China’s wealthy are increasingly benchmarking luxury real estate against Bitcoin as the housing market grinds through a multi-year downturn. This reframing isn’t just a narrative shift—it changes how high-net-worth investors think about liquidity, opportunity cost, and portfolio durability.
The property sector is now in its fifth straight year of weakness, and the data points to a sustained reset rather than a brief cycle. Second-hand home prices across 100 major cities are down 7.60% year-on-year, while new home sales fell 11.2% by value in the first eleven months of the year. Forecasts also point to an additional 6%–7% sales decline through 2026, reinforcing the sense of structural pressure.
陪小侠去看房子了，6600万。我跟他说三年后跌到3000万，硬拉着还非要买
之前 @justinsuntron 说过一句：房子本身并不具有价值，买房一定要放在投资视角下。如果把一套房子放进更广阔的资产池里对比 $nvda 、 $BNB 、 $BTC… https://t.co/e3mU9KwQoD pic.twitter.com/f8KAF0xn8e
— EnHeng嗯哼🔸BNB (@EnHeng456) December 30, 2025
From “safe store of wealth” to “capital drag”
Oversupply, weaker buyer confidence, and tighter measures on developer debt have combined to make property feel less liquid and more encumbered for affluent holders. In that environment, premium real estate increasingly reads like a long-duration position with worsening liquidity characteristics.
At the same time, some wealth holders are using Bitcoin as a unit of account for top-tier property, including social media comparisons that equate Shenzhen Bay units priced at ¥60–66 million to specific Bitcoin holdings. The underlying message is straightforward: investors are weighing depreciating, illiquid real estate against digital assets they view as more liquid and potentially higher-upside. Surveys and market indicators cited here reinforce that tilt, with a meaningful share of high-net-worth individuals planning to raise crypto allocations by 25% in 2026 and nearly half of Asia’s wealthy already holding more than 10% of portfolios in crypto.
Operational and compliance implications for the new wealth rails
Mainland China prohibits domestic crypto trading and initial coin offerings while still allowing private ownership of cryptocurrencies, creating a nuanced and operationally demanding environment for capital flows. In practice, wealthy mainland investors often route exposure through offshore accounts, Hong Kong infrastructure, and over-the-counter markets, with Hong Kong functioning as the more permissive regulated channel. The rise of Bitcoin ETFs adds another route that can reduce direct custody friction and simplify parts of the compliance surface for some investors.
Repricing luxury property against Bitcoin signals a material reallocation mindset that can pressure housing demand while raising the bar for platforms and custodians supporting cross-jurisdictional flows. The near-term watchpoints in this setup are the 2026 property sales outlook and whether the planned 25% increase in crypto exposure among affluent investors becomes observable in market plumbing and liquidity conditions.