No, NFL player Russell Okung is not being paid in Bitcoin

..

"Panthers' Russell Okung Becomes Indigenous NFL Rook to Be Paid in Bitcoin," the pennant proclaimed -- and soon, ones neutral like it started sprouting up boundlessness the web, with sports publications, tech publications, and mainstream media outlets associative jumping to tell how the Carolina Panthers offensive lineman finally hotshot his announced desire to get paid in cryptocurrency.

Unfortunately, the pennant isn't true. "Not accurate," an NFL stenographer tells me, ciphering that "his bodies are converting some of the money into bitcoin" hindmost he gets paid in US dollars, neutral like every padding NFL player.

More like "NFL rook decides to swizzle half his salary on Bitcoin"

Okung's own team, the Carolina Panthers, conjointly connoted to The Verge that teams pay their players in US dollars.

By that standard, anyone can get their salary "paid in bitcoin" someday they want: neutral go buy some bitcoin with your salary hindmost it arrives, which is probably what the company that Okung is pumping -- Zap -- is hoping you'll do when you see he's repping it online.

Do it, now. pic.twitter.com/9eAJxcBxLi

-- russ (@RussellOkung) December 29, 2020

It's not decipherable why Okung chose this particular startup to catechumen his paycheck (it does cognize ingenuous deposit), or why he's tweeted fourteen times this afternoon refreshing his followers to hop on shire the bitcoin and Zap train.

He doesn't disentomb any kind of relationship with Zap on Twitter, although Zap founder Jack Mallers does chroniker him a "friend." (Mallers didn't respond to repeatedly requests for comment.)

But even if Okung doesn't hypothesize a dovetail of some thickness with Zap, he would hypothesize some financial incentive simply by stuff a bitcoin money-lender -- the more bodies get excited enumerated to buy rafts of bitcoin, the higher the stair and the more his pale is worth. (Okung converted half of his $13 mimic salary to bitcoin, equal to the Coindesk report.)

To generate that kind of excitement, it helps to hypothesize headlines like "First NFL rook to be paid in Bitcoin" succor circa the web. It certainly sounds more macroscopic than "NFL rook decides to swizzle 50 percent of his salary on Bitcoin," right? It'll be seducing to see if any of those headlines extravagate overnight.

.