Tom Brady took on another significant professional risk a little over a year after leaving the New England Patriots for a Tampa Bay Buccaneers franchise that hadn’t made the playoffs in 13 years.
Brady and his wife, Gisele Bundchen, agreed to partner with major cryptocurrency brokerage FTX on Tuesday according to Reuters amid the current downturn for Bitcoin. The Bucs quarterback didn’t sugar-coat the challenge facing Bitcoin in a tweet on Monday.
“Alright, the laser eyes didn’t work,” Brady wrote. “Anyone have any ideas?”
Brady put laser eyes on his Twitter profile in the spring as part of a campaign to boost cryptocurrency interest with “laser focus”. It became a trend among cryptocurrency investors to “raise bitcoin’s worth to a $100,000 valuation, according to a comment in the bitcoin subreddit” per Newseek’s James Crowley.
Amid Brady’s busy offseason, he talked about his confidence in cryptocurrencies and its future with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried according to CoinDesk.com’s Nikhilesh De. Brady shared in the interview with Bankman-Fried that he learned more about it through one of his coaches with the Bucs.
“In our quarterback room, one of my coaches has been on it for eight, nine months. So we talk about it basically every day, the prices of the different tokens, how the space is doing,” Brady told Bankman-Fried.
Brady has been involved in business ventures consistently outside of his football career from his TB12 Sports health and wellness company to his film production company, 199 Productions. The 22-year NFL veteran has big goals for his latest venture with FTX, which already partners with a couple of major sports organizations. FTX partnered with MLB and on June 23 per MLB.com, and FTX took on the arena name for NBA team Miami Heat per Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time in the crypto-world and Sam and the revolutionary FTX team continue to open my eyes to the endless possibilities,” Brady said in a press release. “This particular opportunity showed us the importance of educating people about the power of crypto while simultaneously giving back to our communities and planet. We have the chance to create something really special here, and I can’t wait to see what we’re able to do together.”
It wasn’t Brady’s only announced business move of the day. He also became the latest athlete to endorse Subway according to the Sports Business Journal.
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What are Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin?
Cryptocurrency is money in digital form that’s decentralized from governments and banks, and Bitcoin is one type of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin came about “in the wake of several decades of governments debasing their currencies” according to professor Phillip Booth of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Booth notes that Bitcoin can only be used as money and it’s value is impacted by its limited supply via “a digital mining process which required programmers to invest time in discovering more Bitcoin.” The digital currency fluctuates in value because of it, and Booth notes that it has “no intrinsic value” by itself.
Cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin can’t be duplicated because of blockchain technology. Blockchain “is a database” at the “simplest level” according to Forbes. The database is housed on multiple computers requires “a majority” of the computers to confirm the legitimacy of the data per Forbes.
Brady’s and Bundchen’s Roles with FTX
Brady will be an FTX ambassador, which involves educating people on cryptocurrency according to the FTX press release. He will also work with FTX’s charitable causes.
Bundchen will work on FTX’s social and environmental initiatives per FTX’s press release. She will also work with FTX to grow its charitable impact through additional charities.
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Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen Enter ‘Historic’ Business Deal