This AMA explored how the 2026 World Cup could drive crypto opportunities beyond football, including prediction markets, fan tokens, collectibles, SocialFi and sports-related RWAs. Speakers agreed that the biggest growth may come from products that turn global attention into user participation and community engagement.
Introduction
Cwallet
Cwallet is a full-featured crypto wallet ecosystem that positions itself as more than just a wallet. During the AMA, Tom introduced Cwallet’s latest World Cup prediction market campaign, which includes a 50,000 USDC prize pool. He also mentioned that the team is continuing to build new features, including improvements to swap functionality, with the goal of giving users more options inside the ecosystem.
Gacha Galaxy
Gacha Galaxy is a platform spun out from ME3 Labs. Matthew shared that the project had officially launched its latest platform and is now focused on the collectible space. The team has built a pricing oracle that detects market inefficiencies across seven marketplaces in real time. Gacha Galaxy is also building a prediction platform alongside its collectible products, with the team currently preparing for public sale and TGE.
Chiliz
Chiliz is a sports blockchain and the creator of fan tokens. Siyi explained that Chiliz has deep experience from previous World Cup cycles, where fan tokens generated strong attention and trading volume. For this cycle, Chiliz has announced new national team partners, including Scotland and South Africa, alongside existing partners such as Portugal and Argentina. The team is also introducing token burns based on national team performance during the World Cup.
SHIFT
SHIFT is an RWA token issuer focused on bringing fully backed stocks, bonds, ETFs and leveraged ETFs on-chain as native cryptocurrencies, currently launched on Solana. Michael mentioned that SHIFT does not currently have a World Cup-specific product, but he sees strong potential in future RWAs connected to sports ownership, such as tokenized exposure to sports clubs, motor racing, athletes or other competitive assets.
Every World Cup creates winners beyond the football field. Looking ahead to 2026, which sectors or narratives have the greatest opportunity to benefit from the event and why?
Cwallet
Tom believes the most obvious opportunity is sports-related tokens, but the larger narrative is attention monetization. The World Cup is one of the rare global events that can concentrate billions of viewers at the same time. When attention reaches that level, new digital economies can emerge around prediction markets, consumer crypto apps, creator economies, SocialFi, community incentives, reward systems and on-chain fan engagement.
From Cwallet’s perspective, users are often more interested in participating and competing than simply speculating. That is why Cwallet launched its World Cup prediction league, where users can turn their football knowledge into rankings, engagement and rewards. Tom believes the next wave of growth will come from platforms that convert global attention into measurable participation, rather than relying only on token buying.
Gacha Galaxy
Matthew agreed with the attention and participation angle, but focused on two areas: prediction markets and collectibles. He said prediction markets are evolving quickly and already have real use cases and revenue in Web3. In his view, the World Cup will likely strengthen this trend because users are actively looking for ways to speculate, compete and engage around match outcomes.
On the collectible side, Matthew pointed to the strength of physical and digital collectibles, using examples like Pokémon-style collectible demand. He believes World Cup-themed collectible assets, including hybrid NFT and on-chain collectible models, can perform well during and even after the tournament. For Gacha Galaxy, collectibles are attractive because they combine emotional value, scarcity and tradability.
Chiliz
Siyi also sees prediction markets as a major growth driver, especially because they have already shown mainstream potential during large events such as elections. He believes the World Cup could become another moment where prediction markets attract broader attention and bring more mainstream users into crypto through sports-related participation.
From Chiliz’s perspective, fan tokens remain one of the strongest sports crypto narratives. Siyi explained that World Cup cycles historically bring increased traction and volume to national team fan tokens. Because Chiliz works directly with national teams, the performance of these teams can become closely tied to fan engagement, token activity and even tokenomics, such as performance-based token burns.
SHIFT
Michael agreed that competition is a powerful driver of human behavior, and that this competitive angle is one reason prediction markets like Polymarket have gained attention. Although SHIFT does not currently have a World Cup-specific product, he sees sports-linked RWAs as a future opportunity.
He believes future RWA products could involve ownership exposure to sports clubs, racing assets, athletes or other competitive categories that fans care about deeply. In his view, the sports industry has many assets that are not easily accessible to retail users today, and tokenization could eventually allow fans to gain more direct exposure to them.
If someone wanted to position themselves before the World Cup hype begins, what signals should they pay attention to today?
Cwallet
Tom suggested focusing on three main categories. The first is user growth, especially real activity rather than surface-level metrics. Investors and users should ask whether people are returning daily, whether they are participating repeatedly and whether engagement is growing organically. For World Cup-related products, real recurring participation may be a stronger signal than short-term hype.
The second signal is partnership activity. Collaborations between exchanges, wallets, sports brands, media companies, prediction platforms and major events can reveal where attention is moving. The third signal is consumer product adoption. Tom emphasized that many crypto products attract traders, but fewer attract mainstream users. Products that combine prediction experiences, rewards, community competitions and social engagement may have stronger potential because they lower the barrier for non-crypto users.
Fan tokens were one of the biggest sports-related crypto areas in the last cycle. What lessons can investors learn from that experience, and what might a stronger version of the sports crypto opportunity look like this time?
SHIFT
Michael believes the next stage should move closer to real ownership and actual economic participation. Instead of only holding a fan token, users could eventually own tokenized exposure to a player’s career period, a sports club, an esports team, a racing asset or another competitive asset. This would give fans more direct skin in the game and potentially connect them to real value streams.
He also believes collectibles have already shown what is possible, but sports RWAs could go even further. In his view, there are many categories beyond football, including racing, horses, esports and other fan-driven markets, where tokenized ownership could create new ways for communities to support and participate in the assets they care about.
Cwallet
Tom said the main lesson from fan tokens is that owning a token does not automatically create engagement. Many earlier fan token projects focused too heavily on speculation while offering limited long-term utility. A stronger model today should emphasize participation, competition, rewards, community interaction and ownership of experience.
He believes the future may look less like “buy a fan token and wait” and more like “predict outcomes, earn rankings, unlock rewards, access exclusive experiences and build reputation within communities.” In his view, successful sports crypto products will feel closer to games and social networks than traditional financial products, especially during the World Cup when fans want to participate even if they are not physically attending matches.
Chiliz
Siyi responded that fan tokens have already delivered real benefits to many holders through exclusive rewards, tickets, engagement activities and governance decisions. He noted that while the user base is still small compared with the total global sports fan base, the trend is growing. Many users come from mainstream sports communities and benefit from holding and actively using fan tokens.
For the next stage, Chiliz is exploring how to improve the experience beyond physical rewards, since many current benefits still require travel, hospitality or in-person attendance. Siyi also mentioned digital rewards, stronger links between team performance and tokenomics, and prediction games where users build squads based on national teams rather than individual players. These games could use real-time data from oracles, creating a more gamified and interactive sports crypto experience.
Gacha Galaxy
Matthew added a more cautious view on sports RWAs. He said tokenizing athletes, teams or real estate sounds strong in theory, but many RWA concepts have struggled to become commercially viable because they lack liquid secondary markets. Without a real aftermarket where users can sell their holdings efficiently, adoption becomes difficult.
This is why Gacha Galaxy is focused on collectibles. Matthew believes collectibles work better when there is an active secondary market, because users need liquidity and price discovery. He also observed that World Cup prediction users are becoming more sophisticated than in previous cycles. Instead of simply betting on their favorite team, users are now using hedging strategies and spreading exposure across multiple outcomes to improve their chances of winning.
conclusion
The World Cup could become a major catalyst for sports crypto, but the strongest projects will be those with real users, strong partnerships and practical engagement models. Prediction markets, fan tokens and collectibles may perform well if they offer more than speculation and create fun, rewarding experiences for mainstream fans.
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