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Strawweight Luana Pinheiro Becomes First Female UFC Fighter To Be Paid In Bitcoin – Bitcoin News
On Wednesday, cryptocurrency payment service company Bitwage announced that Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) strawweight Luana Pinheiro will be the first female UFC fighter to be paid in bitcoin. Pinheiro’s girlfriend, a UFC flyweight fighter, started getting paid in bitcoin last March, and after her eight-fight winning streak, Pinheiro decided to follow her partner’s decision to get paid in crypto.
UFC Strawweight Luana Pinheiro gets paid in Bitcoin via Bitwage
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters have been cashing in on crypto assets these days, after UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou announced that he would be getting half of his UFC 270 purse paid in bitcoin. The UFC also collaborated with the digital currency exchange Crypto.com and through an agreement with the company, UFC Fight Night bonuses are paid out in bitcoin. On July 27, crypto payment service company Bitwage announced that UFC fighter, strawweight Luana Pinheiro (18-2 record), will be the first female UFC fighter to be paid in bitcoin (BTC).
Bitwage says that because Pinheiro leverages the company’s platform, she does not need to negotiate with the mixed martial arts (MMA) company UFC to receive crypto payments. Pinheiro got the idea from his boyfriend, who is also a UFC fighter in the flyweight division, Matheus Nicolau (record 18-2). Nicolau started getting paid in BTC in March, and Bitwage says that makes them “a true UFC power couple on the bitcoin standard.”
“MMA is a brutal sport and there is no time to overthink. Mental strength and callousness are everything,” Pinheiro explained in a statement sent to Bitcoin.com News. “I don’t think I’ll have a problem with bitcoin going down or up [in fiat value]. If it wasn’t volatile, it wouldn’t go up either. Consider this: it takes an average of 10-15 years for a person to earn a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so my time preference here is just as long if not longer. I call it black belt time preference. Everything else is just noise to me, and the lower the price, the more bitcoin I will be able to secure for the future.”
Bitwage co-founder Jonathan Chester: “Right information at the right time is everything”
According to Bitwage co-founder and CEO Jonathan Chester, the company’s team flew out to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to help Pinheiro get started in person. Chester noted that the service is not just for athletes and high-net-worth individuals, as anyone worldwide can choose to use Bitwage’s crypto payment services. “Right information at the right time is everything. Having knowledge and not acting on it is not why we acquire knowledge in the first place. We get it so we can act.” Chester explained Wednesday during the announcement. Chester added:
It is our goal to help each individual on their journey. Through education, each individual can choose how they want to be paid, whether it is to their self-controlled wallet or to their bank account. So at the end of the day they don’t need anyone and are truly independent.
Since 2014, Bitwage has been offering crypto and stablecoin salary services, and in 2020 they launched a pensioner service with the Gemini exchange. To date, the startup has processed more than $150 million in transactions and has 50,000 users and partnerships with 2,000 companies worldwide. In addition to UFC fighters Pinheiro and her boyfriend Nicolau, professional athletes Alex Barrett, Achara Ifunanyachi and Alex Crognale have also chosen to be paid in crypto using the Bitwage service.
What do you think of the first female UFC fighter to be paid in bitcoin? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
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