Odell Beckham Jr. Took His $750,000 Rams Salary in Bitcoin and Was ‘Happy’ When It Hit Record Highs — Here’s What It’s Worth Now After the Crash
Most people would probably think twice before turning a $750,000 paycheck into Bitcoin (BTCUSD). Odell Beckham Jr. didn’t just think twice. He did it, watched the investment get hammered, and then waited long enough to see it come roaring back.
In November 2021, Beckham was playing for the Los Angeles Rams when he announced that he would convert his $750,000 base salary into Bitcoin through a partnership with Cash App.
Bitcoin was trading around $64,000 at the time. At a price of about $64,293, $750,000 would have bought roughly 11.66 Bitcoin.
The move quickly became one of the most talked-about athlete cryptocurrency bets.
Then Bitcoin crashed.
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Beckham Held Through the Crypto Winter
By 2022, Bitcoin had fallen more than 70% from its 2021 peak and eventually traded below $18,000. That meant Beckham’s roughly 11.66 Bitcoin would have been worth only around $200,000 at the lows.
Suddenly, that $750,000 decision didn’t look quite so clever.
But Beckham apparently didn’t sell.
That mattered when Bitcoin began its long recovery. By July 2025, Bitcoin had climbed above $120,000 and set a new record. On July 14, Beckham celebrated the milestone on X, writing, “Sooooo bitcoin is at an ALL TIME high today…safe to say we still happy with our decision.”
At Bitcoin’s eventual 2025 peak of about $126,198, Beckham’s original 11.66 Bitcoin would have been worth approximately $1.47 million.
For a move that looked terrible during the crypto winter, that was quite a turnaround.
What Beckham’s Bitcoin Is Worth Now
Bitcoin has since given back a sizable portion of those gains.
On Sept. 10, Bitcoin closed at about $76,568. At that price, 11.66 Bitcoin would be worth approximately $893,000.
That would still leave Beckham’s original Bitcoin position about $143,000 above the $750,000 amount he converted, assuming he still owns all of the original Bitcoin.
The assumption matters.
There is no public real-time account showing exactly how much Bitcoin Beckham currently holds. His public comments indicate he continued to hold the investment, but the current valuation is an estimate based on the original 11.66 Bitcoin.
There is also an important distinction between Beckham’s $750,000 base salary and his overall Rams contract. The one-year deal was worth up to $4.25 million, including a $500,000 signing bonus and potential incentives. The $750,000 figure was the amount used for the Bitcoin conversion calculation.
Taxes are another issue. Converting the salary into Bitcoin didn’t erase the income-tax obligation attached to the compensation. The actual tax liability would depend on Beckham’s circumstances, so the investment’s gross value shouldn’t be treated as his after-tax profit.
The Bet Has Survived More Than One Crash
Beckham’s Bitcoin experiment has now lasted through one of crypto’s nastiest downturns and a subsequent record-setting rally.
The original $750,000 converted into Bitcoin at roughly $64,293 would have been worth around $1.47 million at Bitcoin’s October 2025 record high. Today, using the Sept. 10 closing price, that same Bitcoin would be worth roughly $893,000.
That’s a much less spectacular number than the peak, but it’s still above the original $750,000 conversion value.
And that may be the most interesting part of Beckham’s crypto gamble.
The investment didn’t require him to call the bottom, predict the next rally, or perfectly time a sale. He simply held through the part when it looked like the decision had gone horribly wrong.
Now, as Beckham begins another chapter with the New York Giants, the Bitcoin bet is still sitting in the background.
The Giants officially brought Beckham back in June of this year, and he made the team’s initial 53-man roster in August after spending the 2025 season out of the NFL.
His football comeback is getting plenty of attention. But sitting alongside it is a five-year-old financial decision that has already survived a spectacular crash, a record rally, and another major pullback.
For now, assuming Beckham still has those original coins, the bet is still in the green.
On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.