Bitcoin football club Real Bedford FC wins the league
The so-called Bitcoin (BTC) football team, Real Bedford Football Club, won the UK’s South Midlands League for 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 raised. 327 fans turned up, many of whom had traveled thousands of miles across the globe to watch a non-league football team in a north London town.
At the first home game of the 2022 season, Bitcoin podcaster and club chairman Peter McCormack told Cointelegraph that he bought Bedford FC and changed it to be Bitcoin-friendly Real Bedford, and shared his vision of one day owning an English Football League side. The move would also put his beloved town of Bedford on the Bitcoin world map.
Pitchside and jubilant nine months later, McCormack told Cointelegraph that he is now one step closer to realizing his Football League dream. Also, the fans and critics are starting to believe:
“It’s an underdog story. The thing is, it’s made more sense now because it’s coming out and saying “Yes, I’m going to buy a football team – make a Bitcoin team and get it in the Premier League”. And everyone says, “Yeah, shut up.” But now I have made the first promotion.”
Real Bedford’s promotion brings more than recognition for the club. The club has a Bitcoin logo on its strip, crypto-sponsors, and oddly enough, as opposed to a foundation date ie 2021, the emblem has a base block height: 712,003. As Peter explains, the win for Real Bedford is a win 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 campaigners worldwide tuned into live streams of the game during the 2023 season, while stories of Bitcoin soccer fans from Slovakia traveling to Legend to paint the town red have become a local legend. The team has given British Bitcoin advocates a headquarters and Bitcoin sports lovers around the world a team to rally around.
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However, McCormack is reluctant to push the Bitcoin currency to his local town: “I don’t talk much about Bitcoin here because Bedford is a deprived town and I don’t want people to think, ‘Oh my God, there’s that guy who made some money on Bitcoin. I’m going to buy Bitcoin and they lose their money.”
In fact, the Bitcoin price is still 60% below its all-time highs in 2021, and Bedford, like many UK towns, is on the decline. The darkness of inflation and economic mismanagement, closure of sales and discovered shops overshadows the high street. McCormack explained that it might not be wise to be on Bitcoin in such an environment:
“The [the people of Bedford] can see it, they can come to ours [Bitcoin] meetings, but it’s a soft touch. It’s my Trojan horse. It’s a Trojan football.”
The Bitcoin Trojan horse, a meme in the Bitcoin space popularized by Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation, explains that Bitcoin adoption brings 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:
Every Real Bedford home game hosts a Bitcoin meet before the game. 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 last game of the season showed that for many people it was their first real interaction with Bitcoin.
“The goal is to communicate Bitcoin to the country. It’s a bit like El Zonte was the seed that made El Salvador a bitcBitcoinoin country. I want this to be the seed that makes our country understand and have better regulations for Bitcoin.
It could be an uphill battle. Despite grassroots efforts by Brits at the Bitcoin Collective and Bitcoin Policy UK, ministers are still trying to understand what Bitcoin is and how to regulate crypto.
Ultimately, the weekend Bitcoin party atmosphere – champagne showers, dancing with the kit man and nights out into the small hours in Bedford – will have to contend with a country committed to adopting CBDCs or central bank digital currencies while a group of The UK population cannot afford basic amenities.
Undeterred and committed to the long game, McCormack told Cointelegraph, “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life here in Bedford at every fight I can be in to try to lift my town.”
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