Has The Aston Plaza Project Been Abandoned?

By Rishma Banerjee

As per recently published reports, the largest bitcoin luxury residential project targeting the crypto rich may be in trouble. The Times reported on Sunday that the Aston Plaza project in Dubai which was launched in 2017 by high-profile U.K. entrepreneurs Baroness Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman appears to have been stalled. Its website is still displaying the project as “25 per cent complete,” the same figure as used in its marketing materials. The Aston Plaza plan was unveiled in September 2017 and it was said at that time that the project in total will cost £250 million ($323 million) to build. The two-tower complex was to feature 1,133 luxury apartments over 2.4 million square feet, with each flat costing between $133,000 and $379,000 in bitcoins.

However, according to The Times, government inspectors visited the construction site in January 2018 and declared that the project was “on hold.” Construction, planned for completion by this summer, is no longer underway.

Baroness Mone is also a lingerie designer and peer of the U.K.’s House of Lords, while Barrowman, her life and business partner, is a business mogul and founder of private equity firm Aston Ventures. Together, the two launched the real estate project specifically for the blockchain and crypto community. Barrowman had said then that this he felt that this venture would be the perfect opportunity for bitcoin investors to convert their holdings into “real brick-and-mortar” assets.

He also said in a statement at the time:

“I wanted to offer the property, tech and blockchain community a unique and exclusive opportunity by merging the property and tech sectors together in a true first for the industry.”

The project was accepting payments in bitcoin through U.S.-based cryptocurrency payments processor BitPay.