Something interesting is happening in Europe’s high-end property market, and most people haven’t noticed yet.
Over the past year, more than one hundred luxury homes—each worth between $500,000 and $2.5 million—have been bought using stablecoins instead of traditional bank transfers.
The company making this possible is Brighty, a crypto payments app licensed in Lithuania that serves around 150 wealthy clients who spend an average of $50,000 a month on the platform.
According to Nikolay Denisenko, Brighty’s co-founder and CTO, these aren’t crypto speculators hunting for quick profits. They’re seasoned investors who now treat digital dollars and euros like regular cash for buying real-world assets.
By avoiding the traditional SWIFT banking system, transactions that used to take three to five business days now complete in minutes. Buyers can lock in a price, secure their exchange rate, and close the deal before a bank’s compliance department even opens the file.
Brighty doesn’t just move money blindly, though. They run full source-of-wealth checks before releasing any funds, meeting European anti-money-laundering requirements and giving nervous sellers peace of mind about accepting crypto.
As Denisenko puts it, they’ve created “a clearinghouse that behaves like a bank without the latency of banking.”
Where the Money’s Going
These crypto-funded deals started with London townhouses and villas in the South of France. Now they’re spreading to seafront apartments in Malta, vacation homes in Cyprus, and ski chalets in Andorra.
In every case, sellers receive regular fiat currency at the end, but the money travels on-chain right up until that final conversion. With European mortgage rates near decade highs, these all-cash crypto deals give buyers an edge—sellers often discount the price when they can skip the hassle of financing contingencies.
Euro Stablecoins Take Over
For most of 2024, Circle’s USDC dominated large transfers on Brighty. That changed dramatically in late 2024 when euro-denominated stablecoins overtook their dollar cousins.
The average transaction size in EURC—Circle’s euro-pegged coin—jumped fourfold to nearly €60,000 between July and December. Why? Clients got tired of paying currency conversion fees twice: once moving from dollars to USDC, then again converting to euros for closing.
The timing lines up with Europe’s MiCA regulation, whose stablecoin rules kicked in mid-2025. Under MiCA, issuers must hold one-to-one reserves and publish independent audits, which finally calmed fears about sketchy algorithmic coins.
Wealth managers now say the regulatory clarity is strong enough that euro-backed tokens are appearing in family office policies as “near-cash,” ranking just below short-term government bonds for liquidity.
A New Way to Hold Money
Brighty’s data reveal something deeper: users who used to park idle cash in overnight money-market funds now leave it in EURC, ready to pounce when the right property listing appears.
The coin works as a just-in-time bridge between crypto investments and physical assets, keeping everything on-chain without worrying about bank cut-off times.
“If you deposit in USDC and want to buy in Europe, you pay the spread twice,” Denisenko explains. “Using EURC erases that friction, so it’s becoming the default for anything priced in euros.”
Luxury Goods Go Crypto While Banks Drag Their Feet
Real estate agents aren’t the only ones paying attention.
Christie’s International Real Estate launched a dedicated crypto division last summer after closing a $65 million Beverly Hills sale settled in Bitcoin. In the Gulf, RAK Properties now accepts Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether for new developments, and Dubai aims to digitize $16 billion worth of property titles by 2033.
Even rentals are getting in on the action—a Knightsbridge penthouse rented for £45,000 a week in Bitcoin earlier this year.
Beyond property, private jet operator FXAIR and several Mediterranean super-yacht charters have added stablecoin payment options after crypto-rich entrepreneurs kept asking for them.
All of this is happening against a backdrop of universal banking reluctance. Compliance teams at major banks still treat large direct crypto deposits as high-risk, often freezing accounts pending extra investigation.
Rather than deal with that headache, wealthy buyers are routing money through specialist crypto gateways that pre-clear the funds, verify their origin, and convert to fiat only at the moment of closing.
For estate agencies, this cuts down on deals falling through and removes the nightmare of handling crypto directly. For buyers, it turns an uncertain, sometimes hostile process into a same-day settlement that feels more like online shopping than traditional conveyancing.
Why This Trend Has Legs
The bigger economic picture supports this shift. With eurozone inflation stabilizing but interest rates still elevated, prime real estate looks attractive again as a defensive investment for private wealth.
Stablecoins—whether dollar or euro-linked—grease the wheels, letting wealthy investors rebalance their portfolios quickly without the high conversion costs that used to make real-world purchases cumbersome.
If traditional banks keep dragging their feet, platforms like Brighty are ready to capture more of the settlement process, essentially becoming the crypto era’s version of correspondent banks.
The formula is straightforward: keep the compliance, lose the wait times.
