As the New England Patriots prepare to try to equal the Pittsburgh Steelers’ record six Super Bowl titles when they face the Philadelphia Eagles tonight, one of the NFL’s leading stars has revealed the bitcoin boom at the end of 2017 prompted a number of players to invest.
Richard Sherman, a cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks, told CNBC about the new locker room topic of discussion for teams across the US.
He said: “The way bitcoin boomed from nothing to … $19,000 at one point, that really caught the eye of a lot of people.
“Ever since then it has been common conversation for a lot of us.”
Sherman started accepting bitcoin for merchandise purchases on his website as early as 2014 and as he recovers from an achilles injury, the 29-year-old has been getting up to speed on the latest cryptocurrency news.
He owns bitcoin, litecoin and ethereum, while he’s also a spokesman for the exchange platform Cobinhood and an investor in the company’s coin, COB.
Sherman continued: ”There are a ton of different coins,” and his NFL teammates and rivals are “trying to figure out which one is the one they should get.”
With the top-earning NFL stars taking home more than $20million (£14.2million) every year, Sherman revealed how a lot of American Football players are trying to improve their finical understanding to make the most of their fortunes.
He said: “A lot of them have just been trying their best to become more educated on not only cryptocurrencies, but just stocks and trading in general. Because a lot of them have been taken advantage of by financial advisers.
“So people in my sport, in my field, are definitely becoming more educated and trying to be more intelligent with how they play for the money and understanding where their money is going.
“The NFL has done a great job of opening its doors.
“That is how a lot of players are getting their information and becoming educated on the subject of money management.
“None of us really grew up with … financial literacy.”
Despite his growing interest in cryptocurrencies, Sherman says he doesn’t give investing advice.
He added: “You read up, you hear great things about some, you hear terrible things about others, they fluctuate throughout the day. It is such an unpredictable market.
“It is difficult to try to advise anyone, but we definitely have a ton of conversations about it.”