NEW YORK, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- At the annual golf exhibition now known as "The Showdown" to take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tuesday evening, a whopping 10 million U.S. dollars in prize money will be up for grabs, and, in a bit of a twist, it will be distributed to the participating golfers in the form of cryptocurrency, according a report last month by Front Office Sports.

Title sponsor Crypto.com said in a news release that the event will be "the first ever major golf tournament with a multimillion dollar purse to be paid in CRO cryptocurrency."

"But 'The Showdown' is hardly the cryptocurrency industry's first foray into the world of sports. And the golfers will not be the first professional athletes to receive some or all of their income in crypto," said USA Today, noting that nearly five years ago, former NFL (National Football League) offensive lineman Russell Okung posted a four-word statement to X, formerly known as Twitter: "Pay me in bitcoin."

About 18 months later, he effectively made that a reality by converting half of his 13 million dollars base salary for the 2020 NFL season into bitcoin, a digital currency that is bought and sold online using a type of encryption technology known as a blockchain.

Okung was not technically paid in bitcoin. The Carolina Panthers paid him in U.S. dollars, which he then converted using a crypto product from Zap called "Strike," according to the report. But his investment in the volatile digital currency has paid off, as the value of a single bitcoin has increased from around 27,000 dollars in 2020 to more than 100,000 dollars as of Monday.