Mavericks Accept Dogecoin

2021

Date: 4 March 2021 · Place: Dallas Mavericks, BitPay integration · Figures: Mark Cuban, owner · BitPay, payment processor · Dogecoin community · Tags: Dogecoin, Mainstream Adoption, NBA 01. Tickets And Merch In Doge On 4 March 2021 Mark Cuban announces the Dallas Mavericks will accept Dogecoin for tickets and merchandise via BitPay. It is the largest US sports franchise to take the joke coin as legal tender. Within a week the Mavs are the third-largest Dogecoin merchant on earth. Cuban frames the decision as a customer-service play. Doge holders, he says, are passionate, polite, and the transaction fees are pennies. He does not mention that DOGE/USD doubles on the news. 02. The Coin Built On A Shiba Dogecoin started in 2013 as a Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer parody of Bitcoin maximalism, named after the Shiba Inu Doge meme of 2010. For seven years it traded as a tip jar coin worth fractions of a cent. In the first quarter of 2021 it goes from $0.005 to $0.05 then to $0.74 by May, briefly worth $90B in fully diluted market cap. Cuban's Mavericks decision is the first time a major American institution treats a 2013 internet joke as a payment rail. It is the template for every brand-adopts-meme-coin press release that follows. Sources • Mark Cuban, Twitter (@mcuban), 4 March 2021 • BitPay press release, Dallas Mavericks integration (March 2021) • ESPN, 'Mavericks become largest organization to accept Dogecoin' (March 2021)