BETTING BIG
Crypto billionaires diversify with trophy Manhattan skypalaces
ON a recent afternoon, bros worth billions gathered on the 96th floor of 432 Park Ave. — a sprawling six-bedroom palace in the sky that is on the market for a staggering $169 million — 1,396 feet above street level.
“The first thing everybody does is go straight to the windows. The views are completely insane,” said Ryan Serhant, the skypad’s listing broker and reality TV star.
The full-floor spread stretches from a breakfast bar overlooking Central Park to great rooms and libraries looming over the downtown skyline — and the views never get old.
Condos like this, once the domain of sheiks (the owner of the apartment is Fawaz Alhokair, a Saudi retail magnate) and titans of finance, are now being eyed by a whole new group of ultra-rich young people, who made their fortunes in cryptocurrency.
“We offer wine and champagne for anyone who comes through,” said Serhant of 12 recent crypto showings. “[But] a lot of these crypto guys are dry. They drink computer. It’s very intelligent, smart conversations. They are really interested in hard-asset investments and they want ‘one of one,’ like NFTs. People are spending all this money to own one of one.”
But many of them — like Sam Bankman-Fried, the world’s richest 29-year-old with a $22.5 bilthat lion crypto fortune — are remarkably cash-poor. Some don’t even own their own apartments. “They take care of their parents first, buy their mom a house, like Drake, get themselves a car, and then they buy an apartment for themselves,” said Serhant, who has been tracking and targeting crypto titans via Twitter and Reddit. “Everyone is incredibly public. When we find them, we put properties in front of them and it works.”
These crypto whales have good reason to get into the Manhattan property game now. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced his administration is coming up with new anti-money-laundering requirements for the real estate industry. A big question is whether the rules will include reporting regulations for crypto.
“Will crypto be treated like cash so that paying with it triggers a currency transaction report? Right now, it’s unclear,” said Elise Bean, a former staff director of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “There’s a reason it’s called crypto — it’s tied to secrecy.”
Bean argues that crypto dealers should have to identify the beneficial owners of the entities they are dealing with, just as banks do.
Still, local and federal governments don’t always see eye to eye.
Last month Mayor-elect Eric Adams flew to Puerto Rico on crypto-entrepreneur Brock Pierce’s private jet. Adams said he wants the Big Apple to be a crypto hub.
Like Miami mayor Francis Suarez, Adams tweeted that he will accept his first paychecks in crypto. This was later clarified by his spokesman to mean he’d convert his first paychecks from US dollars into Bitcoin.
Crypto entrepreneur Lane Rettig and his wife, Amazon exec Lily Rettig, recently converted some of their crypto into a new $3.5 million condo on Central Park North, precisely because of the upcoming mayor’s crypto-positive outlook.
“It’s been a tech hub for some time, which was exciting and surprising,” he said. “Now, the city is very cryptoheavy.”
Developer Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group started selling condos for Bitcoin back in 2018. Since then, he has sold more than $25 million worth of commercial and residential real estate in cyber currency, he told The Post.
“Crypto currency holders are a different type of person,” Shaoul said. “They aren’t just finance people, or doctors and lawyers who own stocks. These are bus drivers, school teachers, cab drivers. They never invested before getting on the crypto currency train and now that they’ve made the money, they want to preserve their capital.”
But some warn that crypto wealth has inflated niche pockets of the New York City real estate, like Greenwich Village, where people with no real estate experience are buying townhouses for the first time — and overpaying for them.
These buyers are also difficult to vet, added Dolly Lenz, of Dolly Lenz Real Estate.
“You never heard of any of them,” she said. Jenny Lenz adds that they are looking for $12 to $20 million apartments.
“They want flashy, and they want turn-key, ready to go,” she said. “They want instant gratification.”