NBA Halts Spencer Dinwiddie’s Tokenized Contact (For Now)

Updating yesterday’s story, the National Basketball Association (NBA) released this statement in regards to Brooklyn Nets Point Guard Spencer Dinwiddie‘s plan to sell tokenized shares of his contract as a digital investment vehicle:

“According to recent reports, Spencer Dinwiddie intends to sell investors a ‘tokenized security’ that will be backed by his player contract. The described arrangement is prohibited by the C.B.A., which provides that ‘no player shall assign or otherwise transfer to any third party his right to receive compensation from the team under his uniform player contract.’”

Dinwiddie claims that the league is mistaken and the investment does not represent an assignment of his contract, saying:

I love the @NBA it is the greatest league in the world. And it is an honor to be their partner. But to put this quite simply I’m not assigning my contract and have been explicit in that when I’ve spoken to them.

— Spencer Dinwiddie (@SDinwiddie_25) September 27, 2019

Dinwiddie seemed surprised by the league’s statement, telling The New York Times’ Marc Stein that he had already explained the difference and would continue to speak with league officials:

Said Dinwiddie: “When I was on the phone with the league, I told them it wasn’t an assignment. And they invited me to sit down with them and explain the offering, which is what I’m going to do.”

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) September 27, 2019

Democratic Presidential Candidate and known Bitcoin supporter, Andrew Yang, weighed in with support for Dinwiddie:

I think @SDinwiddie_25 selling interests in his professional earnings is genius and am disappointed the NBA is disallowing it.

— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) September 28, 2019

To read our original coverage of this story, click here.This article is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to invest in any financial products.