Bitcoin, Ethereum and the total crypto market are up a bit today, unlike Argentina and Australia’s football fans.

In one of the biggest shocks in FIFA World Cup history, powerhouse soccer nation Argentina, featuring all-time-great Lionel Messi, went down 2-1 to Saudi Arabia in Lusail, Qatar.

Crypto angle? Yep, there’s one. The Argentine Football Association’s crypto fan token ARG plummeted overnight (AEDT) from about US$7.55 down to a low of $4.96, per CoinGecko data. The token is currently down about 20% over the past 24 hours, although it is up 15% on the month.

ARG? It’s an Ethereum-based football fan token which is part of the Socios ecosystem and requires the purchase of the Chiliz (CHZ) token. CHZ can then traded for specific fan tokens, such as ARG, which give the holders the right to vote on fan-based decisions related to the associated team or sporting entity.

Anyway, it appears crypto-using fans of Argentina have either spat the dummy post loss, or, more likely, ARG was being used by speculators as a way to bet on the outcome of the match, no doubt with the anticipation of an Argentine win and a higher token price.

Hmm, time to buy Brazil’s football fan token BRT?

The Socceroos don’t seem to have a Socios token – but if they did, maybe it would’ve surged as Australia took a shock early lead over France with a Craig Goodwin stunner. (Sad update: Australia is now 4-1 down as we type this. Also, it’s Craig Goodwin, not “Graig” Goodwin as I originally typed at 7am.)

As for the CHZ utility/currency token itself, it’s also down and has been sinking in value over the past week in the lead up to the world’s biggest sporting tournament after building strongly earlier in the month. A buy the rumour, sell the news event based on the World Cup? Quite possibly.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$838 billion, up 3.2% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

The total crypto market cap has found about US$20 billion down the back of the sofa since this time yesterday, with Bitcoin kicking off, passing the ball to Ethereum, which neatly offloaded to BNB. A perfect through-ball to XRP followed, cutting out Cardano, and then a one-two with Dogecoin before a cross to Polygon’s MATIC and a powerful header into the top right corner.

The crypto market was looking especially weak this time yesterday, but this little Bitcoin bounce seems to have spurred some action among other fan favourites, such as MATIC, and Dogecoin. Not to mention the likes of Litecoin, Chainlink and Axie Infinity, below.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$6.18 billion to about US$315 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

Curve DAO (CRV), (market cap: US$396 million) +29%

• Litecoin (LTC), (mc: US$4.96 billion) +14%

• Chainlink (LINK), (mc: US$3.15 billion) +13%

• Kava (KAVA), (mc: US$338 million) +6%

Axie Infinity (AXS), (mc: US$767 million) +12%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

Radix (XRD), (market cap: US$371 million) -10%

GMX (GMX), (market cap: US$331 billion) -5%

BinaryX (BNX), (mc: US$398 million) -4%

Evmos (EVMOS), (mc: US$341 million) -4%

Chiliz (CHZ), (mc: US$967 million) -4%

 

Around the blocks

A selection of rumour, randomness and pertinence that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse…