Historic Fond du Lac Elks Lodge for sale, but not for cash. Bitcoin only, please.
FOND DU LAC - Bryan Perl knows people are going to call him crazy. He's selling the former Elks Lodge, but only to a buyer willing to use bitcoin, a digital currency.
The historic building at 33 Sheboygan St. is for sale for 40 bitcoins. That's equivalent to roughly $260,000 — but Perl won't sell to someone offering dollars. It's the cryptocurrency or nothing.
The former Elks Lodge, a downtown landmark built in 1904, is a large Queen Ann-style structure that sits two-and-a-half stories high and also houses the oldest sanctioned bowling alley in the United States, according to the Fond du Lac Elks Lodge website.
And it may be the first building in Wisconsin offered for sale for bitcoin. Brenda Schneider, Fond du Lac County treasurer, said she doesn't know of any other cases in the county or the state.
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Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009. As it gained popularity as a way to pay for things online, it also attracted investors who saw it as a way to store value outside of traditional national currencies — as well as speculators who saw it as a way to get rich. The price of bitcoin has been extremely volatile. On Nov. 8, it reached an all-time high in market trading of $7,721 per coin. By Sunday, it had fallen 25 percent to $5,617.
Perl said the swings in price don't worry him. He sees it as a long-term investment.
In the last few years, Perl said he had friends talking up the idea.
“I am computer illiterate, basically," Perl said. "So I never really researched it or did anything, but this was back when bitcoin was going for $100 to $200.”
A few months ago, Perl said his good friend came to him once more, suggesting he get into the bitcoin market. "And that was back when it was running around $2,500 a coin," he said.
Perl, a lifelong local entrepreneur who recently sold the 2.0 Ale House, jumped on board when the digital currency stood at roughly $3,000.
Perl said he rode the wave of increasing value for a while and then experienced a mild crash of roughly a thousand dollars.
"After that I was like, well that was a dumb investment. But I talked myself down," he said. "You’re going to put your money in and you’re going to risk it."
Not traditional money
Adam Hayes, a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in economic sociology, said the concept of bitcoin can be difficult to grasp at first, but the act of trading money for another form of currency is extremely common.
Trading cash for a bitcoin is just like exchanging U.S. dollars for any other currency, Hayes said. The difference with bitcoin is its universality.
Hayes, who has written several academic pieces studying the bitcoin market, believes its too early to tell if using the digital currency to purchase property is a solid move.
"It isn't traditional money in a sense," he said. "Due to people still mining for bitcoin, I view it as a produced product."
Bitcoin miners use large supercomputers to solve complex math equations in order to obtain a new block of bitcoins. The amount of energy a computer uses to mine the coins is extremely expensive, Hayes said, which is ultimately one of the trade-offs for acquiring the coins.
The biggest question around bitcoin is whether it will hold its value, or turn out to be a passing fad.
"Let's say the price of coffee mugs goes up due to a spike in demand: It is going to entice people to become mug producers," Hayes said. "Tomorrow, there are going to be more mugs on the market because of this which will satisfy demands. With bitcoin, you can't really go about it like that. The more producers that come online to mine bitcoin, the more difficult it becomes to mine, which is what drives the price of bitcoin in the end."
Tom Ackerman, partner with ZA Commercial Real Estate, said when Perl first came to him with interest in listing the property for bitcoin he was dumbfounded by the idea.
In his research of bitcoin, however, Ackerman said he found more people than just Perl who own bitcoin in the Fond du Lac area.
A century-old club
The former Elks Lodge building is bathed innostalgia. Hardly anything has changed since Perl purchased the building in September of this year.
The old bar begs to serve a drink, while all of the serving utensils anyone could ever need remain in in the dining area. The ballroom sits on the floor above, looking to get a second chance at that last dance.
For the future owner of the former hub of activity, everything comes as is, including all of its potential possibilities.
But will Perl find a buyer with the right sort of currency?
Perl said he already knows there will be many naysayers in the community, but those aren't the people he is paying attention to.
"I am looking for someone to buy this who maybe bought bitcoin a long time ago when the price was extremely low and are looking to do something with it now," Perl said.