Another step for Bitcoin entering mainstream commerce and consciousness. The Sacramento Kings basketball team has started to let fans pay for tickets and merchandise using the cryptocurrency — becoming the first professional sports team to hop on the Bitcoin bandwagon. People who visit the Kings’ physical retail store in Sacramento can already go in and pay for goods in Bitcoin in person; online sales are due to start March 1. To start accepting Bitcoin, the Kings have teamed up with BitPay, the startup that has aspirations to become the “PayPal for Bitcoin” by providing a processing platform for it and other virtual currencies. Backed by an impressive list of investors including the Founders Fund (the VC run, coincidentally, by several veterans of the so-called PayPal Mafia), Li Ka-shing from Horizons Ventures/Hutchison Whampoa and Shakil Khan, BitPay has been making decent inroads with mainstream brands that want to tap into some of the buzz around Bitcoin.