There are far fewer crypto bros and NFT nerds in Davos, Switzerland, for this week’s World Economic Forum, but one striking visual reminder of the volatile cryptocurrency market remains: a bright orange Mercedes-AMG GT with a bitcoin badge replacing the Mercedes Trident star on the front.
Cryptocurrency had a damn good 2022; According to CNBC, the industry lost $1.4 trillion. The crash cleared a former crypto storefront in Davos, Switzerland, during the 2023 World Economic Forum this week:
The Promenade is the main street in Davos where companies and governments take over shops and cafes for a week. Last year, crypto firms from all walks of life took the place. But since the market crash, there have been far fewer crypto firms with flashy storefronts in Davos.
A business selling non-fungible tokens or NFTs is gone. Prices for NFTs, which are digital collectibles, have also plummeted over the past year. What remains are companies that have survived the bear market and want to expand their business.
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There were also those in traditional finance who were less welcoming of crypto firms.
Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, was asked during an event hosted by the Swiss bank what he would like to see in Davos this year. He said he saw it before: “It’s less crypto on the main street.”
However, far fewer crypto storefronts do not mean that crypto has completely disappeared from the WEF stage. Someone still in the crypto game parked this flashy Mercedes-AMG GT in, dare I say it, a Jalopnik-esque orange, on the same block that used to house crypto shops on the boardwalk. Before you get too excited, it’s just a base price of $118,000 GT, with the Mercedes badging replaced with a bitcoin symbol and tires with “In Crypto We Trust” written on the sidewalls and license plate.
And sure, it’s a very nice car, one that doesn’t exactly afford, say, the salary of a modest wordsmith. And yes, those are some very snazzy wheels too, but it’s not what most enthusiasts would consider a super-successful billionaire vehicle to be.
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It is unclear to whom or which company the vehicle belongs. While the car is also being used to solicit donations to Ukraine, two crypto CEOs CNBC spoke to were upset by the flashy sports car’s presence in front of one of the few crypto deals this year, especially after investors in the Industry had lost so much money in 2023.
Cars and crypto/NFTs have grown together like peanut butter and sewage runoff in recent years. A Tesla fan used their vehicle to mine the stuff back down, and Chevrolet ran a hilarious experiment in which the automaker attempted to auction an NFT of a brand new Corvette Z06, with the added bonus that the bid winner got the actual car received. Nobody bid on the car, which was priced at 206 Ethereum, or $238,960 at the time of the auction. The Z06 typically starts at $106,395.
Blockchain Journal’s David Berlind stumbles across a Bitcoin Mercedes at the World Economic Forum