Not all crypto founders are in jail or under federal investigation right now –– at least one of them is house-hopping in Lake Tahoe.
Blockchains founder and CEO Jeffrey Berns and his wife, Mary Berns, listed a pair of adjacent properties they own on the Lake Tahoe waterfront for a combined $45 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. The homes can also be bought separately, for $40 million and $7 million, respectively, the outlet reported.
Clif Chase of Chase International Luxury Real Estate has the listing.
Jeffrey Berns, a longtime consumer protection attorney, founded Blockchains in 2014 to focus on Web3 services. He gained notoriety in 2018 when he bought a plot of land near Reno, Nevada for $170 million to build a futuristic blockchain-centric “utopia.”
Berns bought the lakefront mansion at 1180 Highway 50 in Glenbrook, on the Nevada side of the lake, for $23.5 million in 2018, according to the outlet. The 1.6-acre property includes a 9,300-square-foot, six-bedroom main house, a two-bedroom guest house, and a beach cabana, the listing shows. The estate spans 160 feet of lakefront, with a dock, private pier and jet ski dock.
Berns bought the smaller home next door for guest use, he told the outlet. The 3,000-square-foot, five-bedroom home sits on 0.3 acres and spans 76 feet of lakefront.
Jeffrey and Mary Berns were revealed as the buyers of a lakefront mansion in Incline Village for $47.5 million in May. The purchase is the third-highest residential price ever in Lake Tahoe.
They closed on the Nevada-side property in November last year, and have been living there full time since then. Berns told the Wall Street Journal his family moved to be closer to his daughter’s school.
The bankers of Wall Street have the Hamptons, and the tech founders of Silicon Valley have Lake Tahoe. The mountain community, just a four-hour drive from the heart of the tech world, saw a boom during the pandemic that shot home prices to unparalleled levels.
The lake straddles the boundary between California and Nevada, offering a convenient tax haven for wealthy California residents with vacation homes on the other side of the border.
It was widely reported last year that billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison bought four Incline Village homes between $15 million and $20 million each. The tech founder is an avid real estate investor, and also purchased a waterfront Hyatt resort for $345 million last year. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan bought a pair of adjacent Lake Tahoe compounds for $59 million on the California side of the border in Tahoe City, according to several outlets.
— Kate Hinsche