What began as a joke is increasingly becoming a serious cryptocurrency, as the Dallas Mavericks are the first to accept Dogecoin as payment via BitPay.

Dogecoin was created by IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe software engineer Jackson Palmer and originally released in December 2013. Despite being created as a joke, the cryptocurrency has a market capitalization of $6.3 billion at the time of writing.

BitPay has announced support for Dogecoin payments. Right from the outset, the Dallas Mavericks are onboard, accepting Dogecoin via BitCoin.

“The Dallas Mavericks are a long-time enthusiast of cryptocurrency, opening up new opportunities for the team to sell tickets and merchandise to its global MFFL fan base,” Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay, said. “BitPay believes that with continued cryptocurrency adoption, the industry is reaching an inflection point that will forever change consumer confidence, trust and pave the way for blockchain payments to disrupt the way consumers and businesses receive and spend funds.”

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had a novel reply as to why the Mavericks were supporting the cryptocurrency.

“The Mavericks have decided to accept Dogecoin as payment for Mavs tickets and merchandise for one very important, earth shattering reason, because we can! Because we can, we have chosen to do so. We have chosen to do so because sometimes in business you have to do things that are fun, engaging and hopefully generate a lot of PR. So we will take Dogecoin, today, tomorrow and possibly forever more. For those of you who would like to learn more about Dogecoin we strongly encourage you to talk to your teenagers who are on tik tok and ask them about it. They will be able to explain it all to you,” said Cuban.