Yukihito Taguchi-USA TODAY Sports
Dogecoin was the catalyst for Naomi Osaka getting into cryptocurrencies, the four-times Grand Slam tennis singles champion told Bloomberg in a recent interview.
Osaka talked of reading about an explosion of interest in the meme token on Twitter, even before her agent spoke to her about possibly investing in crypto.
“As athletes, our career isn’t that long, and so I just like being very smart with it,” she said in the interview published Monday, though she didn’t specify any crypto holdings.
“I like when my agent tells me there’s opportunities. And in a weird way, I like to fail a little bit because it makes you understand what didn’t work and why.”
Dogecoin’s price is up 5,700% so far this year at 27 cents per coin, but is still 60% lower from a peak of about 70 cents hit in May, according to data from CoinDesk.
On major crypto exchanges, trading volumes in dogecoin surged to almost $1 billion a day in the second quarter, according to Coinbase data. In addition, Robinhood revealed this month that dogecoin made up 62% of the investing app’s crypto revenue in the same period.
Osaka, who has invested in salad chain Sweetgreen and women’s professional soccer team North Caroline Courage, also spoke about the Reddit-fuelled trading frenzy that blew up this year.
“My boyfriend really loves to wake up in the morning and check his stuff,” Osaka said. “I’m personally not a person that does that, but I can see the appeal.”
Osaka has delved into the world of non-fungible tokens. Together with her sister Mari Osaka, she recently released new signed collectibles on Tom Brady’s Autograph platform.
But the 23-year-old tennis player, who was fined $15,000 for declining media interviews during the French Open, said she likes to keep a low profile from time to time.
