Super Bowl fan uses Bitcoin to snap up tickets for $19,000 in first for NFL showpiece event

A New England Patriots fan is believed to have made Super Bowl history after snapping up a pair of tickets for Sunday's NFL showdown using Bitcoin.

The buyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted a secondary ticket vendor on Thursday after being unable to use the cryptocurrency with official ticket outlets.

TickPick decided to take up the offer and locked in the sale when the price of the volatile currency was worth $9,360, taking the cost to almost $19,000 (£13,400).
While that might seem steep, the seats were located on the first row on the 50-yard line. TickPick was recently selling row 2 seats for $15,255 each.

"The reason why we did it was because a customer reached out and said, 'I have some bitcoin and I'd love to use it to make it happen,'" Brett Goldberg, co-CEO of TickPick, told Benzinga.

"I was terribly sceptical initially, however it absolutely was super simple to be honest and that we saved plenty of cash on fees."

Mr cartoonist distinguished that had the client used AN yankee specific mastercard to shop for the tickets, they might have had to pay a two.89-percent fee on the group action. Instead, the firm paid a zero.1 p.c charge.

He conjointly noted that the employment of Bitcoin, that has seen its value plunge in recent days, all over up cost accounting the client additional.

“When we tend to started the spoken communication, bitcoin was valued around $11,500, however by the time we tend to did the deal, it absolutely was right down to $9,000. That’s however crazy it absolutely was over a four-day amount. Originally he was about to do two bitcoin, however he all over up paying two.2,” Mr cartoonist aforesaid.
While the price ticket reseller was pleased with acceptive Bitcoin on a happening basis, Mr cartoonist aforesaid the currency's volatility meant it would not be an everyday feature.

“In AN hour you'll see many bucks in swing,” he told UPI. “The second it hit my account it absolutely was transferred to North American nation bucks.”

“Me as a business, I don’t need to possess bitcoin. I don’t need to be exposed to the volatility.”

The price ticket sale will not be the sole time Bitcoin can feature within the piece de resistance event between the Patriots and therefore the City of Brotherly Love Eagles.

It has been foretold that the cryptocurrency can account for AN new quantity of bets on the sport.

"Bitcoin's meteoric rise in worth over 2017 has each skilled bookmaker we tend to work with convinced that it's about to dominate the Super Bowl," aforesaid Nate Johnson, Product Manager at PayPerHead.com.

"The data's there to back that up, too. a minimum of five hundredth of all Bitcoin transactions area unit associated with the sports sporting trade."

With the federal ban on full-fledged sports sporting outside of Sagebrush State currently in situ for twenty five years, North American nation residents United Nations agency place bets on-line through offshore bookmakers area unit more and more turning to cryptocurrency.

“With bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general) nobody will stop you from doing no matter you wish along with your cash. That’s why several gambling sites have opted into acceptive it as payment,” Ofir bagel, head of ninety nine Bitcoins, told Bloomberg Law.