The Sacramento Kings are the first professional sports team in the world to mine Ethereum.
The NBA team has announced a new partnership with cryptocurrency mining and hosting company MiningStore.com, keeping its lead as a tech-savvy team. The Kings were the first sports team in the world to accept Bitcoin back in 2014, and they’re the kings of Golden 1 Center, the 100% solar-powered sports complex in downtown Sacramento, California that hosts a tier-4 data center.
They use a mix of drones, Bitcoin, augmented reality/virtual reality and Google Glass to deliver an innovative sports experience for their fans.
From basketball to blockchain, Ryan Montoya, the Kings’ chief technology officer for the Kings, has been a longtime supporter of technological innovations. He and his teammates are launching Mining For Good, a charity that will donate most of the mined ether to Build Black, a community group that works to improve the lives of local youths. The group will be able to convert the ether to cash or hold it as an investment.
“For example, we teach our own Kings employees that everyone is an innovator here. When we first decided to work with MiningStore, we brought its Founder, JohnPaul Baric in to teach all of our employees about blockchain. Why? Because, at the end of the day, these are just words people are reading; nobody knows what it is,” said Montaya in a Forbes report.
Kings Owner and Chairman Vivek Ranadivé founded Tibco, a real-time computing software company and led his team to the top spot on Fast Company’s “Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Sports.” It’s through his drive and vision that the NBA team keeps its eye on the ball of building community and using revolutionary tools to make important social and structural changes.
The team is all about the blockchain. And cryptocurrency. And Ethereum.
Reports Yahoo, “Vivek said, ‘What can we do with cryptocurrency to give back to the community?’ It was obvious to us: Let’s start mining cryptocurrency,” said Montoya. “Let’s mine cryptocurrency and give the proceeds back to groups that could use a little extra help. And we are superfans of Ethereum.”
