The Crypto Golf Club
I’m in the Scottish town of Buckie, a place that shares its name with an iconic Scottish beverage. The drink, formally known as ‘Buckfast’, is known for its very affordable price and punchy alcohol content. Buckie the place and ‘Buckie’ the drink aren’t necessarily connected, but its clear as I roll into the gloomy, grey walled streets, that they’d both be more palatable if you were already drunk. I'm here to explore one of the world's most technologically advanced golf clubs. A club where memberships exist on the blockchain and you can pay your subs in Ethereum. I can’t help but think I’ve taken a wrong turn.
Spey Bay is just a short 15 minute drive toward the Moray Coast. A small dark wood cabin with an eagle logo emblazoned on the side draws me to a halt. Bert, the General Manager and his furry accomplice Archie, greet me at the door.
Bert agrees to sit down with me to help me understand a little more about this pioneering golf club.
I understand the course has existed here since 1907, but the club was acquired recently by an online crypto community, how did that come about?
Mike Dudas, an early adopter of Bitcoin, put out a tweet. And the tweet was along the lines of, ‘we should buy a golf course, who would like to come on board?’ The next day they put up a GoFundMe type of page, and 2 weeks later they had raised 12 million dollars.
That was in January 2022. And while all that's going on, Spey Bay had fallen into a bit of disrepair. Money was short and the place was being kept alive by a local quarryman.
They looked at around 100 golf courses worldwide, with the goal of acquiring them, and this was the first one outside of the USA. They put the question to their community and the response was clear. An offer was placed for Spey Bay in April and they got the keys last June.
They didn’t hang around. From what I hear, when it’s finished, this isn’t going to be a traditional championship links?
The idea is to build a reversible golf course. We took out six and a half acres of gorse last winter and put new tees in. So we can play seven holes reversible. But it also unlocks five new holes going forward. The overall master plan would be to have 22 greens in total and have two rings of the golf course.
Sounds fun, how can I become a member?
Links DAO is the owning company and they have thousands of members who have access to over 400 golf courses worldwide. Spey Bay is an integral part of that because we're the only golf course they actually own.
If you want to just join Spey Bay you can. You'd pay £550 a year, and that would give you access to about 900 golf courses across Europe. We're offering something a little bit different from the norm.
That’s an incredible deal, but where does bitcoin come into all of this?
The first memberships were sold as transferable NFTs. Please don’t ask me any follow ups on that. Having the membership exist as an NFT means members can easily sell it on, should they decide. But it also means people can cast votes about the club, using their unique digital ‘membership card’.
On top of that, you can pay your bills with ethereum, which has added a fun bit of admin. But other than that, we’re a normal club with those additional perks. That's what this is built on, accessibility and community. We have our own gin that's being made locally. We have our own lager made in Aberdeen.
This winter, we're targeting schools to try and get a bigger membership for juniors. And we charge £15 a year if you're under 18. Which is crazy. It's like a round of drinks.
I’m about to head out on the course, what would be a good score?
It’s firm out there, even with the rain we’ve had. We're so quick draining because we sit on a shale bank. We literally are watering every day, even through this summer when it's been wet. The course is constant risk-reward, almost half of them will tempt you into a hero shot. I think you should aim to break par.
I hear that the dolphins are out this morning as well?
The Dolphin Sanctuary is about 500 yards away. They normally feed just off the 16th green. A while back, one of the boys was over from the States and he was following the dolphins with the drone. We got so close that we were getting splashes on the camera.
***
I don’t spot any dorsal fins as I approach the back nine, but I am taken aback by the golf course. The shale bank foundation makes the undulations appear like a succession of static waves. A classic out and back layout sees fairways flow down the half pipes between the heather laden breakers. Par 3s play perpendicular to the coastline, forcing sudden reassessments of wind strength. Several tees on the back nine lift you above the parapet of firm linksland, giving views along a misty Moray coast.
Spey Bay only appeared on my radar when I entered the world of the golf adventurer, but I’m not sure why. It has all the architectural prowess of its big Highland brothers, with the charm and warmth of a small local club, and a far more palatable price tag.
