Jonathan Chancellor
Updated 1 Sep 2022, 6:27pm
First published 1 Sep 2022, 5:00am
Australia’s most colourful cryptocurrency spruiker Fred Schebesta has seemingly missed the property market boom, with his prestige Tamarama apartment pulled from auction last weekend.
The Finder.com.au founder signalled he was selling the luxury penthouse to possibly pour his hopeful windfall into his continued passion, bitcoin.
Foreshadowing the listing of his redundant penthouse in June, Schebesta suggested it was worth more than $7 million.
Fred Schebesta co-founder and CEO of the comparison website, Finder. has pulled his Tamarama home from auction. Source: Supplied
“Selling it is a tragedy, but Bitcoin is just calling me too much,” he said at the time.
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By July the tech tycoon had appointed Conrad Panebianco of Raine & Horne to market the Wonderland Avenue hillside residence with modified $6.5 million price expectations.
The guidance was dropped to $5.8 million earlier this month.
And amid the sun showers, attendees at Saturday’s open for inspection were being told $5.5 million could secure it.
Wonderful view.
But it wouldn’t sell for enough crypto.
The contemporary three-bedroom, two-bathroom penthouse with pool cost $3.9 million in 2017.
Schebesta installed a magnificent mirror that creates appearances of an enlarged 155 sqm space.
Tamarama’s median apartment price sits at $2.79 million, according to CoreLogic, up on the $1.4 million median in 2017. And investors are being advised of improved $3000 plus weekly rental possibilities.
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You could spend the whole summer here.
The global crypto educator and enabler invested in bitcoin in 2017 when it was just $US4000.
Bitcoin, one of the most well-known cryptocurrencies, has lost much of its value in 2022, although in the past month, since the start of the auction campaign, the falls have paused, and it has crept back to around $US31,000 per bitcoin. It sits well below its most recent peak of $US67,000 in November 2021.
Schebesta co-founded Finder with Frank Restuccia in 2007 after the business partners sold their media agency Freestyle Agency for a reported $1.3 million.
They then created one of the nation’s largest comparison sites with 135,000 website members and 200,000 users of its app in 80 countries.
Fred Schebesta at his Coogee ‘Castle’. Jane Dempster/The Australian.
Last year Finder launched Finder Earn, a crypto-based competitor to bank deposits, offering its users a 4 per cent return to exchange Australian dollars for “stablecoins” linked to the currency.
Schebesta last year spent a South Coogee record $16.85 million to buy on Bunya Parade with a 2003 house designed by Renato D’Ettorre Architects.
Now nicknamed ‘The Crypto Castle’, the huge clifftop oceanfront home periodically fetches around $25,000 a night through Airbnb.
