{"id":388,"date":"2017-09-06T17:25:33","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=388"},"modified":"2018-08-20T06:46:46","modified_gmt":"2018-08-20T06:46:46","slug":"mone-and-barrowmans-dubai-bitcoin-property-scheme-is-for-holders-with-more-bitcoins-than-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2017\/09\/06\/mone-and-barrowmans-dubai-bitcoin-property-scheme-is-for-holders-with-more-bitcoins-than-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Mone and Barrowman’s Dubai Bitcoin property scheme: for holders with more bitcoins than sense"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of money sloshing around desperately looking for a home these days. Sane investments aren’t returning enough, so some foolish investors think cryptos aren’t a sinkhole. There are even jawdropping tales of “financially sophisticated” investors mortgaging their house to buy bitcoins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This fell into my inbox<\/a> a couple of weeks ago:<\/p>\n

This information is under embargo until 00:01 Wednesday 6th Sept<\/p>\n

Baroness Michelle Mone OBE, the UK government tsar and entrepreneur and Scottish billionaire Douglas Barrowman are available to the media to brief them on their latest venture into the crypto-currency, Bitcoin. It involves a \u00a3250 million luxury property development in Dubai and the unique aspect of this is it is the first property development to be priced in Bitcoin (the crypto-currency)\u00a0\u2014 which has seen huge focus this year, from companies, investors and governments alike.<\/p>\n

Michelle and Doug will be happy to talk about the reasons why they are launching a business around Bitcoin which she views as the currency of the future. I think many would be interested in their thoughts.<\/p>\n

As heads of their respective companies with a host of business successes behind them, I hope you will be interested in both the news and the interview, which can cover all the business angles especially the future of crypto-currency.<\/p>\n

I hope you feel you would like to meet them and conduct an interview. I look forward to your reply.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sometimes wonder at PR companies trying to declare unsolicited and unarranged “embargoes” when emailing non-fluff journalists.<\/p>\n

Michelle Mone<\/a> is a businesswoman (founder of lingerie company Ultimo<\/a>) who was made a life peer in 2015. Her partner, Douglas Barrowman<\/a>, is a venture capitalist. Neither has any past public record of crypto involvement, though Barrowman now claims some<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I first wondered if they’d been sucked into some sort of Dubai property scam involving Bitcoin \u2014 there was a dubious crowdfunding<\/a> a couple of years ago\u00a0\u2014 but their enterprise seems straightforward: they are pitching to crypto holders with more bitcoins than sense. Bitcoin itself is only involved as a publicity hook \u2014 they know better than to touch a bitcoin<\/a> themselves:<\/p>\n

The venture is accepting payments in bitcoin, with BitPay serving as payment processor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, this presumes BitPay can quickly get<\/a> a single lump of a few hundred thousand dollars to pay them, keeping in mind that Bitcoin order books are terribly thin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I tweeted<\/a> about this after Mone touted it herself<\/a> on Twitter (two weeks ahead of her own “embargo”), and was woken by frantic 8am phone calls from the PR. I didn’t post at the time because there wasn’t really a story yet, and I held off on the PR’s promise of talking to someone involved; but it’s possible they actually read the book<\/a> or the blog<\/a>, and decided to keep to outlets who would be keener on running unpaid advertisements<\/a>. Journalistic August<\/a> is twelve months a year now.<\/p>\n

\"Become<\/a>

Your subscriptions keep this site going. Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes wonder at PR companies trying to declare unsolicited and unarranged “embargoes” when emailing non-fluff journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,5,3],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-doug-barrowman","tag-dubai","tag-michelle-mone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9443,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/9443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}