Paraguay sits dead last in Group D after a brutal 1-4 loss to co-host United States on June 13. Coach Gustavo Alfaro has rallied behind his squad, insisting one result doesn’t define their tournament. But the math is unforgiving: lose to Turkey on June 19, and Paraguay’s first World Cup appearance in 16 years ends in the group stage.
That’s the sports story. The crypto story is arguably just as interesting.
The World Cup’s blockchain backbone
FIFA chose Avalanche as the blockchain infrastructure powering ticketing and anti-scalping measures for the 2026 tournament. If you’ve ever tried to buy World Cup tickets and ended up on a reseller site paying triple face value, this is the fix. Blockchain-verified tickets make counterfeiting and unauthorized resale significantly harder to pull off.
Kraken is serving as the official crypto exchange partner for the entire tournament. That means crypto branding plastered across broadcasts reaching billions of viewers globally.
