Investments in bricks vs. Block investments in Argentina

It is common in several countries, but particularly in Argentina, the notion that «brick» (real property) is a safe investment, but the safer of all. In my opinion, this is an inherited notion of the twentieth century, in which families not only bought the house where they lived, but then continued to buy properties to have a holiday house or an apartment to put for rent and have an additional income. In this article I will explain How Bitcoin is changing that (for good) And what can we expect for the next decades.

Benefits

It is not a difficult comparison to make. Let’s look at the price of BTC in its beginnings, on 07/12/2010 is the first date registered with a BTC price in Coinmarketcap. That price was USD 0.06189. Consider the price of the square meter in the city of Buenos Aires from that moment. I will take the data of the average price of publication of the square meter (in dollars) of departments for sale of 3 used environments published by IDECBA. That price, in the third quarter of 2010, was USD 1,557.

In the first quarter of 2025, the average price of the square meter was USD 2,135. Therefore, if one retained an apartment from mid -2010 to the beginning of 2025, it would have appreciated 37.12%in dollars. In that same period, BTC was appreciated 133,384,792.55%, with a price of USD 82,551.91 on 03/31/2025. Another way of seeing it is: if in 2010 BTC 1,615,769.91 were needed to buy a USD 100,000 department; In March 2025, only BTC 2.87 were needed to buy that same department, now at the price of USD 237,120.

It could be objected that a property is not only appreciated in value over time, but can also be profitable. Even so, I am very sure that the appreciation plus the income of a department in CABA is not even close to the profitability that BTC had in that period. The only way would be that the property has been rented at an exorbitant price, much greater than what it would cost to buy it.

Another possible objection is that Bitcoin might not be revalued as much as in its beginnings, so last fifteen years does not deny decades of real estate profitability. The perspective I found interesting to answer that objection is that of «Bitcoin like Cyber ​​Manhattan”By Michael Saylor. This approach makes us see the 21 million BTC units not as coins that come and go from one place to another but as plots of a city. Buy 1 BTC is equivalent to buying a land or a property in this digital city, in which no more properties can be built than they exist. Being more exact: they are being built little by little, but less and less, until reaching its end of almost 21 million. build more. who first arrive and can monopolize a good amount of these landsthey will be the biggest beneficiaries in the long term.

Costs

Following that analogy, we can compare the costs of BTC and those of real property. Citing Saylor in the other note: «Bitcoin has no maintenance costs, zoning risks, or property taxes, or high transaction costs.»

To that I add that the entry barrier to Bitcoin is much smaller than that of the real estate market. While there are ways to invest in square meters instead of in an entire property (and this will be developed more with the help of asset token in the coming years), I would say that the difficulty of learning to do is comparable to that of learning to use Bitcoin.

Consequences

Therefore, we have on the one hand a little liquid asset, little divisible, uncommonctrable, which allows moderate savings and income capacity, but with maintenance and safety costs; On the other, a liquid asset, easily transportable, infinitely divisible, with a very low entry and maintenance cost and with a high savings capacity over time. Where does this take us?

First, we see an increase in the properties that are being sold in exchange for BTC in Argentina. A 2023 cryptonotic note reported 611 ads of this type on the free market site. A consultation when writing this note in 2025 Sample 612,530 adsa thousand more times, and 25 associated real estate. This indicates that there is a growing number of owners seeking to make BTC instead of dollars (in Argentina the properties are generally sold in this currency).

Secondly, we can infer that for a saving or retail investor it is preferable to dump your savings in BTC (for example, doing DCA) rather than invest in properties, given the costs, benefits and access barriers previously exposed.

Third, even if someone has real estate and wants to get BTC, do not necessarily have to sell those properties. As also explains a Saylor model made by Strategy, Bitcoin24, in addition to simply buying BTC little by little DCA, strategies such as the double or triple maxi can be performed. In this strategy, one is leveraged in real estate through, for example, a mortgage loan. When doing this, The price of ownership in dollars is obtained without getting rid of it and BTC is bought. While you have to pay that credit progressively over the years, the bet is that the amount of BTC you bought will be greater than what you could buy if you use those installments to buy BTC. That is to say: it is indebted in a currency that loses value in time in exchange for being able to get a large amount of a currency that can be seen at that same time.

Conclusion

The neighborhood chosen as analogy for Bitcoin, Manhattan, is precisely paradigmatic of the problem that entails the use of real estate as a means of savings. Empty ultra luxury buildings because nobody really buys them to live there. In Buenos Aires we have a small version of this in Puerto Madero. Projects of this type lead the neighborhoods to gentrification, expelling the population that does have properties to live in them.

Bitcoin has proven to be a better savings vehicle than real estate in the last 15 years. To the extent that Bitcoin wins prominence as a savings vehicle in front of the properties, there will be less speculative demand for the latter. The expected and desirable consequence is to withdraw that speculative demand and the owners prefer to sell, also increasing the offer. This would make the price of properties down. When doing this, Bitcoin will be helping to alleviate housing crises such as those we have in Buenos Aires, in Spain and in the United States. Less people without houses, and houses without people.

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Discharge of responsibility: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to its author and do not necessarily reflect those of cryptootics. The author’s opinion is informatively and under no circumstances constitutes an investment recommendation or financial advice.