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Perth Heat have been hitting it out of the park since 1989. A foundation member of the Australian Baseball League (ABL), they played in the first ABL game and have won a record 15 Claxton Shields.
After some serious thinking outside the diamond, the club scored another first last year, when it became reportedly the first sporting organisation in the world to pay all its players and staff in Bitcoin. The Heat announced they would also accept Bitcoin payments for sponsorship and merchandise, and hold Bitcoin on the club’s balance sheet.
“The players and organisational staff have fully embraced the opportunities that being paid in Bitcoin can provide,” Heat CEO Steven Nelkovski said.
Stars and gripes
While the Heat are understood to be the world’s first club to go full crypto, in the US, several clubs and individuals have embraced crypto to some degree.
Basketball’s Sacramento Kings last year already announced Bitcoin as a salary option, should any member of its organisation wish to take it up, and individual stars from other sports have also been choosing to get their wages in crypto. In American football, free-agent wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr received his whole salary in Bitcoin while starring for the Superbowl-winning LA Rams last season, and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers gets part of his NFL salary the same way.
While both would have been less than stoked by Bitcoin’s dip in recent months, they are no doubt hoping the falls are temporary and the future is one in which crypto will score touchdowns galore.
Tax implications
If you’re thinking of calling a meeting with your boss and asking for your next pay packet to be digital, you might want to consider the potential tax implications, says Danny Talwar, head of tax with the Australian crypto portfolio tracker and tax software provider, Koinly.
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“At the moment, the ATO guidance on this is limited,” Talwar says. “Anyone considering getting paid in cryptos should go and get proper taxation advice.”
Even if you’re just trading crypto – rather than being paid in it – you need to be aware of the need to keep records of every transaction you make, Talwar says. And that can catch people out.
“With crypto, what we find is actually users tend to buy crypto and store it in different places,” he says.
“They buy crypto from various different exchanges. And because people sell, transfer and spend crypto frequently and casually, that there’s often multiple numbers of transactions that can be taxable. It’s really important to know your obligations before you fill in your tax return.”