Trevor Lawrence, the new quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars and the number-one pick for the NFL 2021 draft, has struck an endorsement deal with Blockfolio, a crypto investment app.
The promising young football player expressed his excitement on Twitter over helping bring together the worlds of football and cryptocurrency.
"He's been great to work with and he's also excited about crypto," Blockfolio CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told Cheddar. "I think that was an important piece for us as well because we don't want people who don't care for what we're doing."
Lawrence put his money where his mouth is when it came to the endorsement. A portion of his signing bonus was paid in a mix of bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies.
And, he's not the first player to accept cryptocurrency as payment either. Kansas City Chiefs tight end Sean Culkin has converted his entire base salary of $920,000 into bitcoin.
Bankman-Fried said the goals of the partnership are to educate potential new players and establish Blockfolio as a platform for those seeking to dip their toes into crypto.
He added that the company would focus more on "quality over quantity," however.
"Our goal isn't just to get deals with every single athlete on earth, or something like that," he said. "I think we're really, particularly targeting opportunities that we're most excited about."
Blockfolio also recently struck a deal with Miami-Dade County for the naming rights to the NBA Miami Heat's home stadium. Called American Airlines Arena at its inception in 1999, the stadium will now be renamed the FTX Arena for the next 19 years.
The CEO said the company is discussing the possibility of adding new features to the stadium, such as giving fans the option to make transactions in cryptocurrencies, though nothing is set in stone.
"Frankly, those are conversations that we're having with the team and the league and the county," he said. "We have a lot of ideas. We've been working on crypto payment apps in addition to crypto-investing apps."
The City of Miami, notably, has made efforts to establish itself as a national hub for the crypto economy. Mayor Francis Suarez earlier this year proposed paying municipal workers and collecting taxes in bitcoin.
"I do think it's not going to be the last city to do this," Bankman-Fried said. "I think the world is watching what happens there, and so far it has all the signs of a success."
