Litecoin has secured a deal with the Miami Dolphins that will see the cryptocurrency, along with Bitcoin, accepted as a means of payment for the team’s 50/50 raffle, starting in the 2019/20 season. The trial will allow raffle entrants to buy their tickets in either cryptocurrency online or at a number of kiosk and around the Hard Rock Stadium. Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based payment processor Aliant Payments will be powering the cryptocurrency payment solution, which will guarantee huge exposure for the two tokens, and cryptocurrency as a whole. The sight of ‘pay with Bitcoin’ and ‘pay with Litecoin’ symbols potentially being plastered around the stadium will be a huge boost to normalizing cryptocurrencies.
Biggest Deal So Far
Cryptocurrencies have been accepted by professional sports franchises as early as 2014, when the Sacramento Kings announced that they were accepting Bitcoin payments, while Georgia Tech began accepting Bitcoin for its stadium concession sales the same year. Back then a single Bitcoin could have bought you a family ticket to the match – now it could get you an executive box. Miami Dolphins Vice President and Chief Information Officer Kim Rometo called the deal a chance to “enhance the fan experience”, and it will hopefully highlight the positives of cryptocurrency as the season progresses.
A Lifeline for Litecoin
While the move generates headlines for the Miami Dolphins, it is arguably a bigger deal for Litecoin, whose use case is coming more and more into question as other faster cryptocurrencies arrive on the scene. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee said of the deal:
This collaboration propels Litecoin in front of an audience of millions of people around the world at a time where adoption of cryptocurrencies continues to gain momentum and the ecosystem is able to support real world use cases in ways previously not possible. We see this as a powerful way to raise awareness and educate people about Litecoin and cryptocurrencies on a tremendous scale.
Hopefully this collaboration is the first of many as cryptocurrencies become more widely known about, which will certainly be the case if President Trump continues to talk about Bitcoin.
