Why shouldn't I buy the house directly with legit money then? Why add one more layer and pay some amount in commission and also deal with volatility in BTC prices?
There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money. And settlement of such a large amount of funds between two parties is not simple and fraught with danger if you "do it alone".
Bitcoin or your blockchain of choice has no such issues though! You can prove to your seller that you have the funds, as well as even pre-commit the money in a smart contract, or a multi-sig transaction. Doing so would completely remove the need to wait on the slow and inefficient banks to do their thing.
> There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money.
Where are you getting that from? If the money has been earned in a legit manner and you want to spend it on a legitimate thing, who's stopping you from spending it?
Yes if your source of money isn't legal or you want to spend on something illegal, that's a different story.
My money is completely legal, but it was a protracted process to:
A.) Transfer a part of it (for this particular bank, anything more than $5000) to pay a deposit for a house;
B.) Make a final settlement on a house, again with money I had available in my account.
There are limitations on how much you can transfer easily at once, and different kinds of approval and parties have to be involved to pay for something large.
Those per transaction limits are for YOUR protection so in case someone hacks into your account they won't empty it and you can ask the bank to raise the limits.
Banks ask you the reason for transactions beyond a certain amount because they have to report it to authorities.
Large transactions like paying for a property don't happen at the drop of the hat. You won't just wake up in the middle of the night and decide to buy a property immediately right then.
You asked who is stopping you from spending your money as you want. I listed who and provided some examples. The reason why they make it difficult is beside the point.
It took me the better part of a morning I would have ideally spent on more productive tasks.
I spent an hour on the phone to get my limit temporarily raised, then another hour or so later in the day when the payment was flagged as suspicious and my account was locked. There was then an arbitrary waiting period of one day where the transfer sat in limbo before getting processed (more security theatre), and finally an additional two days for the funds to clear.
There really isn't.. I can pay 1 million EUR with my debit card if there's enough money in the account. That's the default limit, and can be raised anytime if needed.
If I have the money and they are legal, I can spend them without anyone getting in the way.
If I am in a country from where I can legally send money to Dubai to buy property, should I still convert money to BTC for buying property? Common sense says no. It may be legal but I don't need to add another layer of complexity.
If I am in a country from where I cannot legally buy a property in Dubai, would buying a property via BTC route be legal? Definitely not.
The only scenario in which it makes sense to buy property directly in BTC is if I had bought BTC years ago when it was cheap, it would be better to convert it into a real asset like an apartment in Burj Khalifa and convert my on paper wealth into real wealth.
The core scenario in which it makes sense to buy property in bitcoin is if you already hold a ton of bitcoin. Then, selling the bitcoin in order to pay fiat for a house is the more cumbersome route to take.
A few years ago I was earning a fair chunk of loyalty points (and hence air miles) by buying gift cards in supermarkets, then immediately depositing the full value of the gift cards into a savings account of mine.
This was entirely legal, and I was Making My Own Financial Decisions™, but the route got shut down pretty quickly anyway.
