Chess Tournament Bitcoin Tech – Bitcoin Magazine: Bitcoin News, Articles, Charts, and Guides

On May 29th, the world’s top 16 chess players competed in the FTX Crypto Cup. Hundreds of thousands of fans tuned in to Chess24.com, Twitch, Youtube and the Champions Chess Tour website to watch their favorite players duke it out in the nine-day event. But unlike prior tournaments of this scale, where the prize pool is almost always denominated and paid in U.S. dollars, the FTX Crypto Cup was different. Thanks to cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX and its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, the tournament’s $220,000 prize was supplemented by 2.1825 BTC, split among the winners.

Bitcoin enthusiasts have spent the better part of a decade advocating for the currency. They argue that bitcoin will transform the world, democratizing finance by mitigating and decentralizing the power currently wielded by Wall Street, politicians and technocrats. Skeptics have called bitcoin a “scam,” a “ponzi-scheme” and a “speculative bubble.” Nevertheless, over time bitcoin’s most ardent critics have slowly flipped their positions, institutional investors have bought in and the “digital gold” continues to permeate throughout our society. The FTX Crypto Cup represents just another example of bitcoin’s move into the mainstream. On the surface, that’s all the news there is to report — a crypto company sponsored a chess tournament with bitcoin.

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