Peer’s Dubai move uses Bitcoin

One of Scotland’s best-known female entrepreneurs, Baroness Michelle Mone, today launches a ground-breaking £250 million Bitcoin-priced property joint business venture in Dubai.

Aston Plaza and Residences will cover 2.4 million square feet when complete in late 2019, split across two 40-storey residential towers, a major shopping mall, additional sports amenities, gardens and unobstructed views of the famous Dubai skyline.

And, in a world-first, Mone, who is joined in the venture by her fellow entrepreneur and boyfriend Douglas Barrowman, revealed that from today the remaining apartments will also be priced and sold in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

The peer said: “I am thrilled to be launching a project of this scale as a step in the property development business. My partner Douglas has been a fan of Bitcoin for many years.

“There is a massive Bitcoin community, and we believe it is the digital currency of the future. It is safe, transparent and secure and we believe other property developers will follow us.”

Work started on site in Dubai eight months ago, with 483 of the planned 1,130 apartments pre-sold for cash, but Bitcoin buyers are welcomed from now on.

Bitcoin is seen as the world’s leading cryptocurrency, using decentralised technology – the so-called blockchain – for secure payments.

Mone said that communal areas of the Dubai development will be designed by her company Michelle Mone Interiors, with the styling given a distinctive “British” feel as she and Barrowman believe many residents “will be expatriates”.

She added: “So far we have had a lot of professional buyers but also young couples.”