Giants’ Saquon Barkley taking all future endorsement pay in bitcoin

Saquon Barkley is making a significant financial move, taking 100% of his future endorsement pay in the form of bitcoin.

The popularity of cryptocurrency has widened in recent years — Saquon Barkley is getting in on the action.

On “The Best Business Show with Anthony Pompliano” Wednesday, the Giants running back announced he’ll be taking all of his future endorsement pay in bitcoin. According to Joe Pompliano, this amounts to more than $10 million on an annual basis.

BREAKING: Saquon Barkley has announced on The Best Business Show that he is taking 100% of his endorsement money in Bitcoin going forward.

That's more than $10 million annually.

What a legend. pic.twitter.com/6gpQBewgMv

— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) July 14, 2021

“You see [Kevin Durants], the LeBrons, the [Tom Bradys] of the world and you want to create generational wealth,” Barkley said on the show. “You can’t do that…especially in the sport I play and the position I play coming off of injury.”

Barkley has secured endorsement deals with Hulu, Oikos, Nike, Pepsi, Toyota, Campbell’s, Gillette, and more since February 2018. The Giants drafted him in April of that year.

As for his football-playing money, Barkley is set to make a 2021 base salary of $850,000 in the fourth year of his rookie deal. His fifth-year option (which was exercised this offseason) is slated to provide a 2022 base salary of $7.217 million.

The financial details of his next contract are unclear — the Giants still need to evaluate their top back and decode whether offering a lucrative deal will be worth it.

Barkley is coming off a 2020 campaign in which he played fewer than two full games due to a season-ending ACL tear suffered last September. It’s still too early to tell whether the 24-year-old will be ready for Big Blue’s Sept. 12 regular-season opener against Denver.