While it can be valuable, crypto is very volatile. Not even financially savvy people necessarily fully understand it. If one person in the locker room is speaking confidently about some new, shiny, trendy sexy thing, then somebody else is going want to figure out how they can have it, too. “And locker rooms are horrible places to get advice, but unfortunately that’s where most athletes get advice. “Athletes tend to ride trends,” LaMontagne said in an interview. Noel LaMontagne, a former NFL player who is the director of Verdence Capital Advisors, thinks more athletes are likely to follow suit, but they don’t necessarily understand the consequences and risks attached. Okung transferred half of his earnings, or $6.5 million, into about 240 BTC, which are now worth $14.1 million. Carolina Panthers offensive lineman Russell Okung was the first to publicly request his $13 million salary in Bitcoin in 2020, and his early adoption of crypto has paid off to date.
Then, on Saturday, Bitcoin plunged more than 20% to $42,000 before recovering to $49,012 on Sunday evening trading.ĭespite the high risk and volatility, a handful of professional athletes spoke publicly about getting paid in Bitcoin. Bitcoin (BTC), the most popular cryptocurrency in the market, reached an all-time high last February, exceeding $65,000 in value following Tesla’s announcement that it had acquired $1.5 billion worth of the digital coin as part of cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase’s IPO.
have shown a growing interest in cryptocurrencies to diversify their portfolios and beat inflation-related losses on million-dollar contracts.Īccording to a report from Cointelegraph, the total cryptocurrency market cap reached $3 trillion in 2021.
Amid the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, professional athletes in the U.S.