Bitcoin on the way to 2018 Winter Olympics

Remember when Cool Runnings made Jamaica’s first ever bobsled team famous? Well, the latest edition of the Winter Olympics will see the USA luge team become a champion for Bitcoin in what could be a first for cryptocurrency in the sport.

USA Luge Foundation has been campaigning for donations in Bitcoin od Medium back in December 2017. The team can’t wear any sponsor logos at the Olympics so the team has promised to promote the cryptocurrency in upcoming competitions, depending on how much Bitcoin whey will raise. They claim to be the first US Olympic group to set up its own Bitcoin wallet to accept donations.

US luge doubles silver medallist Gordy Sheer said: “You know, we hear a lot of jokes about lugers being crazy, and people don’t know why we do it.

“But luge is something that gets into your blood and transforms your life and the Bitcoiners we’ve met know exactly what it’s like to be all in on something that the world doesn’t appreciate yet.

“We’ve looked at Bitcoin hard, and it is definitely a risk-reward we understand and are eager to take.”

The team put together a list of targets they will meet as crypto investors begin to donate.

Once they receive five Bitcoins the cryptocurrencies logo will appear on team hats. 10 Bitcoins will introduce its logo onto the outerwear of the team for the rest of this year, excluding the Olympics.

• 5 BTC – Bitcoin’s logo will appear on team hats and memorabilia hats
• 10 BTC – Above, including Bitcoin logo sewn onto all luge team outerwear for the 2018 season (excluding the Winter Olympics)
• 25 BTC – All of the above, including Bitcoin logo of sleds for the next two seasons.
• 50 BTC – All of the above, with Bitcoin logo on sleds for next four seasons.
• 100 BTC – All the above including Bitcoin logo on team skin suits for four years (excluding Olympics).

The current value of Bitcoin is 7.530,36 € ($9.304,98) at the time of writing this article. If the team were to receive 100 Bitcoins in donations, they would have received 753.036€ ($930.498) worth of the cryptocurrency. There is already a number of cryptocurrency betting platforms aimed at sport enthusiasts, allowing people to gamble with cryptocurrency. It wouldn’t be surprising to see more of various currencies showing up on team jerseys, vehicles etc…

South Korea has been booming hub for cryptocurrency trade over past year. We’d have expected more vendors accepting virtual currency in Pyeongchang province. However, according to Forbes, there is a ski-rental shop near the Olypics village thas is accepting Ethereum as payment. Given cheap transaction fees and “universal” nature of ETH, it’s quite surprising that more vendors aren’t doing the same.

While transacting with virtual currency while traveling could become massive in the future, don’t expect to see much more mentions during this Olympics. Although the fact is, people are in fact using cryptocurrencies during global event like the Olympic games shows the power of the technology.