Buying a House in the Age of Surveillance
Hi Plebs,
In todays world of mass data collection and ubiquitous surveillance, something as fundamental as purchasing a home has become a major privacy minefield. The traditional process of buying real estate using fiat currencies leaves a staggering trail of personal and financial data that is collected, monetised and vulnerable to exploitation.
A Privacy Nightmare
When you go through the arduous process of obtaining a mortgage from a bank or lender, you must relinquish a shocking amount of personal information - tax records, pay stubs, banks statements, employment history and more. The data falls into the hands of countless third parties like realtors, title companies, insurers, and mortgage brokers to name a few.
Your most sensitive financial life details are handled by entities who often have poor data security and privacy practices. Time and again we see major corporate data breaches exposing millions of peoples’ private records to cyber criminals and authoritarian regimes alike.
The Bitcoin Solution
The beauty of Bitcoin transactions is their innate privacy, pseudo anonymity, and security. If property was purchased using Bitcoin here is how it could look:
No personal information is exchanged, only public wallet addresses.
No centralised data repositories of your financial life exist - to be hacked.
All funds can be secured by the owner with back up seed phrases.
No backdoor surveillance vectors exist.
Moreover, Multisignature (multisig) wallets can be employed as a ‘decentralised escrow’, with funds only released once all parties digitally sign off on the agreed terms. Buyer and seller deposits could be secured in a 2-of-3 multisig contract, with an independent legal representative as the third impartial vote.
While regulation and infrastructural challenges exist before, Bitcoin can fully disrupt the real estate market, as it provides a tantalising alternative for obtaining true financial privacy when making one of life’s biggest purchases - your home.
Cheers, and onwards with Bitcoin
