Saquon and Cryptocurrency

One NFL player could earn millions—or pennies.  I’m Amy E. Feldman.

New York Giants star Saquon Barkley just announced that he is planning to have all the money from his endorsement sponsors—including Nike—paid in Bitcoin.  He joins Trevor Lawrence, Russell Okung, and other people—like you for that matter—who are asking to be paid in cryptocurrency.  But can an employer pay an employee that way?  Well, not directly.  For one thing, some state laws say that employees have to be paid in US currency.  And while it probably won’t affect Saquon, employees have to be paid at least minimum wage—depending on how fast the cryptocurrency value nosedives, it could be less than minimum wage by the time you could cash out.

Now, Saquon’s sponsors are depositing US dollars into a bank account that then converts dollars to bitcoin, just as you could do because you’re free to spend your salary as you wish.  But you and Saquon might be better off just buying Nikes than crypto because you’ll be able to put those on to pound the pavement if the value of your bitcoin gets sacked.