Spencer Dinwiddie Ties His Career to Crypto
Spencer Dinwiddie’s bold, innovative move to tie his contract – and NBA career – to a crypto token nearly cost him that same platform. But, since putting that behind them, Dinwiddie has reiterated his goal of tying his career’s ups-and-downs, as well as any future team he might join, to the whims of a crypto market.
Taking to global crowd-fundraising platform GoFundMe recently in order to raise even more funds from fans, Dinwiddie has his heart set on a $24,632,630 or 2625.8 BTC haul to help him kickstart the next phase of his project.
Dinwiddie plans on selling his contract-backed SD8 coin to investors with initial prices on the coins starting at $150,000. In the beginning, he will be reaching out solely to qualified, accredited investing professionals.
“I think the prolonged conversation obviously worked out because they recognized I’m not doing anything wrong or anything illegal. They know it’s coming. They didn’t have too much rebuttal for it. There’s nothing in there that’s considered gambling,” Dinwiddie told Forbes of the NBA’s threat to terminate his contract.
Of course, the NBA has signed off on his current project but everything is very tentative at this stage.
“Spencer Dinwiddie’s advisors provided us today with new information regarding a modified version of their digital token idea, which we are reviewing to determine whether the updated idea is permissible under league rules,” the organization said in a statement.
A huge component of this SD8 platform will be Dinwiddie’s increased and enhanced interaction with fans, Forbes reports.
Still, it’s not smooth sailing from here. The move is still registering as controversial in many circles. For his part, Dinwiddie attributes this to the NBA being a “legacy institution” and thus frightened by innovation.
“Legacy systems generally do fear that type of thing and so they kind of drew a hard line and kept talking about termination.”
That said, CBS Sports has outlined multiple ways that Dinwiddie’s GoFundMe violates the NBA salary cap rules.
Citing the NBA’s own definition of how this violates their salary cap rules, CBS Sports writes, “Neither the Players Association, the NBA, nor any Team (or Team Affiliate) or player (or person or entity acting with authority on behalf of such player), shall enter into any agreement, including, without limitation, any Player Contract (including any Renegotiation, Extension, or amendment of a Player Contract), or undertake any action or transaction, including, without limitation, the assignment or termination of a Player Contract, which is, or which includes any term that is, designed to serve the purpose of defeating or circumventing the intention of the parties as reflected by all of the provisions of this Agreement.”
Whether Dinwiddie’s innovative approach to NBA player contracts will be allowed to fly or not doesn’t really answer the question of if it is viable or not. Given the looser rules in other sports leagues, Dinwiddie might be pioneering a new way for players to secure contracts – and professional freedom.