Dogecoin (DOGE) Racks Up Support from BitPay and NBA Franchise Dallas Mavericks

Dallas Mavericks, a pro-basketball team in the United States, is out to make history yet again.

After becoming the second National Basketball (NBA) team to adopt Bitcoin for payments and the first to consider blockchain-ticketing, the Mark Cuban-owned basketball team is looking to add Dogecoin (DOGE) to its crypto payments lineup for fans.

Mavericks Go Deep into Crypto With DOGE

The Mavericks’ long-time blockchain partner BitPay will be adding support for the meme-based DOGE crypto so fans can use it for payments and merchandise, according to a press release Thursday.

The billionaire owner of the Mavs Mark Cuban has turned sail in the past couple of weeks. The Shark Tank investor who was once a skeptic has made a 180° and is now a crypto lover.

Cuban has spoken glowingly about the industry in the past. He spoke about the potential disruption crypto projects like Ethereum could bring to the global financial space in an interview. He also applauded the growing non-fungible token (NFT) community, saying that NFTs have reignited the zeal for basketball fans to trade cards.

But, when it comes to Dogecoin, no one promotes the token as much as Tesla boss Elon Musk. Dogecoin's value started experiencing some ebbs and flows following Musk's tweets last year.

Musk’s tweets saw the meme-based cryptocurrency leave the lower ranks of the crypto chart and make an unprecedented entry into the top ten cryptos by market cap.

At one point, DOGE increased by almost 200% in two months. Cuban himself had expressed admiration for the Shiba Inu- the mascot used to represent DOGE- saying he bought a stake in the digital asset for his son.

Dogecoin Gains Wide Adoption In The US

Dallas Mavericks' DOGE pick following their Bitcoin support should not really be confusing. Cuban adopted DOGE as a pet project after Musk and a couple of celebrities came on board.

The Mavs owner had said in a tweet that he was having fun with his son watching the digital coin perform in the market and reiterated his desire to maintain a DOGE investment in the announcement. As dogecoin's popularity rises, more businesses look towards supporting the digital asset.

Leading Bitcoin automated teller machine (BATM) Coinflip now supports DOGE withdrawals on its 1,800 BTC ATMs scattered across the US. Company CEO and co-founder Daniel Polotsky said the decision was made following DOGE’s growing popularity and recent wide adoption among generation Z. The crypto company, which had 441 ATMs in Jan. 2020, has seen its machine count increase to 1,800 following growing interests in the nascent industry.