SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – JANUARY 17, 2021-1
Crypto-millionaires are buying vehicles with Bitcoin
Musicians and star athletes come to shop for luxury cars at MotorCars of Georgia, a dealership just outside of Atlanta. Quavious Marshall, better known as Quavo of local rap group Migos, bought a Silica White McLaren 720S from there in November. Ricardo Lockette, a retired Seattle Seahawk wide receiver, posed for an Instagram photo with a blue Lamborghini Huracan in December. Even Shaquille O’Neal has stopped by. Last fall, the dealership also got a visit from Peter Saddington, a seemingly unassuming 35-year-old coder who is neither a rapper nor a celebrity. He caught the attention of the dealership though — and the internet — by cashing in 45 bitcoins to drive away with a $200,000 2015 Lamborghini Huracan with a white matte wrap and race exhaust features. Thanks to an early interest in cryptocurrencies, buying those 45 bitcoin cost Saddington less than $115. The bitcoin enthusiast’s Lamborghini purchase isn’t just a crazy bargain. It reflects a trend of the new rich spending their cryptowealth on the Italian super car. Saddington, who studied computer science at Florida State before earning three master’s degrees in counseling, education and theology from Luther Rice College & Seminary in Georgia, stumbled across bitcoin in 2011. An article by technology publication ArsTechnica caught his eye, with a report that bitcoin had lost 90 percent of its value in a dip from its then peak of $30 to under $3. When Saddington first invested in November 2011, a single bitcoin cost $2.52. While he won’t say how many coins he currently owns, at that time, he bought more than 1,000. When bitcoin was at its peak last December, those coins were briefly worth $19,000 each. Bitcoin has since fallen to trade near $8,100 Wednesday morning, according to CoinDesk, but if Saddington is still holding his original $2.52 coins, that’s still a return of about 321,000 percent. Saddington, who is the CTO of VinWiki, an Atlanta-based start-up that provides automotive histories for used cars, also runs a cryptocurrency forum called The Bitcoin Pub and two YouTube channels about the cryptocurrency. His YouTube video documenting the Lamborghini purchase has over 1.5 million views. And it’s not all internet lore. Pietro Frigerio, the dealer principal and general manager at Lamborghini Newport Beach in Costa Mesa, California, saw sales of the car spike as the price of bitcoin skyrocketed. END OF PART ONE Make It A Champion Day!
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