Odell Beckham Jr.'s July 2025 Bitcoin "Victory Lap" Didn't Age Well…

Back in November 2021, Odell Beckham Jr. signed a one-year, $750,000 contract with the Los Angeles Rams. At the time, he announced he was "taking his salary in Bitcoin." Technically, Odell was paid in U.S. dollars via direct deposit—as every NFL player is—and he then used a third-party app to convert those dollars into Bitcoin.

At the time of his conversion, Bitcoin was trading at $64,293. That meant $750,000 would have bought him roughly 11.66 BTC.

By mid-2022, the move looked like a disaster. Bitcoin had dropped as low as $17,000. But by July 2025, the crypto markets had rebounded in dramatic fashion. On July 14, 2025, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $120,214. Odell tweeted a screenshot of the price with a smirking caption:

Sooooo bitcoin is at an ALL TIME high today…safe to say we still happy with our decision 😏✌️✌️🚀

Lets see what crypto week talkin about 👀 pic.twitter.com/5I0uNV5zao

— Odell Beckham Jr (@obj) July 14, 2025

At that moment, his 11.66 Bitcoin was worth approximately $1.4 million. After subtracting the $377,000 in state and federal taxes he owed on the original $750,000 salary, he was up more than $1 million on paper. It looked like one of the smartest financial plays of his career. Fast forward about six months…

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Crypto Crash

As I type this article (February 5, 2026, at 11:30 am PST), Bitcoin is trading at $65,717.50. That's down more than 45% from its July peak. Just in the past few days alone, it's dropped more than 10%, falling below $66,000 for the first time since late 2024. And this isn't just a blip—it's part of a broader, brutal downturn across the entire crypto sector.

What's driving the collapse? According to market analysts, investors have been fleeing riskier assets like crypto and tech stocks, rotating instead into traditional safe-haven assets like gold and government bonds. Gold is up over 14% year-to-date, and has surged nearly 70% since Bitcoin's October 2024 peak. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has lost almost half its value in just four months.

Even worse: Bitcoin has now fallen below the average entry price for many U.S. Bitcoin ETF investors, and corporate whales like Strategy—who accumulated over 713,000 BTC at an average price of $76,000—are now sitting deep underwater. Shares of crypto-adjacent companies like Coinbase, Circle, and Robinhood have plummeted alongside Bitcoin itself.

Prominent investor Michael Burry, best known for shorting the housing market before the 2008 crash, didn't hold back. In a recent Substack post, he described the current plunge as a "sickening scenario" and warned that Bitcoin may be entering a "death spiral."

And then there's the regulatory backdrop. While the White House has publicly supported crypto innovation, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed last week that the government has no authority—or intent—to bail out the industry. With interest rates staying high and Congress still slow-walking crypto legislation, investors are left without much of a safety net.

All of that makes Odell Beckham Jr.'s once-glowing $1.4 million crypto balance look a whole lot shakier.

Updated Math: From $1.4 Million to a Modest Gain

At today's price of $65,717.50, Beckham's 11.66 Bitcoin is worth $766,363. That's still above his original $750,000 conversion, but not by much—and certainly not after taxes.

As a reminder, when he received that $750,000 from the Rams in 2021, Beckham was still liable for full federal and California state taxes on the income. That tax bill totaled approximately $377,000, regardless of what happened to Bitcoin afterward.

So, even though his BTC holdings are still in the green on paper, after subtracting the taxes he already paid, Odell's post-tax gain stands at just $389,363. That's a sharp comedown from the $1.025 million gain he was sitting on last July.

The bottom line? He's not underwater, but he's now only up around $12,000 from where he started four years ago.