It is an old sports legend that Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia has secrets in its basement. The rumors range from a jail cell for unruly fans to a secret tunnel to whisk away team out in times of danger, due to unruly fans.
But the Golden 1 Center, the home of the Sacramento Kings, has something very special in its basement, only it has nothing to do with unruly fans. They have a money printing machine, capable of creating currency out electricity and they are using it to further their cause.
That cause just so happens to be a local charity, and that currency, a cryptocurrency. Specifically they are mining Ethereum and giving it to Build Black[1] a charity designed to promote “proactive investment and radical transformation for Black communities.”
It’d be easy enough for the Sacramento Kings to simply invest fiat currency into Build Black but the move is about more than just injecting cash into the charity and it is more than just a publicity stunt.
The Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé is known for being a forward thinking owner. He is a young owner (relatively). His money comes from technology, not old empires. He created TIBCO that helped revolutionize how trading was done on Wall Street. That gave him the nickname “Mr. Real-Time” going back to at least 2002[2]. Since he became the owner of the Sacramento Kings in 2013, they have been the most forward looking team technology wise in the NBA, if not all of sports.
The Ethereum experiment goes along with their previous cryptocurrency ventures, Virtual and Augmented reality offerings, an e-sports team and training facility[3], AI, Chatbots[4], Google Glass[5], drone cameras[6] and
