In this interview, Grant Cardone explains how he merged his 40‑year real‑estate expertise with Bitcoin to create what he calls the largest real‑estate‑Bitcoin deal ever. He recounts his early exposure to Bitcoin (receiving 150 BTC as payment for a speaking gig) and the misconceptions he encountered about mixing the two assets. After consulting Michael Saylor, Cardone decided not to go public but instead to acquire a property below replacement cost and fund the discount with Bitcoin. The resulting project, closed in January 2025, comprises 366 units at 101 Meissner in Boca Raton, valued at $235 million in real estate and $100 million in Bitcoin (3 BTC per unit). He highlights how this hybrid structure attracts larger, faster capital, draws older, wealthier investors, and offers liquidity for cap‑ex and mortgage management. Cardone also points out a regulatory quirk in REITs that forces 90 % cash distribution, preventing them from holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets, and argues his model could disrupt the 65‑year‑old REIT industry.
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Largest real estate Bitcoin project ever done on the planet. $235 million of real estate.
I mean, you've been super vocal about Bitcoin. In fact, one of the biggest real estate transactions, the biggest in history. Yeah, that's right. Tell us about that.
So look, I mean, I'm a real estate guy. Real estate guys buy in all cycles. And I've been buying real estate for 40 years. There's never been a bad time to buy real estate. If you buy it and hold it long enough, you're going to be just fine. Don't over-leverage it. Buy great locations, sit on the cash flow, take care of the property, take care of the resident, and it's just a matter of time when you get before you get rich. Now, what does that have to do with Bitcoin? Because Bitcoin is real estate. Bitcoin is real estate without the gutters, the HVAC, the roofs, the siding, the termites, the tenants, the toilets.
Absolutely.
I like the evictions, the property taxes. So, you know, I've been looking at Bitcoin. As a public real estate guy and a closet Bitcoiner for 13 years.
I like this. Portable digital property.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
And I've been looking at, you know, I was introduced to Bitcoin. Somebody gave me Bitcoin. They gave me 150.
Somebody gifted you Bitcoin?
They gave me 150.
A very good friend.
Yeah. Well, no, I worked for it.
Okay.
He worked for it. So they said, look, we don't have money to give you. They wanted me to speak in an event.
Okay. Okay.
We don't have money, but we'll give you Bitcoin. And I literally said, what is Bitcoin? They said, it's BTC. I said, is BTC like an STD? And they said, no, it's not an STD. I said, okay, if it's not an STD and you can't pay me any other way, I'll take it and I'll figure out what to do with it.
So that's the origin story.
That's the origin story.
Wow. That's pretty cool.
And so I still have that Bitcoin today.
Wow.
And, and then I started looking at what is Bitcoin. How could the two go together? I got a lot of misinformation on the way. People were like, oh, you need to put your real estate on the blockchain. Or they would say dumb stuff like, you need to get rid of all your real estate and buy only Bitcoin.
I'm like, which is— I had $5 billion.
No, I'm like, I'm going to throw away a whole career. Like, right. It was this all or nothing kind of thing, you know? And so it became a bit confusing, but I was always trying to figure out, I wonder if there's a way to put them together. Well, I met with Michael Saylor about 2 years ago. And he said, Grant, what you should do is you should take your audience that already trusts you. You should go public. You should raise money against the public company and buy Bitcoin. I said, but I'm not public, public.
Right.
He's like, that's your problem. I'm telling you how to do it. So I went home with Michael's advice and said, okay, how can I do this? Well, I didn't go public. What I did was I went and found a piece of real estate. I paid cash for it. I bought it below what it would cost to build it.
Okay.
So we stole the real estate. And then what I did was rather than just taking a discount on the real estate, I filled in the discount with Bitcoin. So I paid $72 million for the real estate, $15 million for the Bitcoin, put the 2 together, and I was still below replacement cost on the asset, the physical asset. And it's still cash flow. We did our first project in January 2025. We just closed one, largest real estate Bitcoin project ever done on the planet. $235 million of real estate, quarter of a billion dollars of real estate.
That is massive.
Even a big deal for Draper.
I can't believe it. Yeah.
And $100 million of Bitcoin. So we have for— there's 366 units in this project. Every unit has 3 Bitcoin Wow. So the investors now have the combination of a real asset that's very heavy, very constant, consistent, long-term growth. And then we added the Bitcoin. So we have the volatility and the stability of 2 asset classes, one that's ancient and one that's very new.
That's massive. I mean, that's a massive step forward for the industry. Sort of like a hybrid of what Michael Saylor's advice was. Exactly. Because it's not all or nothing in this world.
Yeah, exactly. And the cool thing, Megan, is that the people that have invested with us in these projects, the money came faster, the money was bigger, and the age of the demographic investor, do you think it went up or down?
I don't know. I'm guessing down, but it went up 15 years.
Older investor, richer investor, and the money came in faster. That's, I mean, the check size came bigger. That's because basically I'm explaining, I'm not explaining Bitcoin. I don't have to explain the Bitcoin. I explain Explain the iPhone. If you have an iPhone and I'm like, hey guys, new iPhone. Oh yeah, what is it? But if you go back 16 years ago before there was an iPhone, you had to explain it. And that's where we're at with Bitcoin today. Nobody's doing a very good job of explaining it.
No, it's too complicated. It's too nuanced. They really need something concrete, right? They need a concrete example of why this is better.
Concrete.
Yeah.
Concrete, steel, and glass.
No pun intended.
So I have 366 units. The address is 101 Meissner. I show the asset. It's beautiful. Already have tenants in it. They're already cash flows. Everybody, if you're in Boca, you know the location. It's premium real estate. That's the real estate. Oh, by the way, guys, it's going to do like a 4% return, and we got Bitcoin with it. Oh wow, that's cool. When do I get one or the other?
They get exposure to both of the assets.
They get exposure to both.
It's a match made in heaven. Yeah, really.
Exactly. It is.
It should be polarities.
It's opposites attract.
And the fact that the average age went up. is just astounding to me because you actually showed them why it's feasible and logical to do this.
Yeah, we showed this to one of the biggest banks in the country, and it's the bank most connected. I'm not going to drop the name, even though you have already.
Oh, yeah.
It's the bank most connected with the REITs. There's 193 REITs in this country. It's about a $4.3 trillion industry. They control all the institutional quality real estate in the country. And the guy that created the REIT system looked at my model and said, if I understand what I'm looking at, this is a 2.5-hour meeting. If I understand what I'm looking at, you're going to disrupt a 65-year-old business.
And that is actually what you're doing right now. I mean, this is like an archaic system that you've upgraded.
66 years, real estate has not changed the way you buy it.
It's not accessible. It's not— you can bring more money in this way.
Well, you can, you can not just bring more money in. The most important thing is you're going to be able to solve the long-term problems of real estate, which is every 20 years you need a new roof, right? Every 15 or 20 years you need gutters. Every— you're going to need plumbing. You have problems, CapEx, on hotels, office buildings, apartment buildings. They age.
Right.
The Sistine Chapel has probably had a few remodels over the years.
Yep.
If you had Bitcoin on your treasury, for lack of better words, on your balance sheet, you would cover those. Then you could fix the roof when you need to because you're liquid, or you could pay off the mortgage when interest rates go too high.
Really?
See, the way the REITs are set up right now is they have to distribute 90% of their money. We discovered this glitch. Accidentally. They have to distribute 90% of their revenue every quarter. I'm sorry, their cash flow.
Right.
Their free cash has to be pushed off their balance sheet.
It can't sit there and accrue. Yeah.
Which means they can't reinvest their money.
That's, that's not optimal at all, is it?
No, it's terrible.
Yeah.
So that also means they can never hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
