Three minutes. That’s all it took for US defender Auston Trusty to find the net against Turkey in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, scoring his first goal for the national team on the sport’s biggest stage. Coach Mauricio Pochettino ran to embrace Trusty on the sidelines, planting a kiss on the defender’s head in a moment of pure sideline euphoria.
But while the soccer world was busy dissecting Trusty’s left-footed finish, the crypto industry was quietly running its own parallel tournament. The 2026 World Cup has become the most crypto-sponsored edition of the event in history, with Kraken serving as the official crypto exchange supporter of the tournament.
The crypto World Cup playbook
Kraken’s role as the official crypto exchange supporter represents a significant milestone for the industry’s mainstreaming ambitions. It’s the kind of sponsorship deal that would have been unthinkable during the 2022 tournament in Qatar, when the crypto market was still nursing wounds from the FTX collapse and a brutal bear market.
Chiliz (CHZ), the token powering the Socios.com fan engagement platform, has historically seen trading volume spikes tied to major international soccer tournaments. The pattern is fairly predictable: big match, exciting result, fans rush to buy tokens associated with winning teams.
