World Cup Fan Tokens, NFTs See Heavy Volume After Argentine Victory

Argentina became the soccer world champion after beating France in the 2022 FIFA World Cup final in Qatar on Sunday.

Immediately after the win, the Argentine Football Association (ARG) fan token spiked momentarily from $4.01 to a high of $5.02 within the hour before a steady almost hourly decline to its current price of under $3.00 in the past 24 hours. 

ARG’s 24-hour trading volume peaked at $40 million, as per token tracking site FanMarketCap. 

Runner-up France does not have a country fan token, tIn addition to post-World Cup fan token activity, Argentina-related NFTs have also seen a pump since the win.and now seven-time Golden Ball award recipient Lionel Messi has played for PSG since 2021 on a two-year contract. 

And Messi’s PSG teammate, Kylian Mbappe, forward for the French national team, also won the Golden Boot award after scoring a hat trick for France in the final match. 

PSG’s president Nasser Al-Khelaifi is the chairman of the investment group that owns the soccer club — Qatar Sports Investments, a subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

During the World Cup, the ARG token also saw major fluctuations when Argentina had its only loss against Saudi Arabia.

What are these Fan Tokens?

The ARG and PSG fan tokes are issued via Chiliz’s Socios platform, and reside on Chiliz’s permissioned sidechain, forked from Ethereum, per the Chiliz FAQ.

While fan tokens may serve a more speculative purpose, those traded through the Socios platform offer holders access to merchandise and ticket promotions, as well as the chance to vote on club changes.

The tokens are not available and do not trade on public Ethereum.

Messi NFTs

In addition to post-World Cup fan token activity, Argentina-related NFTs have also seen a pump since the win. 

In particular, Messi’s second official NFT collection with NFT marketplace Ethernity, the Messi Time Machine Collection, has seen major resale volume in the past 24 hours. According to Ethernity, traffic to its marketplace tripled yesterday.

The ‘Lionel Messi: The King Piece’ NFT reached nearly 40 ETH in trading volume over the past seven days, according to OpenSea. This marks a 4,292% increase since the week prior.

Marketplace users seemed to scoop up these NFTs the night before the game which caused a volume spike of over 28 ETH in less than 24 hours. A 13% increase in trading volume can be seen in the last 24 hours since the win.

Ethernity even hosted a fantasy sports-style bracket challenge for community members with for the most accurate sets of predictions. The top three participants will win from a prize pool of 1000 ERN, Ethernity’s native token, while others will be able to claim a physical sports jersey.

Also trending on OpenSea is a fan-developed CryptoPunks-inspired collection called The Argentinians Official. It logged 127 ETH in trading volume activity on the night before the World Cup final after days of zero activity. It has since declined by 46%.

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