Alkmaar Zaanstreek popularly known as AZ, a Dutch professional football team, has signed an exclusive partnership with Bitcoin Meester, a licensed cryptocurrency trading platform.
In a statement released on the club website on Thursday, AZ Alkmaar and Bitcoin Meester are exclusive and official cryptocurrency partners until mid-2024.
Both AZ and Bitcoin Meester are confident in the future of bitcoin. That is why part of the sponsorship amount is paid in digital currency. AZ will leave this on the balance sheet during the collaboration and is the first Dutch club to do so.
AZ Alkmaar will be the first professional football team in the Netherlands to pay its players with Bitcoin, joining the growing list of sports franchises adopting BTC for paying professional athletes.
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Several American sports clubs and famous sportsmen are adopting Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, ranging from Major League Baseball to the National Basketball Association. Tom Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl winner, signed a celebrity crypto-endorsement contract with crypto exchange behemoth FTX in June. AZโs Commercial Director, Michael Koster, said
The cryptocurrency market is booming, with the exponential growth of users in recent years, that is appealing, but it is precisely in a new market that some guidance is important. Not everyone is already familiar with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin Meester is able to guide new users in this world in a responsible manner
While the sports sector in Netherland is blooming in crypto, on the other hand, Crypto regulations seem to be a major topic of discussion among the authorities in the Netherlands.
Pieter Hasekamp, director of the Dutch Bureau for Economic Analysis under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, recently published an essay entitled โThe Netherlands must ban bitcoin.โ however, The Dutch finance minister, Wopke Hoekstra, said that banning cryptocurrencies wouldnโt solve anything.
Approximately 700,000 individuals in the Netherlands are currently investing in cryptocurrencies, according to statistics from Dutch News.
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