“We are the Bitcoin club. But like Bitcoin, we are a community. So this is our team. And if we go up, everyone is going to say: Yes, that’s our team!” Chairman Peter McCormack told Cointelegraph.
The Bitcoin (BTC) dubbed football team, Real Bedford Football Club, won the UK South Midlands League in the 2023 season.
Fans from all over the world, from Vancouver to Beijing, flew in to watch the final home game and see the trophy being hoisted. There were 327 fans, many of whom had traveled thousands of miles across the globe to see a non-national league football team in a north London town.
Some photos of our final home game of the season where we were crowned league champions.
We had a record crowd of 327, this is up from 50-80 last season. Thank you to everyone who came and has supported us. pic.twitter.com/u19kcpO3WM
—Peter McCormack☠️ (@PeterMcCormack) April 16, 2023
Some photos from our last game of the season at home where we were crowned league champions.
We had a record crowd of 327, this is up from 50-80 last season. Thank you to everyone who came and supported us.
In the first home game of the season in 2022, Bitcoin podcaster and club president, Peter McCormack, told Cointelegraph that he bought Bedford FC and renamed it Bitcoin-friendly Real Bedford, sharing his vision of one day owning an English Football League team. The move would also put his beloved town of Bedford on the world Bitcoin map.
Nine months later, McCormack has told Cointelegraph that he is one step closer to realizing his dream of a soccer league. Also, fans and critics are beginning to believe:
“It’s a story of underdogs. What happens is that now it makes more sense, because one comes out and says: ‘Yes, I’m going to buy a football team, make a Bitcoin team and put it in the Premier League.’ And everything the world is like, ‘Yeah, shut up stupid.’ But now I’ve gotten my first promotion.”
The promotion of Real Bedford means more than just recognition for the club. The club has a Bitcoin logo on its stripe, crypto sponsors, and interestingly, set against a founding date i.e. 2021, the emblem sports a founding block height: 712,003. As Peter explains, a victory for Real Bedford is a victory for Bitcoin:
“This is going to sound really horrible. It’s not my team; it’s our team. But it is. It’s our team. It’s our Bitcoin team.”
Bitcoin supporters from around the world tuned in to live streams of the match during the 2023 season, while stories of Bitcoin soccer fans from Slovakia traveling to Legend to paint the city red have become local legend.. The team has given British Bitcoin fans a headquarters and Bitcoin sports lovers around the world a team to rally around.
However, McCormack is reluctant to impose Bitcoin as a currency in his city: “I don’t talk about Bitcoin much here because Bedford is a city in need, and I don’t want people to think, ‘My God, there’s this guy who made money with Bitcoin. I’m going to buy Bitcoin,’ and then they lose their money.”
In fact, the price of Bitcoin is still 60% below its 2021 all-time highs, and Bedford, like many UK cities, is in decline. Hit by inflation and economic mismanagement, closed sales and boarded-up shops cast a shadow over the main street. McCormack explained that it might not be wise to brag about Bitcoin in such an environment:
“They [la gente de Bedford] they can see it, they can come to our meetings [de Bitcoin], but it is a soft touch. He is my Trojan horse. It’s a Trojan soccer ball.”
The Bitcoin Trojan Horse, a meme in the Bitcoin space popularized by Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation, explains that Bitcoin adoption provides freedom as well as wealth. For McCormack, instead of capturing Troy, he could emulate the success of Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, but in Bedford:
The Trojan football ☠️ pic.twitter.com/fh77fufvcx
—Peter McCormack☠️ (@PeterMcCormack) April 11, 2023
Every Real Bedford home game hosts a pre-game Bitcoin meetup. Locals and traveling Bitcoin enthusiasts ask questions and learn more about the decentralized currency, while Real Bedford merchandise can be purchased using the Lightning Network. A show of hands in the final game of the season showed that for many people it was their first real-life interaction with Bitcoin.
“The goal is to communicate Bitcoin to the country. It’s a bit like El Zonte was the seed that turned El Salvador into a Bitcoin country. I want this to be the seed that makes our country understand and have better regulations towards Bitcoin”.
It could be an uphill battle. Despite grassroots efforts by the British at Bitcoin Collective and Bitcoin Policy UK, government ministers are still trying to understand what Bitcoin is and how to regulate cryptocurrencies.
Ultimately, Bitcoin’s weekend party atmosphere – champagne showers, dances with the man in the kit, and late-night parties in Bedford – will have to contend with a country committed to adopting Bitcoin. CBDCs or central bank digital currencies while a cohort of the UK population cannot afford basic services.
Undeterred and committed to the game for the long haul, McCormack told Cointelegraph: “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life in Bedford in every game that I may be trying to lift my city up.”
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