Gibraltar United, a club competing in the local Premier Division, is supposedly going to pay players in cryptocurrency, according to a report by The Guardian. Team boss Pablo Dana is an early adopter of Quantocoin and his club is promoting the coin. All player contracts for next season are going to feature digital asset payments.
It was not clear whether the players will get paid in Quantocoin or in other cryptocurrencies.
Gibraltar aims to be a crypto leader
While this may sound like a breakthrough, Gibraltar United is not exactly a high-profile competitor. The team is semi-professional, and the local championship received UEFA’s recognition in 2013.
On the other hand, the news is indicative of Gibraltar’s openness to crypto. The country has drafted multiple regulatory documents, including an extensive one covering distributed ledger technology (DLT) as a whole.
Dana commented on Gibraltar’s forward-looking policies:
“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.”
He went on to explain this is an excellent solution for his club in particular as some of the foreign players have trouble setting up accounts with the local banks. Dana is such an optimist on the blockchain, he even recommends it as a solution to the corruption and scandals which plague the sport.
Other football teams to follow?
Near-term cryptocurrency adoption among top football teams does not seem very likely or at least there are not many indications for this at the moment.
Sponsorship contracts, however, are an entirely different story - when it comes to individual players, quite a few have struck promotional deals with various crypto projects, while a few are aiming to create their own coins. Some of the more high-profile names include: Leo Messi, Didier Drogba, Luis Suarez, James Rodriguez, Ronaldinho, Luis Figo and Michael Owen.
Teams also do not fall far behind – Arsenal has a partnership with CashBet, while Wolverhampton is sponsored by CoinDeal.
ATurkish second-division club, Harunustaspor, did partially pay for the transfer of Omer Faruk Kiroglu in Bitcoin, but so far this remains the only case.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
