n

on-league football isn’t the obvious

home for a cutting-edge digital

currency revolution. Let’s face it,

debit cards feel way too sci-fi at lots

of clubs. Wave the contactless and

you risk being burned as a witch.

Blockchains? That’s what they stick

between the gates to stop kids

sneaking in for free.

But look out Bedfordshire: Peter McCormack

is here to shake things up. McCormack is one

of the world’s best-known bitcoin investors,

host of a globally popular podcast called

What Bitcoin Did, and – slightly off-brand –

the new owner of 10th-tier Bedford FC. Last

year he strode into his hometown team,

currently in Spartan South Midlands Football

League Division One, renamed them Real

Bedford and announced a big push for the

Premier League.

“My first goal really was to bring League

football to Bedford,” says McCormack, who

once claimed that his bitcoin portfolio had

rocketed to $1.2 million (before losing it

again). “The Premier League thing was more

of a joke: let’s try to poke people and see. Is

it likely? No. Is it impossible? No.”

Say what you like about the future-finance

people now getting into football, but they

talk a good game. You’ll have noticed a lot

more talk about bitcoins, NFTs (non-fungible

tokens; more on them later) and blockchains

on sports pages recently, and some mighty

mission statements. That’s just the crypto

way. WAGMI, the US NFT company who

recently bought League Two’s Crawley Town,

takes its name from crypto slang: ‘we’re all

gonna make it’. Which is certainly positive.

Then again, McCormack is also brutally

honest when things go south. “What I will

tell you is that in the first six months of doing

this, I have got it absolutely f**king wrong in

every way possible.”

So what exactly are people like him trying

to do here? Is their presence truly something

to fear from a swathe of suspicious fans who

are already sick of their very existence? It’s

time to make sense of the wild web...

IT’S ALL GETTING MESSI

If nothing else, Peter McCormack’s attitude is

refreshing in a sport that’s usually renowned

for arse-covering.

Words Si Hawkins

Fans have hissed and eye-rolled as NFTs and

bewildering terminology have crept into the

footballsphere – and now things are getting

serious, with crypto investment group WAGMI

United’s takeover of Crawley Town. But is the

growing fear among traditional supporters fair

or unfounded? FFT goes in search of answers...

THE WAR On

CRYPTO

For most of us, though, the very sudden

onslaught of ads for NFTs and other crypto

assets can be alarming – but rest assured,

a lot of people promoting them probably

know next to nothing, too. John Motson,

for example, has an NFT. John Terry also

launched a series – Ape Kids Football Club

• that crashed so badly he then deleted his
  tweets promoting it. It’s all a bit bewildering.
  “It’s not regulated at the moment and
  that’s why everybody’s getting twitchy,” says
  Dr Rob Wilson, a sports finance expert at
  Sheffield Hallam University. “The only way
  I’ve been able to get my head around it is by
  investing myself, so I can start to understand
  the mechanics of how it works.”
  There’s one recurring thing he noticed quite
  quickly: whenever a significant football and
  cryptocurrency crossover was announced,
  “we saw a massive spike in the price of the
  coin”. So expect loads more in the future.
  Anything called ‘crypto’ is going to sound
  a bit sinister, but the grand idea was pretty
  wholesome originally, and hints of that
  ethos remain. When the cryptocurrency
  company HSH bought 25 per cent of Italian
  Serie C side Rimini in 2018, using their own

CRYPTO