No, the title isn't a mistake, this is the true story of how a marijuana based cryptocurrency, sponsored a diplomatic trip for 5 time NBA champion Dennis Rodman!
But before we go there, how did all of this get started in the first place?
Dennis Rodman, an eccentric and flamboyant, now retired former NBA champion, went for the first time to North Korea on trip sponsored by Vice Media in 2013.
You might know Vice from their news channels today, but back then they were pioneers in journalism, and made documentaries on many interesting places.
Their original documentary on North Korea was an instant hit and became the benchmark for all other documentaries on the country that followed.
Vice wanted to go back to the North, but this time they wanted to do things different.
On their original trip to the country they had only been shown the typical stuff that all tourist get to see. The DMZ, Pyongyang, some museums, and a whole lot of propaganda!
Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea actually grew up outside of the country in places like Switzerland, and is supposedly a fan of western culture. Him and his father Kim Jong Il are known to be big fans of American basketball, in particular the Chicago Bulls.
Knowing this Vice proposed a basketball game between the Harlem Globetrotters and a North Korean team. They asked Dennis to join them, since he was a former member of the Chicago Bulls, and they hoped that his would persuade the North Korean government in approving the game.
The idea was that this would be a unique way to show the country in a non political way and that the teams could bond through the event. Vice would get a chance to film and talk to the North Koreans, and instead of the typical rehearsed propaganda they were hoping to get some real conversations.
The North Korean government approved the event, and Kim Jong Un even attended himself! The trip was a great success and was later termed as basketball diplomacy.
You can watch the full documentary of this trip below. It's a great video, and I reccomend it to anyone that is interested!
Afterwards Dennis and Kim actually developed some sort of friendship, with Dennis calling the dictator a "great guy" and a "friend for life".
Dennis returned to the North in 2015 for another basketball game. After the success of the first one, another game was proposed, and this time Dennis went with an all star cast of retired NBA stars.
This trip was also turned into a documentary called: Dennis Rodman's Big Bang in Pyongyang, another movie I highly recommend! It's a film full of crazy unbelievable things, such as Dennis singing happy birthday in front of a large crowd to Kim Jong Un!
You're probably wondering by now what Potcoin has to do with all of this.
Well the second trip to the country attracted a lot of controversy and critcism. Many people believed that the North Koreans were just using Dennis for their own goals, and that Dennis was naive and a little gullible.
At first most of the trip was going to be sponsored by an Irish gambling company, Paddy Power. But they withdrew as the negative media coverage increased. After they backed out, potcoin stepped in!
At the time, the price of Potcoin shot up in value when Dennis shared the news on his twitter, dressed in a Potcoin baseball cap and t-shirt.
Launched in 2014, Potcoin is a cryptocurrency created to facilitate transactions within the legal cannabis industry. It wants to give marijuana dispensaries and farmers an alternative to banks.
Shawn Perez, potcoin's spokesman, said that the trip would be a “peace mission,” but almost everyone thought it was nothing more than a publicity stunt.
And this brings us to 2018 and the end of this story, to the moment where Potcoin again sponsors Dennis, when he traveled to the political summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore. Dennis offered his support to his "friends Trump and Kim", but wasn't acutally invited!
But at least we got this crazy interview out of it!
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this amazing story!
