Bitcoin has a way of finding itself in the middle of strange news, and its latest celebrity endorsement seems to follow suit perfectly.
That came with the announcement this week that Mike Tyson, the U.S. former professional boxer, would be rolling out the Mike Tyson Digital Wallet in connection with Bitcoin Direct. In a release about the news, the company notes that this is the first celebrity-associated digital wallet and that it is aimed at bringing bitcoin mainstream.
Not only will it enable buying and selling of bitcoin, but it allows users to get bitcoin at any bitcoin ATM around the world. The Mike Tyson Digital Wallet is now available for iOS, and will soon launch for Android.
“Bitcoin Direct is pleased to partner with Mike Tyson because Tyson is a universally known star whose fan base extends generations. People around the world of all ages know Mike Tyson, and as such Tyson’s potential to expand the bitcoin market is dramatic,” said Peter Klamka, CEO of Bitcoin Direct. “The Mike Tyson Digital Wallet offers beginners a simple and secure way to get started with bitcoin. Users can create wallets for sharing funds with friends, store multiple personal wallets in the same app, accept payments from friends, or pay bitcoin-accepting businesses online or in person.”
But this isn’t the first time Tyson’s name has shown up in a bitcoin story. A report in July showed that the former heavyweight boxing champion was getting into bitcoin by launching a bitcoin ATM. And he did so in a very flashy manner, starting with his tagline on his site promoting the ATM: “Mike Tyson’s fastest knockout in the ring was 30 seconds. The Mike Tyson bitcoin ATM can turn your cash into bitcoin in under 20 seconds.”
Iron Mike’s ATM, as it was coined, joined the Vegas Strip in August. The ATM was also rolled out in partnership with Bitcoin Direct.
The new digital wallet was rolled out in collaboration with BitPay, a bitcoin payment tech company, which has its own bitcoin wallet platform called Copay. The Mike Tyson Digital Wallet is being pitched as “one of the first bitcoin wallets that allows users to purchase and/or sell bitcoin right from the app.” What this means is that the wallet user can use the app to exchange bitcoin with the bitcoin exchange Glidera.
This new wallet is free for users, and enables users to select whatever options work best for them when needing to pay a small fee to confirm a bitcoin payments across the network. To find bitcoin addresses, users can open the app, pick a wallet on the menu and then select “receive.” As explained by Bitcoin Direct: the digital wallet address is a unique string of numbers and letters below the QR code.
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