By
Steve Muchoki
April 25th, 2024
Starting next season, the football players of a semi-professional team in Gibraltar will receive cryptos as a part of their remuneration.
Nowadays cryptocurrencies are steadily gaining pace, partly due to a trustworthy blockchain-based payment system that underlies the credibility of digital assets. The headlines these days are all about the cutting-edge means of payment used to streamline online transactions and despite an onslaught of criticism, cryptocurrencies indeed are crept into mainstream.
Disrupting traditional remittent services rife with overheads and intermediaries, cryptocurrencies bring to the surface affordable and secure transactions stored on a decentralized digital ledger. A vast array of technical giants has already incorporated crypto payments into the list of their services while sheer demand and fierce competition foster the further development of a crypto-based payments industry.
Today holders of digital assets are no longer stitched to the exchange platforms, they are allowed shopping, travel and gamble using their crypto wallets, while some companies have even decided to remunerate their staff with altcoins. And we are not talking about a fintech industry.
As it became known, a Premium Division football team, Gibraltar United would be the first football team to pay its players in cryptocurrency. However, it is not a coincidence since Gibraltar is one of the many countries that are leading the pack in terms of cryptocurrency adoption. The government introduced various regulations for businesses using blockchain technology as far back as January and is currently working on a solid framework for regulating ICOs as well.
Gibraltar United has started a sponsorship deal with the cryptocurrency platform Quantocoin, which will result in all player contracts featuring a payment agreement in the digital coin by next season. According to the team owner, Pablo Dana, the measure is set to provide a means for paying foreign players who struggle to establish bank accounts in Gibraltar, while sidestepping taxes and fees.
He also stressed that the club adopting this method of payment aims to take full advantage of the state’s friendliness towards cryptocurrencies as well as to bring transparency to the sport while reducing the financial corruption usually associated with football.
Gibraltar has started to regulate cryptocurrencies at the beginning of this year, working on a transparent and safety ruling for transactions made with digital coins. Consequently, these efforts have made Gibraltar the first European county provided the groundwork for a football team to write cryptocurrency payments into player contracts.
Suggesting that Gibraltar’s technologically literate environment is an ideal sanctuary for this idea to flourish, 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.”
The announcement may seem far from the wean millions spent across Europe’s top leagues. However, it is an entry point for cryptocurrency into the football world, which could rapidly spread to more significant changes in how player contracts and transfers are dealt with in Europe’s major leagues. Thus, considering the example of Gibraltar, other European countries may follow suit in regulating blockchain.