Gibraltar United FC, a football team from Gibraltar is poised to become the world’s first football club to pay its players in cryptocurrencies by next season, reported The Guardian. Founded in 1943 in the midst of World War Two, they play in the Gibraltar Football League Premier Division.
According to Guardian, Pablo Dana, the owner of the Gibraltar United FC (GUFC) team has invested in Quantocoin blockchain platform which is specialized in cryptocurrency payments. Dana says all player contracts will include payment agreements in cryptocurrency by next season. It is not yet confirmed whether the players will get paid in Quantocoin or in other cryptocurrencies.
Dana said,
It was the first [place that] regulated betting companies 20 years back, when everyone was seeing them as horrible. They put compliance and anti-money laundering regulations and created a platform – they have the intelligence to do the same with cryptocurrencies.
In January 2018, Gibraltar launched regulations for companies using the blockchain and the government is ready to launch the world’s first legal platform for initial coin offerings (ICOs), which raise funds for the launch of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin on to the blockchain.
This is not the first time that football and cryptocurrency are mentioned together. There are football stars, who command a massive fanbase – both online and offline – and have been endorsing various crypto startups around the world. Recently, Ivorian footballer Didier Drogba teamed up with cryptocurrency-based social networking platform all.me. Another football star, Luis Suarez, who currently plays as a striker for Spanish club Barcelona and the Uruguay national team, has also endorsed the Ethereum-based prediction market platform, Stox. Ronaldinho, the Brazilian football star and ambassador for Spanish club Barcelona, declared earlier this year that he is launching the Ronaldinho Soccer Coin (RSC) Project.
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