Mark Cuban’s Mavericks to Accept Dogecoin for Tickets, Merch

(Bloomberg) -- The Dallas Mavericks will begin accepting Dogecoin, the “meme” cryptocurrency frequently mentioned by Elon Musk, for purchases of both tickets and merchandise.

“Sometimes in business you have to do things that are fun,” Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said Thursday in a statement. “Because we can, we have chosen to do so.”

The digital coin, first created as a joke in 2013 and based on the meme image of a smiling Shiba Inu, now boasts a market capitalization of roughly $6.4 billion and was praised by Cuban last month for its entertainment and educational value.

BitPay Inc., a provider of cryptocurrency payment services, announced the new payment option in a press release and said it believed the industry was “reaching an inflection point that will forever change consumer confidence, trust and pave the way for blockchain payments to disrupt the way consumers and businesses receive and spend funds.”

The move is not the first of its kind for the Mavericks, which in 2019 began accepting Bitcoin for game tickets and merchandise. The NBA team also accepts Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.

Read More: Feb. 11, Dogecoin’s Creator Is Baffled by Meteoric Rise to $9 Billion

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