Australian Baseball Club Embarks On A Bitcoin Standard, Integrates Lightning

The Perth Heat is setting Bitcoin as the new standard for all payments and payouts, the club said in a statement.

• ABL’s most successful club has embarked on a Bitcoin standard, shifting its corporate treasury from dollars to bitcoin.
• “The Perth Heat are embracing the reality that the future of money and corporate treasuries will live on the Bitcoin blockchain,” its chief bitcoin officer said.
• The club will pay players and staff in bitcoin, accept BTC for payments, and hold bitcoin in its balance sheet.

Australian Baseball League’s most successful club, the Perth Heat, has embarked on a Bitcoin standard, the company said in a statement sent to Bitcoin Magazine, a first in the sports world. The Heat will fully integrate the Bitcoin and Lightning networks into its operations to hold bitcoin in its balance sheet, accept BTC payments, and pay players and staff in bitcoin.

“In partnership with OpenNode, the Perth Heat is setting Bitcoin as the new standard for payments and payouts,” per the statement.

The club will accept and send instant bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network by leveraging OpenNode’s suite of payment infrastructure solutions. In addition to paying players and staff in BTC, the Perth Heat will accept sponsorships, merchandise, and ballpark concessions in bitcoin.

“The Perth Heat are committed to operating according to a Bitcoin Standard and in doing so are shifting the corporate treasury from dollars to Bitcoin,” Perth Heat chief Bitcoin officer Patrick O’Sullivan said. “This is not a one-off purchase to hedge against future uncertainties or inflationary pressures. The Perth Heat are embracing the reality that the future of money and corporate treasuries will live on the Bitcoin blockchain.”

O’Sullivan also said that the club has already established an initial position in Bitcoin “to help secure its digital property rights on the world’s most secure monetary network” and will continue to convert available capital into BTC. The club is “determined to lead from the front” in capitalizing on “the power of sound money principles,” he added.

The future possibilities for the Perth Heat are massive as the club completely switches from a dollar mentality into one based on sound money. In addition to treasury appreciation, the club will be better positioned to secure better players and deals in the future, outpacing its competitors. The game theory aspects of Bitcoin adoption might also lead other clubs to follow.

“We look forward to setting the bar for how much value a sports organization can bring to a community in the Bitcoin age,” Perth Heat CEO Steven Nelkovski said. “By embracing the underlying values of the Bitcoin protocol we believe that the organization can reach new levels of success both on and off the field and remind the world of the true value of sports. The players and organizational staff have fully embraced the opportunities that being paid in Bitcoin can provide.”