In 2021, many celebrities across different fields got involved with the cryptocurrency space in various ways.
Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen competed for the top prize of 1 Bitcoin (approximately $51,000 at the time of writing) in the bullet tournament “Agadmator CakeDeFi Christmas Arena” on the 21st of December.
- Apart from Carlsen, the 2-hour featured some of the very best bullet players in the world, including Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja, Andrew Tang, Daniel Naroditsky, among others.
- The event had to halt midway due to technical difficulties. However, the open-source Internet chess server, Lichess, revealed that it will be resumed on another day with the same scores and the same remaining time of around 1 hour 15 minutes.
- Carlsen has emerged as a crucial proponent of the space with his chess-centric events and initiatives.
- The 31-year old Chess grandmaster had played for NFT trophies and cash prizes in Bitcoin and other crypto-assets.
- The Norwegian chess player made history after being awarded a non-fungible token (NFT) trophy after he won an international chess tournament, Meltwater Champions Chess Tour (MCCT), in October this year. He was quoted saying,
“It’s a nice trophy and I’m very happy to be breaking this ground.”
- MCCT had recently entered into a partnership with cryptocurrency exchange FTX that enabled professional chess players to compete for a prize fund of 2.1825 BTC.
- Besides, Carlsen is the world’s first Bitcoin chess champion. He recently defeated Russian Chess Grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi to win his 5th World Chess Championship title.
- He had secured his first world title back in 2013.
Featured image courtesy of ChessBase