When top welterweight fighter steps into the cage next month for The World Series of Fighting, he will be fighting for a new type of funds in Digital Currency.

NBC’s Brian Kelly breaks it down:

… So, I’m sponsoring Jon Fitch, the No.2 Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) World Ranked Welterweight, in his upcoming fight on July 5 on NBC. Like many of us, Jon has recently caught the digital currency bug and with this sponsorship, he will become the first professional athlete to be paid in a digital currency.

This sponsorship is just the beginning of the journey toward acceptance as a medium of exchange. I have also partnered with Moolah so that any retailer in the world can accept Nautiluscoin and convert those coins into seven major fiat currencies. In the next few weeks, retailers will be able to accept Nautiluscoin for both online and offline transactions. As well, members of the Nautiluscoin community are launching several new ventures that will use Nautiluscoin exclusively.

As digital currencies mature, they have the potential to become a new investment asset class. Some will be used as a broad medium of exchange, while others will solve specific economic problems. This emerging asset class is in training daily and fighting to become a new way to diversify an investment portfolio.

Brian Kelly is founder and managing member of Brian Kelly Capital LLC, a global macro investment firm catering to high net worth individuals, family offices and institutions. He is also the creator of the BKCM Indexes, benchmarks for multi-asset money managers. Kelly, a CNBC contributor, often appears on “Fast Money.”