How do you know when you’ve truly made it? Just look in the driveway.
The purchase of a Lamborghini is becoming a meme in the Bitcoin community, with would-be millionaires asking “when Lambo” in regards to when their investment will be worth enough to buy one of the cars. There’s even a when-lambo website, which is dedicated to helping Bitcoin owners calculate their proximity to sweet Italian leather and the burn of rubber on roadways.
The site notes that its calculations, which are based on the value of Bitcoin over the past seven days, “are completely fictional” — a disclaimer likely due to the simple fact that Bitcoin is a very unstable investment, seeing major upswings in price followed by sharp downturns. But Bitcoin billionaires are buying nonetheless. A general manager at a Lamborghini dealership in California told CNBC that it had seen “over 10 transactions” involving cryptocurrencies in December of last year, when Bitcoin soared to more than $19,000 a coin (who knows what’s it’s really worth, of course).
For some Bitcoin millionaires, a Lamborghini is more than just a status symbol. It serves as proof that the coin does hold real-world value. In 2015, Piper Moretti, a realtor who specializes in helping people use Bitcoin to purchase homes, saw how the purchase of a Lamborghini even helped persuade a realtor to sell her clients a $3.2 million home in Manhattan Beach. The owner’s agent refused to accept a purchase in Bitcoin out of fears that her client would be scammed.
Moretti’s clients, who do not wish to be named, decided to purchase a Lamborghini and sent over the details of the transaction to Moretti, who was able to persuade the home owner that her clients were legitimate.
“The Lambo actually helped us get the house,” Moretti told Business Insider.
She said that the Lambo purchase helped prove that Bitcoin wasn’t just some made-up internet thing, but real money that could be used to make real purchases such as homes and cars.
Cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, saw rapid growth over the past year. This growth also saw the rise of scammers, which has damaged the currency’s reputation and led some businesses to refuse payment in Bitcoins. Of note are the Mt. Gox bankruptcy filing and Bitcoin gold — a project designed to create a new form of cryptocurrency that also tapped into the Bitcoin name.
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