He expounded: “So if you want to buy a house and your title company sends you a total that you’re supposed to tender – whether that’s your down payment amount on a finance deal or you’re paying in full, you’re a cash buyer – what are the amounts that you need in funds to close escrow? ForumPay will basically say ‘well, if you want to pay using bitcoin or cryptocurrency, you press the button when you’re ready to pay and we’ll lock what your exchange rate is going to be.”

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Given the notorious volatility of cryptocurrency, that exchange rate locked-in period is typically between two to five minutes. ForumPay creates a digital wallet, “and you transfer from the wallet the amount that escrow is requiring, ForumPay converts it to US dollars and transfers to the escrow account.”

To the uninitiated, the audience for this sort of transaction might be seen as somewhat limited given its relatively nascent origins. Bitcoin was the first decentralized currency, introduced in 2009. Since then, thousands of other options have been introduced with futuristic-sounding names like Cardano, Ethereum, Solana, Terra, Tether and more.

But no. The audience is rather huge. It’s estimated some 106 million worldwide now use cryptocurrency exchanges, according to 2021 data from Crypto.com. Additionally, more than 4,500 Bitcoin digital wallets are holding value in excess of $10 million, data from The Block Research shows.