World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen Competed in a 1 BTC Prize Bullet Tournament

In 2021, many celebrities across different fields got involved with the cryptocurrency space in various ways.

Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen competed for the top prize of 1 Bitcoin (approximately $51,000 at the time of writing) in the bullet tournament “Agadmator CakeDeFi Christmas Arena” on the 21st of December.

Apart from Carlsen, the 2-hour featured some of the very best bullet players in the world, including Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja, Andrew Tang, Daniel Naroditsky, among others.
The event had to halt midway due to technical difficulties. However, the open-source Internet chess server, Lichess, revealed that it will be resumed on another day with the same scores and the same remaining time of around 1 hour 15 minutes.
Carlsen has emerged as a crucial proponent of the space with his chess-centric events and initiatives.
The 31-year old Chess grandmaster had played for NFT trophies and cash prizes in Bitcoin and other crypto-assets.
The Norwegian chess player made history after being awarded a non-fungible token (NFT) trophy after he won an international chess tournament, Meltwater Champions Chess Tour (MCCT), in October this year. He was quoted saying,

“It’s a nice trophy and I’m very happy to be breaking this ground.”

MCCT had recently entered into a partnership with cryptocurrency exchange FTX that enabled professional chess players to compete for a prize fund of 2.1825 BTC.
Besides, Carlsen is the world’s first Bitcoin chess champion. He recently defeated Russian Chess Grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi to win his 5th World Chess Championship title.
He had secured his first world title back in 2013.

Featured image courtesy of ChessBase