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Crypto collapse sparks status symbol sell-off
Crypto bros are running on empty — and appear to be offloading their fancy cars amid the fallout from the FTX implosion, which has rippled through the cryptocurrency market and caused the value of digital coins to plummet.
An uptick in like-new models of sought-after luxury cars have hit resale sites such as AutoTrader in recent weeks, but they’re not fetching the premium prices they once did. The Mercedes Benz G-Wagon — the unofficial “new money” badge of the crypto rich — was once valued around $300,000 in the resale market but is now closer to $200,000, car experts said. Other luxury rides such as the Lamborghini Urus and McLaren Spider have also taken a hit.
‘Getting decimated’
Some luxury car insiders believe the purge is linked to the FTX collapse, which caused as much as $2 billion in client money to evaporate.
“Exotic car market is getting decimated right now,” CarDealershipGuy, the anonymous CEO of a luxury car dealership who pens an eponymous newsletter, tweeted Nov. 22, noting that a 2021 Mercedes G-Wagon with just 3,378 miles sold for $187,000 at auction. “That’s nearly an $80,000 (or 30%) drop in under 12 months,” he wrote.
More recently, a 2020 Mercedes G-Wagon — the G63 AMG model — with 3,992 miles sold for $179,000 at auction, down from around $240,000 last year, he told The Post.
“It’s clear that in the last couple of months the decline in prices for exotic vehicles has accelerated and that correlates very, very well with the meltdown in the crypto markets where we know that some of the biggest customers of exotic vehicles were crypto millionaires,” CarDealershipGuy said.
The starter Mercedes G-Wagon, which costs upward of $140,000 for the 2023 model, has cemented itself as a status symbol among celebrities, CEOs and crypto investors, some of whom made a quick buck in the volatile market and wanted to show off to the world. In August, The Post profiled a former Amazon delivery driver who became a self-made crypto millionaire and scooped up a G-Wagon with his profits.
But in the last few weeks, CarDealershipGuy told The Post his DMs have been filled with inquiries from crypto bros wanting to sell their hot wheels.
“If we learned one thing, everything is correlated when you have a large evisceration of wealth. It impacts the entire economy,” he said.
Software engineer Brianna Wu tweeted a listing for a 2020 McLaren 600 LT Spider with just 9,000 miles listing for $255,400 on car-ad aggregator AutoTempest.
“The crypto crash is real. Right now, AutoTempest is exploding with McLarens — the flashy and extremely unreliable car of Cryptobros who couldn’t change a tire if their lives depended on it,” she wrote.
Another eagle-eyed auto scout, Marshall Haas, noted on Twitter that more than 1,600 G-Wagons are for sale on AutoTrader.
“That’s more than I’ve ever seen. Crypto boys are hurting,” he tweeted.
‘Under pressure’
The number of used luxury vehicles priced at more than $100,000 for sale on AutoTrader has more than quadrupled in the last three years — accounting for 0.16% in fall 2019 to 0.69% in fall 2022, a rep for the website shared with The Post.
What’s more, data from Manheim, an auction site where dealers can acquire used vehicles, found for the first half of November, seasonally adjusted values of luxury SUVs were down 12.1% year-over-year.
“We do know in the larger market used-vehicle prices are under pressure — the wholesale values have been dropping most of this year,” Mark Schirmer, a rep for AutoTrader told The Post via email, noting that retail prices are beginning to follow. “Remember, in 2021, there was a historic run up in usedvehicle values. This year, we are seeing declines — what goes up, must come down.”