The sale has been agreed for a fleet of rare F1 cars, valued at approximately £4m, purchased in cryptocurrency. The four car fleet will sell to a buyer transacting with the cryptocurrency Litecoin, subject to standard blockchain verification.
Eleesa Dadiani, founder of Dadiani Syndicate, said: “We are hugely excited to be conducting the sale of these exquisite machines in cryptocurrency. The introduction of the blockchain has created a new economy layer, which is yet to be fully realised – especially in international trade and cross-border transactions. Cryptocurrency is not just about ‘getting rich’ – it is about facilitating trade and investment in a more transparent, decentralised way.”
Cryptocurrency market place
London-based Dadiani Syndicate offers the UK’s first market place to exchange luxury assets bought solely in cryptocurrency. Heritage F1, the UK’s only F1 car dealership, provides the cars. The deal, they claim, will be the first time either a single F1 car, or fleet, will be available for purchase using cryptocurrency. Previous cars sold by Heritage F1 include the 2000 Arrows A21, the 2006 BMW Sauber F1.05 and the 1993 Sauber C12A.
The sale comes just a few weeks after the launch of Dadiani Syndicate, a bespoke platform. This operates as a cryptocurrency conduit – enabling international high net worth consumers to purchase assets from luxury dealerships in a wide range of cryptocurrencies.
Your Christmas cryptocurrency present?
The flagship car in the fleet is the 2011 Sauber Ferrari C30, raced by Sauber Motorsports in the 2011 F1 season. The car was driven by drivers Kamui Kobayashi (who achieved 5th place with the car at the Monaco Grand Prix) and Sergio Perez. This car has a carbon-fibre body, a 2,400 cc V9 engine and seven-speed semi-automatic carbon-fibre gearbox. The purchase of the Sauber also includes the Sauber’s matching transport lorry and truck.
All four cars are fully race-able and track worthy. Their attraction, however, is as appreciating investments. Since the 2014 introduction of quieter F1 cars, with V6 turbo hybrid engines, the value of pre-V6 turbo hybrid engine cars has, in certain instances, more than trebled in the last few years.
What does it mean
In recent months the number of ‘collectibles‘ available for sale cryptocurrency has risen. Last September, entrepreneur Baroness Michelle Mone put two 40-storey residential complexes in Dubai up for sale in Bitcoin. This month a £5.3m Caribbean island became available, for purchase solely in Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency market itself has also experienced explosive growth this year. The outstanding figure is that of Bitcoin surging to over US450B.
Yet all of this wonderful pro-cryptocurrency verbiage is exactly that – verbiage. The cars are still cars. The attraction for the buyer is still the car or cars. To use a cryptocurrency for payment may be an efficient way to crystallise an exchange from cryptocurrency to a tangible asset.
For the seller the advantage is less obvious, unless the hope is that a payment in a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin will carry on growing in value or that such a sale will produce a result superior to a normal one. The latter seems doubtful.
Whether the sale succeeds remains unclear. ET’s view is that this is a particularly frothy form of extra-frothy Christmas cryptocurrency present.
