The cruise ship intended to become a home for Bitcoin nomads, but a startup has bought it. Its owners sold it for scrap but a new cruise line could put it to use by the end of the year.
A 12-story 245-meter-long residential cruise liner, called MS Satoshi, aimed to become a home for the Bitcoin community. Now it is back after a cruise company bought him, according to international sources.
After remaining inactive in Panama since the end of last year, they decided to put the ship in motion. In recent days, it sailed to Bar City, Montenegro, on the Adriatic Sea in Southern Europe.
The History of the Satoshi Cruise Ship
In the beginning, the cruise ship offered its services as “Regal Princess” in 1991. After that, its owners transferred it to P&O Cruises Australia in 2007.
The cruise ship sailed to Carnival Corporation’s P&O Cruises Australia as “Pacific Dawn” until 2020. Then they were ready to transfer it to Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) later that year.
CMV’s closure in 2020 led them to sell the ship to Ocean Builders. The latter planned to turn it into a cryptocurrency tech hub off the coast of Panama.
They Abandoned the Project Due to Lack of Insurance
The truth is that Ocean Builders received the Satoshi cruise in November of last year. However, they left the project arguing that they had insurance problems.
At that time, they decided to sell the Satoshi cruise ship for scrap. For that reason, the ship remained inactive in Panama.
“The Satoshi cruise ship, which we sold as scrap metal on December 18th, was sailing from Gibraltar to Panama. We hope that it will arrive next week for its supply of fuel and then go to a scrapping center in India,” Ocean Builders said then.
Ocean Builders’ Plans for the Bitcoin Community
The main investor from that company is Chad Elwartowski, an American Bitcoin trader. He desires to create permanent homes at sea without any government restrictions.
For that reason, Ocean Builders had an ambitious plan to launch a “crypto cruise.” They wanted to provide blockchain enthusiasts with a friendly environment in which to live and work with cryptocurrencies.
However, the Satoshi cruise plan never came to fruition. In December 2020, they alleged that they did not have insurance for the concept of a community aboard an old cruise ship. That situation led the project’s organizers to sell the Satoshi cruise ship for scrap.
New Possibilities for the Cruise Ship
“We exhaustively sought an insurance group to insure the Satoshi cruise. However, we have not yet found an insurance company that is willing to insure MS Satoshi,” said the company.
At the time, Ocean Builders CEO Grant Romundt said that they would not be able to “go ahead because of archaic insurance companies. They are incapable of adapting to new innovative ideas.”
To conclude, if the legal problems have a solution, the Satoshi cruise may receive new life in a cruise line’s fleet. No one knows yet which one it is but it may start to operate later this year.
By Willmen Blanco
