At the end of the 2018 NBA offseason, Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie was hanging out in Los Angeles with Jeremy Adams, a close friend from their days at the University of Colorado. The two played basketball at Boulder, and they share an enthusiasm for the world of blockchain technology and entrepreneurial pursuits.
Dinwiddie had thoroughly enjoyed the process of developing his own shoe the previous year outside the sneaker industrial complex. He and Adams wondered: What other opportunities existed out there?
“With the shoe, we started exploring ways to try to take control of the brand,” Dinwiddie said.buy nike nfl jerseys cheap
For years, Dinwiddie threw himself into the world of markets — both traditional sectors like financial services and newfangled corners of the ecosystem like cryptocurrency. These days, it’s normal to walk into an NBA practice facility and find a hard copy of a pitch deck lying around the locker room. But Dinwiddie isn’t just into investing; he is a guy with a more holistic interest in how money works. How is value transferred in an economy? How do you make markets more inclusive? What’s a cool way to bring liquidity to an illiquid, unrealized sector?
On that last question, Dinwiddie realized the next step in his entrepreneurial journey was to create a financial instrument that would allow him and other athletes to fully maximize their upside. Why not just be the investment vehicle, allowing people who believe in that athlete to cash in when he makes good on his potential?
The idea of athletes or celebrities securitizing their talents has precedent. In 1997, musician David Bowie worked with an investment bank to sell “Bowie Bonds.” Investors were paid a fixed annual return of 7.9% over 10 years for bonds that were backed by Bowie’s intellectual property — in other words, his recordings and songs — and his rights to royalties. Chicago White Sox slugger Frank Thomas took a long look at securitizing his contract in 1998, but the plan got hung up over skittishness about clauses in his deal that would nullify the contract for scenarios like a non-sports-related injury or player strike.cheap nike nfl jerseys china
Dinwiddie plans to offer what he has named his Professional Athlete Investment Token (PAInT) as soon as this week. The offering has a minimum investment of $150,000, and it would be available only to accredited investors on a new platform that he hopes will eventually host dozens of athletes who follow his lead.
The NBA has taken issue with Dinwiddie’s efforts, and the two sides have been debating whether issuing a PAInT would violate the league’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Dinwiddie is hopeful that the measures he has taken over the past few weeks will persuade the league of its permissibility under the CBA.
