Australia’s Best Baseball Club Will Pay Players In Bitcoin
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are making more and more appearances in the sports world. The latest team to enter the crypto world is the Australian Baseball League club, the Perth Heat. On Wednesday, the club announced that it has integrated encrypted payments into its operations. Heat said that it has partnered with OpenNode to accept and send Bitcoin payments over the Lightning network.
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The baseball club is one of Australia’s most successful teams, having won four ABL championships since the league’s inception in 2010. It claims to be the world’s first professional sports club to fully embrace digital currency.
Perth Heat integrates Bitcoin payment
The baseball club renamed itself the “Bitcoin Baseball Team.”
As part of the partnership with OpenNode, Perth Heat is making Bitcoin the new standard for payments and payments. Players and employees will receive their salary in Bitcoin, although this is not required. Players can still receive payments in traditional fiat currency or partially in Bitcoin. However, the club’s executive director, Steven Nelkovski, said that all current club employees were on board with the program.
BTC is trading at $ 59.55K | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
By embracing the core values of the Bitcoin Protocol, we believe the organization can reach new levels of success on and off the field and remind the world of the true value of sport. We know that the community views Perth Heat as a model of success and we hope that our adoption of a Bitcoin standard will inspire others to adopt a monetary system that requires value creation to thrive, ”said Nelkovski.
As part of its Bitcoin adoption efforts, the club also plans to “Hodl Bitcoin on the club’s balance sheet.”
Perth Heat’s new Bitcoin director Patrick O’Sullivan has shed light on the club’s latest strategic move. He said it was a way to secure his digital property rights on the world’s most secure foreign exchange network.
“We believe that the world has begun to recognize the power of sound monetary principles and is determined to take the initiative. It is not a one-time purchase to guard against future uncertainty or inflationary pressures. Perth Heat accepts the reality that the future of corporate cash and cash will live on the Bitcoin blockchain. “
The club will also accept Bitcoin payments for sponsorships, merchandise, and stadium concessions on match days.
Encryption regulation in Australia
Australia has made great strides in encryption this year. It has one of the highest encryption adoption rates in the world. This may be due to the country’s goal of going crypto. With that in mind, regulators are enacting laws to regulate cryptocurrencies in different industries.
Last month, Australian senators wrote a report calling for a review of financial and tax regulations to make the country a global crypto hub.
Related reading | Crypto will dominate Australia’s financial sector in less than 10 years
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) also recently greenlit a number of cryptocurrency-related ETFs. This approval may see Bitcoin and Ethereum-backed mutual funds soon listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
Additionally, Commonwealth Bank announced its partnership with US cryptocurrency exchange Gemini and blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. It will become the first major Australian bank to offer crypto services to its clients, which it plans to launch in 2022.