2006 WSOP Main Event champion Jamie Gold has welcomed the World Series of Poker’s partnership with Solana. At WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas next month, players will be able to pay their buy-ins with cryptocurrency via Solana Pay, skipping long lines and some of the usual fees. For Gold, who claimed the WSOP’s top title and $12 million twenty years ago, the new system is a personal story about time, convenience, and freedom from cash.
Details
WSOP Paradise will offer participants another way to take their seats in tournaments. Instead of withdrawing a large sum of cash in advance, finding the cashier, and waiting hours to register, players will be able to use Solana Pay. Payments through the crypto service are expected to reduce the number of steps before a tournament starts and eliminate the need for participants to carry cash.
Gold speaks about this as more than an outside observer. In 2006, he won the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas, becoming one of the leading figures of the poker boom. The winner took home $12 million, and Gold's friends and family watched him at the final table. The champion recalled being so confident of his victory that he invited 30 of his closest friends to watch the tournament.
His father, however, was not there with him. Health problems kept him from traveling to Las Vegas. Gold later connected that story to a new perspective on time. As he put it, as people get older, they begin to understand that time is one of the most valuable resources, and that much of life depends on how they choose to spend it.
“My relationship with the World Series of Poker and my new relationship with Solana have given us the opportunity to help other people with the click of a button,” Gold said in a video interview with Solana. He added that no longer having to carry large sums—or any cash at all—“changes his life.”
For poker players, the problem of long lines is nothing new. Gold says that tournament registration used to take four to six hours. During that time, players could already be resting before the start, studying the tournament structure, or simply preserving their focus. With Solana Pay and the WSOP app, the champion says, queues should become a thing of the past.
“We used to have to stand in line for four to six hours just to buy into a tournament. Now, thanks to the WSOP app, there are no more lines. The less time we waste, the more value remains in our lives,” Gold noted.
The champion's path to poker began long before his breakthrough in Las Vegas. Gold grew up in a gambling family: his grandfather was a gin rummy champion. As a child, Jamie played with friends for candy at summer camp. By the end of camp, he had amassed a whole chest of sweets, though he later gave them back to the other kids. Gold explained that at the time, he was mainly interested in competition and the desire to win.
Later, he decided to trade candy for WSOP chips. His father's illness—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease—influenced that decision. Gold said his father wanted to see his son happy and pursuing his own path. Poker ultimately led him to the series' top title and one of the biggest prizes in Main Event history.
In 2026, Gold continues to work as a poker ambassador and a link between the tournament industry and the crypto service. Earlier in Las Vegas, he hosted a Solana freeroll with crypto influencers. Now, his role is expanding through the partnership with WSOP Paradise.
What’s next
The next major event for the new payment system will be WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas. Series participants will be able to try Solana Pay when purchasing buy-ins. Organizers expect the service to speed up registration and reduce the costs associated with traditional payment methods.
For the WSOP, the partnership opens another path toward digitizing tournaments. Poker series are gradually moving more processes to mobile apps, and buy-in payments are part of that transition. If players embrace the new payment method, the model could be adopted at other stops on the World Series of Poker circuit.
For Gold, this story goes beyond technology. His 2006 victory earned him $12 million and a place among the best-known WSOP champions, but twenty years later, he is talking about more than the size of the prize. He sees time as the true measure of success—the time saved through faster registration, shorter lines, and not having to carry large sums of cash.
“It changes the game,” Gold said of the WSOP-Solana partnership. WSOP Paradise will show how readily poker players take to the new format and whether crypto payments can evolve from a promotional initiative into a permanent tool for participants in the biggest tournament series.
