High-grade marble sourced from one country just wouldn’t do for former casino owner Jack Sommer.
His Las Vegas mansion, a luxurious 25,000 square-foot home which features a Jacuzzi in its staff quarters, yes – staff quarters, is adorned with metamorphic rock sourced from China, Iceland and Brazil.
The house also contains a “secret” garden and the books in its library rest upon American cherry wood shelves.
Now the mansion up for grabs, and you can pay with bitcoin – well, if you happen to have $7.85m worth of the currency, that is.
Sommer, who previously owned The Aladdin casino resort in Las Vegas (now the Planet Hollywood casino resort), decided to offer the property to bitcoin buyers as a means of attracting publicity after a suggestion from his sons, who are both keen bitcoiners.
The entrepreneur told the Las Vega Review-Journal:
“The advantage is that we’re expanding our market and adding some notoriety.”
The property, which is situated within a gated community on a golf course, has been on the market since the beginning of October, according to the property listing.
His sons have mined, stockpiled and traded bitcoin, using the currency to “buy computers, software and other equipment,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal added.
Alberta property
Earlier this year, Canadian Taylor More tried to sell his home in Alberta for bitcoin.
His 2.9-acre property was listed at CA$405,000 (US$382,616), with a discount for those paying with bitcoin. CNET Australia said the property looked like “a great opportunity for someone who’s looking for a fixer-upper”.
Just this month, another property in Alberta was listed with bitcoin as a payment option. According to the National Post, the CA$1m (US$944,733) property in Red Deer includes:
“A four-bedroom, two-bathroom home complete with greenhouse, a secret room accessible via a walk-through closet and a private forest.”
Yes, you can now buy your own private forest with bitcoin. According to the property listing, the master bedroom has room for “two king sized beds, a sitting area and office space”, which means that it’s probably bigger than most London flats.
Attention to detail
But although Sommer’s Las Vegas mansion isn’t the first property to list bitcoin as a payment option, it is certainly the most lavish. Sommer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “This house was an exercise in how many cool details we could put in.”
Although it doesn’t have a private forest, its does have a 120-ton cooling tower that supplies air conditioning to the property, as well as a 2,000 square-foot guest house where Anna Nicole Smith once shot a film.
Sommer and his wife, Laura, are downsizing now their seven children have flown the coop, according to AP.
In practice, using bitcoin to buy the property could prove tricky – due to the continued volatility in its price. Julian Tosh, owner of bitcoinsinvegas.com, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
“If the value is changing 30% a day, how do you quantify that in a contract and expect each side to hold on for 30 to 90 days while escrow clears.”
But with the asking price at almost $8m, very few bitcoin fans will be able to afford it. And hey, who would actually want to buy it? It doesn’t even have a private forest …
Las Vegas image via Shutterstock