About a year ago, Nikolay Denisenko, a former senior backend engineer at European fintech company Revolut, began formalizing a process whereby “special customers” of his new crypto payments app, Brighty, could use their digital assets to purchase real estate.
Since then, demand has exploded.
Brighty has so far brokered more than 100 transactions for the Lithuanian-licensed platform’s wealthy clients, allowing them to purchase apartments with crypto, with many more in the pipeline. Purchases of residential real estate are mainly made in destinations such as the United Kingdom, France, Malta, Cyprus and Andorra, Denisenko said.
“We have between 100 and 150 wealthy clients, and our revenue is growing rapidly,” Denisenko, co-founder and CTO of Brighty App, said in an interview. “The average spend of these people is around $50,000 per month. The upper limit, in terms of use cases, is buying apartments in Europe. The size of these transactions ranges from around $500,000 to around $2.5 million.”
This trend is another telling sign of cryptocurrency emulation of traditional finance, where wealthy investors often like to de-risk their portfolios by investing a portion of their liquid assets in the safe haven of hard assets, such as real estate.
It is not surprising that there is a demand to cater to wealthy crypto holders looking to make large-scale purchases, given that banks are shying away from such transactions. By 2025, the number of crypto millionaires worldwide jumped 40% in 12 months to reach 241,700, according to the Crypto Wealth Report 2025.
A long-standing concern surrounding crypto is the idea that digital assets could easily be used to launder the proceeds of crime.
However, Denisenko pushed back on the legitimacy of banks’ hesitation, telling CoinDesk that sophisticated blockchain analysis tools can be used to perform sufficient due diligence on client funds. He noted that most traditional financial institutions would likely be scared off by crypto when it comes to evaluating the source of funds needed to purchase a home.
“The starting point is that these investors hold cryptocurrencies, which can scare off banks, even if these people have gained this wealth very transparently through Bitcoin, for example,” Denisenko said. “If they want to use that money to buy an apartment, we err on the side of caution and use things like Elliptic’s blockchain analytics tools to evaluate the portfolios in question.”
Provided that Brighty’s compliance team is satisfied with the source of this cryptocurrency, the funds are accepted and the customer also gets a fiat currency account in their name.
“Then it’s just a matter of making a payment. The seller can either be a lawyer or the owner of the apartment, and the money that goes to the seller comes from the client, not Brighty; it doesn’t come from our bank. The money can’t just come from companies like Binance or Kraken, for example.”
The advantage of using crypto to buy a house is that it is faster and less complex than using a traditional method, such as SWIFT, the global interbank payment instructions network used by more than 11,000 banks. If the buyer converts, for example, a stable currency, like USDC, to euros, it makes sense to replace SWIFT rails for local transfers, Denisenko said.
A new trend
The Brighty team also observed an interesting shift in the choice of stablecoin used for large transfers, which was typically Circle’s USDC.
From now on, the preference of wealthy customers is instead for a stablecoin indexed to the euro in order to avoid conversion costs.
The crypto broker saw an increase in average euro-backed trade size from €15,785 ($18,385) in the third quarter to €59,894 ($69,762) in the fourth quarter as high net worth individuals opted to execute large trades in Circle’s EURC rather than USDC.
“Recently, we started seeing our customers using euro stablecoins where previously they could have used USDC,” Denisenko said. “Why? Because if you deposit in USDC and you buy something in Europe, you have a conversion cost. So it’s more convenient to use EURC because you remove any exchange rate.”
Looking ahead to the new year, Denisenko said his company is now involved in many conversations with real estate agencies, engaging them in the concept of buying apartments with transparent and legitimately acquired crypto holdings.
“Our high-net-worth clients are simply looking to de-risk their portfolio assets by investing some of their money in real estate,” he said.