Argentina fan token loses value after shocking defeat in World Cup opener

The Argentina Fan Token (ARG) has witnessed a huge fall in value after the team— peaked as one of the favourites to clinch the 2022 FIFA World Cup— lost to Saudi Arabia in their first group game. 

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It was an unpredicted result and Lionel Messi, arguably the world’s greatest player, watched helplessly as the Arabians came from behind to beat Los Albiceleste 2-1 after he opened the scoring from the penalty spot in the first half. 

Following the defeat, the Argentina Fan Token (ARG) nosedived from about $7.20 at the beginning of the match to $4.96, according to the reports gathered by CoinGecko.

Though there have been glimpses of recovery, as it trades at $5.31 at press time, ARG is still miles behind its peak value of $9.19, which it recorded just five days ago when it was tipped as one of the fan tokens that could see a significant rise during the ongoing global showdown in Qatar.

The Argentina Fan token was an initiative of Chiliz in collaboration with the Argentine Football Association. 

What to know about Argentina Fan Token (ARG) & other teams’ tokens?

The Argentina Fan token is an ERC-20 token, accessible for grasping on the Socios app. It is also available on numerous other crypto exchanges like OKX, Gate.io, etc. Some other teams involved in the world cup have their tokens.

Chiliz expounds that these tokens offer owners voting privileges in fan decisions and accessibility to a more profound and exclusive gathering of fans. Holders also transit from diverse reward phases until they acquire any available VIP slots and privileges. 

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“The more tokens a fan holds, and the more they vote, the higher the clout rating of that fan.”

The other tokens affected by Argentina’s shocking defeat

The Argentina Fan token is just one out of a pool of tokens affected by World Cup favourite Argentina’s loss.  In preparation for the buzz of the world cup, many clubs and national teams formed partnerships with Chiliz and Bitci to create fan tokens, gaining millions of dollars in striking this partnership.

Several national team tokens enjoyed a surge in the days preceding the kick-off of the anticipated global competition. However, the early results from the tournament have not only affected the value of the Argentina Fan token, but they also influenced other teams’ tokens. For instance, Brazil’s team fan token dropped by about 10% to $0.7386 on Tuesday. The same happened with Spain’s team fan token— it fell by 7% to $0.7386. 

There are rumours the activity surrounding fan tokens hints that fans are staking them to bet on matches indirectly.  The potentiality of this occurring gained prominence after Saudi’s win, an Ethereum NFT collection named The Saudis enjoyed a rise in sales. However, it has no proven connectivity with the Saudi team.

After Saudi Arabia won, 52 NFTs sold from the collection on OpenSea for an average of 0.2 ETH each, which is about $280. But that small pump appears to have been short-lived, as the collection’s floor price has already declined from its daily peak of about 0.31 ETH back down to 0.24 ETH on OpenSea. Sales volume has already slowed significantly in the hours following Saudi Arabia’s victory.

While a 1,200% trade volume increase in 24 hours might seem like a lot, it’s put into perspective by the very low number of sales before the peak early Tuesday. There’s only been 21.75 ETH (roughly $24,000 worth) traded for the collection in the past day across marketplaces. And at the time of writing, OpenSea is the NFT marketplace with the most Saudis NFTs listed (180) for sale, according to Gem data.

The truth is that crypto tokens and NFTs christened after real entities or items are usually affected positively or negatively by the significant events that involve these items or entities. Thus, in the coming days, other fan tokens might surge or drop as influenced by the loss or win of the team the token is named after.