The Sacramento Kings basketball team has teamed up with a crypto mining hardware firm to install mining machines in an indoor arena, with the crypto earnings funding a scholarship program, local news outlet The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday, June 28.
The Kings have partnered with company MiningStore for the installation of Ethereum (ETH)
mining machines in Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center. All crypto proceeds will go to multi-year scholarship program MiningForGood, which the Sacramento Bee describes as a charity for tech education and workforce development in Sacramento. The first recipient of funding from the Kings will reportedly be an initiative for black communities in Sacramento called “Build. Black. Coalition.”
Vivek Ranadive, the Kings’ principal owner, said that the mining scholarship program aims to “inspire the next generation of tinkerers [sic] and thinkers to create change in their own community and around the globe,” Ranadive calls the team’s crypto-mining plans “innovative,” stating:
“Opportunity begins when technology allows the world to find innovative solutions to complex problems.”
Mining Ethereum for charitable causes has already been tried out around the world. In February, UNICEF Australia asked PC gamers to mine ETH in their downtime as a donation to Syrian children, and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated $2.4 million in ETH to fund anti-aging research.
The Sacramento Bee notes that the Kings began accepting Bitcoin (BTC) for their team store in 2014 after partnering with BitPay.