Retired NFL lineman Russell Okung waited 4 years to dunk on his Bitcoin haters

Almost exactly four years ago, then-Carolina Panthers offensive lineman Russell Okung took half of his $13 million salary for the 2020 season and had his employer deposit the money into a crypto product from Zap called “Strike” which purchased Bitcoin with the funds.
At the time, Okung was called the first NFL player to accept his salary in Bitcoin, even though that’s not exactly what was happening. That didn’t make Okung’s gamble any less risky. He took a guaranteed $6.5 million and bet it on cryptocoins at a time when the term was just starting to become a household phrase. That Okung’s contract wound up being his last in the NFL only compounded that risk, but no professional athlete is ever guaranteed another payday.
Okung retired in 2023, having last officially played 2020, but his position on Bitcoin held strong. On Monday night, as Bitcoin topped $87,000 for the first time, Okung began pulling out receipts to show how the gamble paid off. And to dunk on those who mocked him.
Let’s do some quick math: Bitcoin was trading at $27,081.81 on December 29, 2020 when the Bleacher Report tweet went out. If Okung bought $6.5 million worth of Bitcoin then, he’d have held a little over 240 Bitcoins. If he held onto all 240, that would be worth $21.36 million after Monday’s record high, bringing his total contract value with the Panthers to $27.8 million — which is pretty great for someone who only made seven starts that season.
But there’s some pretty significant context needed here.
For one, we don’t know how much Bitcoin Okung currently owns. He may have increased his position or decreased. Bitcoin itself is also extremely volatile — as with all cryptocurrencies.
At the end of 2022, a single Bitcoin could be purchased for $10,000 less than Okung originally paid in 2020. Which means before those 240 Bitcoins were worth more than $20 million, they had depreciated to roughly $4.08 million.
We also don’t know if Okung has cashed out his Bitcoin yet after hitting record highs on Monday, so it’s not as though the $21 million is just sitting in his pocket now. We do know that the crypto industry at large has benefitted greatly from an election cycle that saw a number of crypto critics voted out office in favor of pro-crypto candidates.
President-Elect Donald Trump, who was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, has also embraced a pro-crypto platform. That’s been a main driver of this week’s record highs.
Per the Associated Press:
If all of this seems somewhat vibes-based, that’s not entirely wrong. But those vibes also help explain why a former offensive lineman is now tweeting like a wide receiver.