Mayweather’s misguided money moves

For a retired boxer, Floyd Mayweather makes an awful lot of money fighting. The 41-year-old raked in $275 million for knocking Conor McGregor out last year, and is set to do something similar in his match-up with this year’s rising UFC star, Khabib Nurmagomedov. But Mr. Money has another fight on his hands, and the bookies are betting against him emerging victorious.

According to TMZ, both Mayweather and music producer DJ Khaled are being sued as part of the lawsuit against Centra Tech, a company which raised $32 million in an ICO for its crypto debit card that it told investors had received support from both Visa and Mastercard. That turned out to be a bit of a lie, and, in April, the company was charged by the SEC with fraud. A month later, the three founders were indicted for fraud and creating a fictitious CEO. But investors still aren’t happy and have filed a class-action lawsuit against Mayweather and Khaled. They want some of Mr Money’s err.. Money.

The lawsuit alleges the celebrities helped the success of the Centra ICO and are thus partially responsible for the resultant loss of money they incurred-- Centra’s coin price plummeted from $0.32 to $0.016 after it emerged the founders had been telling porky pies. But how did Floyd get involved in such a salacious scheme?

The Money doesn’t like banks very much, choosing to keep his cash not in a bank account, but stuffed in a backpack one of his entourage schleps around. Back in September 2017, Mayweather decided to take a break from all the money moving and started using a Centra card loaded with bitcoin instead. According to several now deleted social media posts, he loved it. From spending it in a shop and posting a photo of himself with the card on Twitter, he made it so clear he was a fan, he re-nicknamed himself Floyd ‘Crypto’ Mayweather. But as soon as the sham was revealed, he presumably went back to good ol’ fashioned greenbacks in backpacks.

While the amount the class-action lawsuit is seeking in damages against Mayweather hasn’t been revealed, Mayweather’s desire to knock down another UFC straw man for a $100 million payday could be less about being the undisputed fighting champ, and more about paying his legal bills. But what if he loses? Well, let’s just say the bookmakers have the chances of him taking home that money at 25/1.

Read Next: Making GPUs great again