NBA players Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala will take a portion of their next salary in bitcoin and donate $1 million in BTC each to fans, the Golden State Warriors guard and guard-forward announced on Monday.
“I’m with bitcoin because I believe it’s the future of money,” Thompson said in an announcement tweet on Jan. 10.
Thompson and Iguodala have partnered with Cash App, the money transmitting and bitcoin buying application owned by financial services company Block, led by Bitcoin bull Jack Dorsey and previously known as Square, to facilitate their salaries’ conversion. The app will also intermediate the donations, which are already live in the announcement tweets.
“Bitcoin is the future, Klay Thompson and I are both believers,” Iguodala tweeted on Jan. 10, sharing his paycheck plans.
Thompson and Iguodala are the latest to join a cohort of athletes receiving their compensation in the peer-to-peer money created 13 years ago by the pseudonymous individual or group Satoshi Nakamoto. Since its inception, Bitcoin has scored massive gains against the U.S. dollar and enabled its holders to increase their purchasing power dramatically while fiat currencies lose value every year. Athletes have paid attention to this dynamic and are now demanding to be paid in bitcoin, a currency with a programmatically limited issuance that’s impossible to be changed.
The trend began when NFL tackle Russel Okung tweeted “pay me in bitcoin” in May 2019. In September of that year, the athlete told Bitcoin Magazine that he wouldn’t stop until he was being paid in BTC. Though Okung wasn’t the first to make such an ask, he did start a movement after his goal was achieved a year and a half later, in December 2020. The athlete managed to get indirectly paid in bitcoin through Strike, a Lightning payments app that handled the conversion of his yearly paycheck into BTC. Nowadays, the service is available to all Strike users.
In November 2021, NFL legend Aaron Rodgers announced he would take a portion of his salary in bitcoin while star Odell Beckham Jr said he would take all of his yearly compensation in BTC. In December, Patriots quarterback Mac Jones gifted bitcoin to his entire offensive line.