“Stick your Bitcoin up your arse.”
Mark has heard that one plenty of times. He runs the merchandise hut at Real Bedford, a non-league football club with a Bitcoin millionaire for a chairman and the Winklevoss twins as co-owners. He says it doesn’t bother him.
It’s a couple of hours before kick-off, and around 20 people are sitting in the clubhouse for the latest Bitcoin meet-up. They are almost all middle-aged men. An American dressed in orange films himself talking about Bitcoin culture. A teacher who's travelled from Norfolk listens politely. A man with plugs in his earlobes describes a Bitcoin-mining simulator he has designed, to mild interest. That’s Mark, by the way.
Around us, footballers wander through on their way to get ready for the match, paying little attention to the gathering. At one point, the only woman in the room asks what could be done to persuade more women to come along. Peter McCormack, Real Bedford’s chairman, wonders aloud whether men simply think about money more than women.
This is fairly standard pre-match entertainment at a club that describes itself as the first in the world to run on a Bitcoin standard. Its shirt sponsor is Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange. Its stadium is named after Ledger, which makes crypto wallets. Supporters can buy their pints and shirts in Bitcoin. Instead of a founding date, the club badge carries the date of its first blockchain transaction. When the team won its first league title, a limited run of shirts was produced with “Satoshi” — the pseudonym used by Bitcoin’s mysterious creator — printed on the back.
And on the pitch?
Since McCormack bought the club in 2021, the club has ascended to the heights of the Southern League Premier Central, the seventh tier of English football. It’s quite the achievement: Real Bedford have won three promotions in the past four seasons, along with the support of the Winklevoss twins, who invested $4.5 million (£3.58 million) last year. McCormack’s stated ambition is to take the club all the way to the Premier League.
Not everyone in non-league football is delighted about this. Hence, from rival fans: “Stick your Bitcoin up your arse.”
The people at the meet-up, naturally, have a different view. They don’t want to stick it up their arse. There is an obvious joy in being around people who get it, and fans have travelled from all over. There is an update from the Real Bedford supporters’ club in Slovakia, whose members are planning to come over for a match. Towards the end, a 19-year-old man tells McCormack that he sees his role as educating his peers about the evils of fiat currency. He isn’t from Bedford; he has travelled up from London.
I ask which football team he supports. He says he’s more of a rugby fan.
Real Bedford began life as Bedford FC in 2002, when Bedford United merged with a local Sunday-league team called US Valerio. When McCormack bought it, he added “Real”, as in Real Madrid.
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