NBA Champion Klay Thompson reportedly took a portion of his NBA salaries from 2022-23 in Bitcoin. He then donated $1-Million of BTC to various fans of his dynasty basketball team, the Golden State Warriors. While fans likely used the money for various needs of survival, the multi-millionaire athlete did not have to do so. And if they did keep his Bitcoins through today, the FTX fall-out would have canceled 50% of Klay’s Bitcoin salary.
How much Bitcoin did Klay Thompson take?
For the 2022-23 season (last year) Thompson, alongside Andre Igoudala, took a portion of his NBA salary for that season in BTC. The exact amount is unknown but prices of Bitcoin at the time of reports were between $35k to $43k. There was typical volatility, something good for profit taking.
The Warriors’ shooting guard’s contract guaranteed him a salary of $40,600,080 for that 2022-23 season [view contract]. If he took that in Bitcoin entirely, he’d have lost well over $20,000,000 of that salary in this market crash.
Today’s BTC price is $16,780. This is far from the $35k-ish figure that the cryptocurrency was worth when Thompson and Igoudala got paid. 50% of that would be $17.5k, so today’s token price is almost $1000 less than half the value of his day 1 investment.
Klay Thompson or Andre Igoudala have spoken publicly of the matter.
However, the Bitcoin market is sure to come back. The utility of digital currency on decentralized exchanges is far too valuable to people with billions if not trillions of dollars.
