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TechCrunch Founder Sells $1.6 Million House on Crypto Real Estate Platform

Michael Arrington has also dived into blockchain capital investments with his $100m firm, Arrington XRP Capital.

Updated Sep 13, 2021, 9:21 a.m. Published Jun 24, 2019, 12:00 p.m.
mansion

Propy

, a blockchain based real estate platform, announced the sale of a $1.6 million San Francisco property owned by the venture capital fund CrunchFund, co-founded by Michael Arrington.

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The announcement follows news of Propy’s highest cost transaction to date, a $2.4 million duplex in San Francisco, completed entirely on the platform.

Propy is a real-estate transaction platform that empowers buyers, sellers, their agents, and escrow agents to close a traditional real estate deal entirely online. The purchase offer, payment and deeds are uploaded to an immutable blockchain.

“The traditional real estate sale process is arduous and broken. Buyers, sellers, and their professional support struggle with overly complex interactions – it’s an opaque, dated, and unnecessarily lengthy process, full of risks such as wire fraud,” said Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, whose most recent venture is into blockchain capital investments and management with his $100m firm, Arrington XRP Capital.

“When it comes to expensive property or other expensive goods, these normally already have digital presentation of ownership, that’s why blockchain is applicable to space,” said CEO Natalia Karayaneva. “Blockchain’s main implications, after [virtual] money, is as a technology that enables ownership transfers… it aligns the entire process of any value transfer including real estate.”

Propy completed its first deal in 2017, and its first US transaction in Vermont 12 months ago. Worldwide, they have assisted in some form in over 60 real estate transfers. This includes auctioning a 17th century Italian mansion and UNESCO site on its blockchain.

The median price of a house sold on its platform is around $1.5 million, said Karayaneva, though the value of the houses is steadily increasing. About 20 realtors have closed deals on the platform, though 3,000 have signed up.

Karayaneva believes in two or three years the majority of real estate transactions will be entirely digitized. The company is working with county governments to provide technology that automatically and immediately reports the transfer of title deeds.

“We don’t want to work against them. Either we help them or will eliminate them,” she said.

The venture capital arm of the U.S. National Association of Realtors (NAR) recently invested an undisclosed amount in Propy via its REACH accelerator program. The company also raised $15.5 million via an initial coin offering in 2017.

Arrington previously purchased a $60,000 apartment in Kiev through Propy, using ethereum and smart contracts to settle the deal.

Sold house image via Shutterstock

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KuCoin Hits Record Market Share as 2025 Volumes Outpace Crypto Market

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KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.

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  • KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
  • This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
  • Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
  • Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
  • Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.

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Here's what bitcoin bulls are saying as price remains stuck during global rally

Here's what bitcoin bulls are saying as price remains stuck during global rally

It's about a lot more than "zooming out." Supply overhangs and investor "muscle memory" regarding gold help explain bitcoin's poor absolute and relative performance.

Yang perlu diketahui:

  • Bitcoin has failed so far to act as an inflation hedge or safe-haven asset, lagging badly behind gold, which has surged amid high inflation, wars, and interest rate uncertainty.
  • Crypto advocates argue that bitcoin’s weakness reflects a temporary supply overhang, investor “muscle memory” favoring familiar precious metals and its correlation with risk assets, rather than a collapse in long-term demand.
  • Many bitcoin proponents still see BTC as a superior long-term store of value and “digital gold,” predicting that, once traditional hard assets are overbought, capital will rotate into bitcoin, allowing it to “catch up” to gold.