Two once-prized office buildings in downtown Denver were recently sold for a mere $3.2 million and nearly a $200 million loss. Just six years ago, these buildings—located at 621 and 633 17th Street—were reportedly valued at over $200 million. That represents a loss of more than 98% in nominal dollar terms. But the real story is even more striking when we reframe this collapse in terms of Bitcoin.
This isn’t just about real estate. It’s about how we measure value, and what’s really being lost when traditional assets depreciate while monetary systems shift underneath them. To really grasp how deep this collapse is, we need to look not just at the dollars lost—but at the Bitcoin forgone.
The Numbers in Dollar Terms
Let’s start with what happened:
· 2019 Estimated Value: $200 million
· 2025 Sale Price: $3.2 million
· Nominal Loss: $196.8 million (or 98.4%)
This alone is staggering. A pair of high-end, Class A office buildings in the heart of a major U.S. city saw their value effectively wiped out in six years.
It reflects deeper macro shifts—post-pandemic work-from-home culture, oversupply in the commercial real estate sector, tightening credit markets, and the gradual de-urbanization of knowledge work.
But what if we used Bitcoin, not dollars, to assess the loss?
Bitcoin as a Measuring Stick
In June 2019, Bitcoin was trading around $10,817. At that price, $200 million equaled roughly 18,500 BTC.
Fast forward to early August 2025. Bitcoin is now trading at approximately $113,500.
That means:
· 18,500 BTC today = over $2.1 billion
This reframes the picture dramatically:
· The buyer paid $3.2M USD in 2025, or ~28 BTC at current prices.
· The seller gave up what was once equivalent to 18,500 BTC in 2019 value—BTC they could have held instead.
· The opportunity cost in Bitcoin terms is nearly 18,472 BTC, or more than $2.09 billion at today’s price.
What initially appeared to be a $196 million loss in dollar terms is actually more than a $2 billion opportunity cost if those funds had been allocated to Bitcoin instead.
The Real Estate vs. Bitcoin Performance Gap
This isn’t a story about one failed property investment. It’s a broader lens on the comparative performance of traditional hard assets and Bitcoin as a monetary network.
In the last six years:
· The value of this Class A office space dropped 98.4%.
· Bitcoin increased by over 950%.
This is a stark representation of the widening gap between legacy asset classes and emerging monetary paradigms. It’s not just that real estate fell—it’s that, relative to Bitcoin, it absolutely imploded.
This raises a deeper point: what we commonly refer to as a "loss" is often measured solely in fiat terms. But when the money itself is depreciating—quietly, steadily, and structurally—then fiat losses may actually understate the true loss in value. Measuring in Bitcoin highlights a more honest assessment of value over time.
What This Means for Investors
Bitcoin isn’t just an asset—it’s becoming a new baseline for opportunity cost.
When investors evaluate portfolio performance, they often benchmark against inflation, equity indexes, or real estate returns. But what happens when the underlying benchmark shifts?
Over the last decade, Bitcoin has outperformed nearly every major asset class. For long-term capital allocators, the relevant question isn’t, "Did we preserve capital in dollars?" It’s, "How did we perform against Bitcoin?"
In this case, a $200 million investment in Denver commercial real estate not only failed to preserve capital—it underperformed the Bitcoin benchmark by a factor of more than 10x.
The lesson isn’t that all real estate is doomed or that Bitcoin is a guaranteed winner. The lesson is that measuring wealth exclusively in fiat dollars obscures the real cost of capital misallocation.
Repricing the World in Bitcoin
One of Bitcoin’s most important contributions is that it allows us to reprice the world.
This doesn’t mean that every investor needs to hold 100% BTC or abandon other asset classes. But it does mean that we should start thinking in terms of Bitcoin-denominated opportunity cost.
When we do this, stories like the Denver sale become more than headlines about collapsing property markets—they become case studies in how the legacy financial system is being repriced by an emergent alternative.
It invites deeper questions:
· How many other "blue chip" assets are being silently repriced when measured in Bitcoin?
· What does a 60/40 portfolio look like in a world where Bitcoin is the dominant measuring stick?
· How many pensions, REITs, or endowments are structurally long fiat—and bleeding purchasing power as a result?
Bitcoin is a mirror that reflects not just financial returns, but monetary truth.
From Collapse to Clarity
The Denver office buildings aren’t just a story about real estate gone bad. They’re a metaphor for broader shifts happening beneath the surface.
In fiat terms, the buildings lost nearly everything. In Bitcoin terms, the loss is even more profound—not because Bitcoin is magic internet money, but because it represents an entirely different base layer of value.
When capital is allocated in a world where the rules of money are changing, mistakes are amplified. What looks like a safe, steady yield in fiat may turn out to be a massive loss when measured in a more resilient, harder form of money.
As Bitcoin continues to gain adoption—not just as an investment but as a benchmark—more and more of the world will be repriced in sats.
And when that happens, stories like this won’t just be about mispriced office space. They’ll be about the realignment of global capital toward a money that can’t be printed, inflated, or manipulated.
Final Thought
If you’re still measuring success in fiat alone, you may be missing the real story.
The $200 million Denver buildings didn’t just lose value—they exposed the fragility of old models in a new monetary era. Bitcoin isn’t just winning on returns—it’s redefining the baseline.
Because in Bitcoin terms, the real estate didn’t just fall—it disappeared.