About
What is Deadmole?
About Us
Deadmole creates smart, sustainable homes in Norfolk, England.
We are a Norwich-based property development startup — the first blockchain property company in the United Kingdom, established in September 2024.
Our mission is to improve the quality of life for as many people as we can by creating sustainable, affordable, and beautiful smart homes.
Our Philosophy
We are motivated by the joy of breathing new life into tired, unloved homes.
The UK housing stock is full of properties that desperately need modernisation — thousands come onto the market every year.
We take homes built before sustainability was a concern and transform them into green, energy-efficient spaces.
At Deadmole, we choose design and integrity over speed and profit.
Smart Living, Reinvented
We bring the power of the server into ordinary homes.
Every Deadmole home is fitted for the 21st century with smart devices and our own innovative home server — Brainbox — a revolutionary new system that makes connected living secure, private, and effortless.
Making Homeownership Accessible
Our founder, Russelle, set out to make homes more affordable for Generation Z, who have been priced out of the market for too long.
Using groundbreaking blockchain technology, we enable young people to part-own properties they could not otherwise afford, with clear and dependable paths toward full ownership.
Our Values
Deadmole is an inclusive company that supports diversity — not through empty promises, but through action.
We believe that long-term success comes from serving everyone we work with: staff, contractors, suppliers, partners, and customers — as well as shareholders and creditors.
By acting ethically and fostering reciprocal relationships, we contribute to society as a whole.
We measure our success not by the standards of city financiers, but by the value we bring to people and the planet.
The Idea
The starting idea is simple.
- Improve the local housing stock by developing unloved properties for immediate resale. We will focus on:
- Creating light and space
- Creating sustainable homes
- Installing smart devices and controls
- Using blockchain tokenisation to allow fractional ownership
- Engage with the local community to offer experience and employment to disadvantaged people.
- Invest surplus funds in Bitcoin.
On its own, this is already an innovative approach. There are no other UK companies yet; this is the first. Despite this innovative strategy, there are still many ways in which this can be improved on, and there is scope to build a really exciting new company.
The Founder
Early Roots
Russelle Newton’s formative interest in property began during her school summer holidays on the Norfolk coast,
where her mother worked as an office manager at a builder’s yard. Those early experiences sparked a lifelong curiosity
about homes, building, and design.
From Clerkenwell to Code
While working in London, Russelle built a portfolio of high-end residential properties in Clerkenwell, rented to
City professionals and corporate tenants. She recognised the area’s potential a decade before it became fashionable
and invested accordingly — with great success. In 2004 she founded Squaremile Residential, an early
lettings website for similar properties, teaching herself to code along the way.
Hands-On Renovation
After leaving the City in 2003, Russelle began a renovation venture with a friend, delivering their first project
on time and on budget — a satisfying blend of creativity and discipline that would become her hallmark.
A Mind for Ideas
A creative, thoughtful, and playful transgender woman, Russelle has explored a range of innovative business ideas
over the years. In 1997 she developed Glass Slipper, a women-focused dating website concept long before
such platforms were mainstream. Later, her interests in sustainability and technology inspired concepts such as
an electric vehicle conversion business (2014) and a solar-based equity release model. Though none of these became
active ventures, they reflect her instinct for innovation and social impact.
The Birth of Brainbox
In 2017 Russelle returned to her passions for coding, households, and improving everyday living.
She created Brainbox, a home server concept designed to make smart homes more private, connected,
and self-reliant. The idea was ahead of its time, and though local support was scarce, she continued developing it
independently — a testament to her persistence and vision.
Values and Inspiration
Equality, fairness, and diversity are at the heart of Russelle’s work.
Inspired in part by her sister, who has learning difficulties and has thrived in supported employment,
Russelle wants Deadmole to create similar inclusive opportunities — where everyone can contribute meaningfully.
Respect for the Natural World
From a young age, Russelle developed a respect for the natural world and a distaste for waste.
Time spent in car scrapyards with her father, who restored old vehicles, taught her that repair and reuse are acts of value.
These principles guide Deadmole’s genuine commitment to low-impact sustainability.
The Designer Within
A frustrated architect, interior designer, and engineer at heart, Russelle believes the UK’s housing stock is outdated and poorly designed.
Her creative instincts and sense of aesthetics drive Deadmole’s mission to rethink how homes can better serve the people who live in them.
Resilience and Renewal
Deadmole was born out of personal transformation.
After a traumatic relationship breakdown in 2020, the loss of her children, and the death of her father in 2024,
Russelle channelled her energy into building something hopeful and lasting — a company that reflects her values and vision for the future.
Sound Money and Solid Foundations
Over the past two decades, Russelle has observed the rapid expansion of global money supply and what she sees as a policy of financial repression.
Deadmole Limited is, in part, her personal response — a project rooted in tangible assets and sound money principles.
She recognised early that both property and Bitcoin represent resilience: property as inflation-resistant collateral,
and Bitcoin as the world’s only decentralised sound money. Combining the two felt like the logical next step.
Experience and Expertise
Drawing on a decade in London’s financial sector, Russelle qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG in 1993,
working in banking and corporate advisory on transactions worth hundreds of millions.
This deep financial grounding complements her creative and technical strengths.
Scholarship and Perspective
Proud of her collateral ancestor Sir Isaac Newton, Russelle followed a curiosity for ideas and history,
completing a doctoral dissertation in Early Modern English History at Durham University in 2017.
Her first degree was in Music from London University (1989) — an unconventional but enriching path that shaped her broad and reflective outlook.
Full Circle
With Deadmole, Russelle brings together her lifelong passions — property, sustainability, design, and social responsibility —
guided by a renewed sense of purpose and belief in herself.
Going Forward
Geographic expansion
Deadmole will begin renovations in the Norwich and wider Norfolk area, expanding gradually across East Anglia.
Our aim is steady, sustainable growth rooted in craftsmanship and innovation.
Project Helix: Building the Home’s Digital Mind
Behind the scenes, we’re developing Project Helix —
a unified knowledge system that connects every aspect of a home’s life:
its energy use, maintenance, communications, and digital records.
Helix is the framework that will allow each household to have its own
private and intelligent data fabric, designed from the ground up for transparency and control.
It will make homes not just connected, but genuinely aware of their occupants’ needs —
always helpful, never intrusive.
Brainbox Grows Smarter
By bringing a large language model (LLM) into the heart of Brainbox,
we’re creating something new — a private, secure form of intelligence that lives inside the home itself.
Brainbox will learn from the home’s rhythms and routines through Project Helix,
offering practical help, reminders, and insights — all without sending personal data to the cloud.
It’s artificial intelligence with human values: thoughtful, private, and genuinely useful.
The goal is simple — to make technology serve people, not the other way around.
Innovative Blockchain Finance
We are developing a pioneering property–Bitcoin finance model that will make home ownership more attainable
for first-time buyers and younger homeowners. Tokenisation will also streamline home information packs,
reducing conveyancing costs and modernising how property is transferred.
Blockchain governance
Looking ahead, we plan to explore tokenising the entire company on a suitable blockchain —
creating one of the world’s first property development DAOs (Distributed Autonomous Organisations).
Built around smart contracts on networks such as Ethereum or Solana, this model will bring transparency,
participation, and shared ownership to the property sector.