It seems like every sport is either getting into NFTs or on the cusp of doing so. The sports leagues that have not announced NFT platforms yet have so far allowed their players to launch NFTs themselves. To this extent NFL players Gronk and Patrick Mahomes have led this charge with the first baseball player, Taijuan Walker, launching his last week, and finally, NHL star Matthew Tkachuk has announced his. For the most part, though the releases by these athletes have been to tap into the market and make some money for themselves which I am in no way against.

Mattew Tkachuk though has taken an entirely different route though and personally, I am really happy to see it. When Tkachuk announced his NFTs it also announced that 100% of the proceeds will be going to charity. While I am not a big Calgary Flames fan and I know Tkachuk has an iffy reputation for a 23-year-old kid to decide this is huge! He has even commented on how he hopes that this will encourage people to donate to the two charities he has chosen those being the St. Louis Children's Hospital and the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation. If you are confused on what made him chose those charities he was raised in St. Louis and now plays professional hockey in Alberta.

Patrick Mahomes did do something similar with his NFTs as he donated a certain percentage of his NFT sales to charity Tkachuck is the first of hopefully many that will utilize this new area to raise money for charity! Tkachuck is also including physical items to the winner of the NFT auction including a game-used stick, an autograph jersey, and a postgame or virtual meet and greet with him! While all of this is impressive on its own when I thought about how a 23-year-old kid had come up and decided to do this I was just blown away!

If you are interested in the NFT or just want to look at it/follow the auction it is being auctioned on the Mintable platform (mintable.app). It is called the Mattew Tkachuk Genesis and was created by Greg Dubois. With how hot the market is I hope to see more and more athletes and celebrities do this sort of this with their NFTs. The amount of money that could be generated for these causes is huge!