George Boyd has had a change of heart. The former Premier League soccer player first heard of bitcoin (BTC) when it was just $1,800 and, like most people at the time, dismissed it. He was happy to follow the advice he'd received at the start of his career and put his cash into real estate and stocks.
But the more Boyd, who appeared in more than 100 games for Burnley FC and Hull City, learned, the more his outlook changed. The 39-year-old, who in the course of his career also played in the final of the FA Cup — the U.K.'s most prestigious domestic football competition — is now an ambassador for Jacobi Asset Management and said he sees bitcoin as a great source of generating generational wealth.
In common with many sportspeople, Premier League players have a shorter career span than the average person who works until they retire in their mid-60s. For professionals like Boyd, it's not just a case of accumulating wealth, but also preserving it.
“So I had a really good agent who looked after me well," Boyd said in an interview. "His mentality was to start me in property, so I bought into the property market and I've also got a stock portfolio. So that was our sort of general thesis. Now, I try to sell them all and then buy more bitcoin.”
His journey into bitcoin began in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, although he was initially skeptical of the token and its value. Later, he learned how the current monetary system is driving up inflation and how the old-school mentality of investing through property or savings in a bank doesn’t work anymore.
“I think that happened with Covid. Your eyes open even more ... I think the monetary system, once you do go around it and with inflation, how it's stealing from us. I've tried to tell friends, and they're still not listening. But bitcoin just fits today. It's more of a store of value,” Boyd said.
Boyd emphasized the importance of understanding the difference between bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies as well as the benefits of self-custody. He also criticized the traditional financial advice given to soccer players and advocated using bitcoin as a means of creating sustainable wealth.
“We're not talking [profits], we're talking generational wealth, if you get it right and correct, we're talking about, generations of families being set up for life. I think that's how big it is.”
Boyd isn't the first sports personality to come out in support of bitcoin. Some, such as the National Football League (NFL)'s Russell Okung, decided to be paid in bitcoin. Others include the NFL's Odell Beckham Jr. and Premier League's Kieran Gibbs, who sat down on the Peter McCormack podcast “What Bitcoin Did.”
“Sports people have a very unique earning window in that their capacity to earn is high yet the window in which to do this is low, unlike most careers," said Peter Lane, co-founder of Jacobi Asset Management, which listed Europe's first bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in 2023.
"Retiring in your 30’s means that you need to make the wealth you’ve accumulated last possibly another 60 years unlike most people who work 40 years to retire for 20 years or so. These guys need an asset that will keep them wealthy for a very long retirement and we feel that bitcoin is in an ideal position to offer that,” Lane said.
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