If he HODL, he'd never buy the house with BTC in the first place, because he'd HODL forever. There would never be a transaction. So what exactly is the point of BTC then?
People seem to be missing the title of the thread before the hypen... "This Ultra-Modern Beverly Hills Mansion Can Be Yours for 1,000 Bitcoins..." This is what is being discussed. The mansion is bought/sold for 1,000 BTC. Why does everyone keep bringing up USD?
It (digital coins) is a tradable asset class. Period. Not much different from the old-school days of trading cards. Blockchain otoh is a technology with wide application.
USD is currently the world reserve currency. Maybe it will be BTC (or something else) one day, but today it is USD.
And that is the point. So BTC is pointless. It is a USD randomizer. Toss your USD into the BTC randomizer, and what comes out a week later in USD is truly potluck.
There is no real point to it, it is a hi tech ponzi scheme, the hope is some bigger idiot will take it off your hands for a higher price than you paid for it at some future point in time. The thing is there appear to be enough idiots around to push this thing to $100K and beyond.
It's all good though, right? The buyer has a huge mansion, and the seller has 1,000 BTC in his/her digital wallet. (But the power just went out. Shit. Buyer got a house, and I (seller) can't access my wallet. Er...)