In December 2013, RentHop.com began accepting BitCoin as a form of payment for landlords and real estate brokers to advertise apartment listings. The company initially offered a 60% discount off the prevailing USD to BTC exchange rate to encourage adoption of the new technology, and RentHop co-founder Lawrence Zhou pledged to hold the majority of any BitCoin received for the long term.
By using CoinBase as a payment processor from 2013 until early 2017, RentHop accumulated a modest stash of BitCoin from tech savvy real estate agents. The price remained relatively stable averaging $500 through most of the 3 years. When crypto prices appreciated drastically in 2017, the company holdings increased over 3500% at the peak in December 2017. Even today, the largely untouched account has paid off tenfold, even after accounting for the initial 60% discount to customers.
Zhou remains optimistic on BitCoin’s future significance and intends to ride through the recent market volatility. On balance, the company’s decision was a huge victory, attracting a tech savvy user base, streamlining transactions using crypto currency protocols, and accumulating a large but unrealized profit from the appreciation.
As a comparison, RentHop Boston launched in April 2012 serving both No Fee and Exclusive apartment rentals in Cambridge and Greater Boston. RentHop Chicago launched four months later. As of 2019, the unrealized crypto earnings exceed both Boston and Chicago cumulative gross profits!
Unfortunately, as we never re-pegged the BTC prices, no agent has purchased using BitCoin since 2017. The original 60% discount has transformed into a 261% surcharge. Our engineering team may revisit the feature if there is demand.
