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Let’s imagine FIFA Coin.

A token that represents… something to do with FIFA.

Perhaps it gives members voting rights?

Or perhaps it’s a memecoin like Trump’s recent $TRUMP coin — which hit a $70bn valuation at one point.

If you’re wondering why I’m pontificating, Gianni Infantino was at Trump's inaugural Crypto Summit recently (don't ask me why!) and said the following:

"FIFA is very interested in developing a FIFA coin, to do it from here, from America, to conquer the 5 billion soccer fans in the world."

President Trump responded by saying:

"That coin may be worth more than FIFA in the end, it could be quite the coin, actually."

After the announcement, a cryptocurrency called FIFA COIN surged 142,000% and its market capitalisation reached approximately $3 million. However, FIFA COIN is not affiliated with FIFA. Only adding to the confusion of all this.

For those of you who don’t remember, Trump launched his own memecoin a couple months ago called $TRUMP, which has now unsurprisingly crashed and burned.

In hindsight, this may look like what was the top of this crypto market cycle.

In the meantime, President Trump is ushering in a new age for crypto in the U.S.

Banks are now able to engage in crypto services, with stablecoin legislation going through Congress — and he is open about keeping his promise; making the U.S. the home for cryptoassets.

But, first, let’s explore why is FIFA coin a bad idea.

I’ve seen many well-meaning takes on why this could be revolutionary — but the reasoning doesn’t check out.

(1) I saw this pitched by some as a ‘borderless and transparent financial system’ for FIFA

FIFA don’t need their own token for this, and they certainly don’t need to be an openly traded one.

(2) Many also claimed that this could offer real-time, direct financial support to members.

Again, FIFA do not need their own token to do this and could use existing blockchain standards.

Crypto as payments does not make sense when:

1) Stablecoins are here and mainstream
2) Tokens are volatile and big payments would see huge FX slippage
3) You are in a country where your currency is not volatile or particularly inflationary

This would also presume that every single payment is made using this infrastructure, which is of course not going to be the case.

(3) It will conquer the 5bn soccer fans around the world

I mean, I don’t get how a FIFA coin would drive value back to the fans in the current set up of the federation.

It’s also worthwhile noting that fans don’t follow FIFA, they follow their clubs/nations respectively. There isn’t necessarily a direct relationship with the fan that FIFA may think it has.

As Craig Barnwell put it on one of my LinkedIn posts:

There are a bunch of other reasons why this is likely a bad idea but here’s a summary of my thoughts:

So let’s take a look at what FIFA could do utilising blockchain, a technology that is having a profound impact on many industries — and will continue to do so.

We’re now finally moving into an era where the speculative side of crypto is seeing real signs of fatigue — in part thanks to the ultimate culmination of the weird wacky wild west; the President of the United States launching a memecoin.

In his latest newsletter, Simon Taylor called this the bifurcation between crypto and onchain markets.

If we take this approach that this technology is going to be used to disrupt business models, increase efficiency, transparency and more, all whilst regulations are coming into place — rather than focus on price action — then let’s explore what that model could look like for FIFA.

I’ve created a graphic that showcases how FIFA could use blockchain.

(1) Governance layer

FIFA is run much like most governments. Each participating nation has a vote at a yearly congress, and there is a FIFA Executive Committee chaired by the president. The presidency is on a 4-year term, and presidents can be re-elected for up to 3 terms in total.

Now the governance layer having some form of tamper and fraud-proof onchain voting, perhaps governed by a non-tradeable FIFA token ($FIFA?) could be interesting.

More transparent, efficient and gives members and fans peace of mind that voting is legitimate.

(2) Infrastructure Layer

FIFA could create their own blockchain (we’ve seen brands like Sony do this with Soneium) or use existing infrastructure.

If there’s mode modularity required then creating a layer 2 chain on existing infrastructure, or a side chain / owned chain on other infrastructure would make sense.

(3) Settlement Layer

This is where I think there’s big potential for crypto within football especially.

B2B payments are hard. But put into the equation; Players, Agents, FIFPRO (Player’s Association), Clubs, National Teams and Public Good Funding — it’s a miracle that anything gets done in football.

Stablecoins now allow for near instant, low fee, global payments. They can also be transparent and made programmable.

For example, every time a player is bought or sold and then registered to a new club, they have to be registered in FIFA’s Transfer Matching System (TMS). Right now this is a multi-step process:

There is an onchain version of this where the payment executed via smart contract automates the registration upon settlement of funds.

We’re talking about money acting like software now and that is only possible because of blockchain.

(4) Onchain Credentials

This is a big one.

I once spoke to a sporting director of a top tier French team who told me that he is sometimes sent video clips of players on WhatsApp, by agents of players looking to move from anywhere in the world, to the club he worked for.

The issue was that sometimes:

The solution for this is a form of onchain credentials that can create transparency and trust for all parties involved in transactions like this.

Most of the issues above go away if you can have provable identity and credentials — that both parties can see.

To conclude; the case for blockchain here is obvious

The bits behind the scenes in football are arduous, painful, opaque and time consuming.

If only there was some form of tech that could create more transparency, speed and trust across thousands of parties.

I don’t profess that everything I’ve written would work in practice, but this was me writing this off the top of my head in a few hours.

A coherent strategy led by experts in football administration, tech, finance and ID could rustle up something much better in a few months than simply; FIFA Coin.

When I spoke to many people stateside about Trump’s promises and enthusiasm toward the crypto industry there was a sense of relief, joy at finally getting regulation that lets them know where they stand legally and generally speaking; an energy to ‘do stuff’ now that there is more clarity and government backing.

There were a couple of people I spoke to, however, that took the other side.

They were worried that the move fast and break things approach could do more harm than good in the short term.

What is for sure, however, is that many brands and businesses are still viewing this technology through the lens of making a quick buck. The world where that is true is shrinking.

Especially for someone like FIFA.

FIFA for example have already had deals in place with blockchains Algorand and Polygon, issued FIFA NFTs on both chains, and have also licensed NFT gaming to NFL Rivals creators Mythical Games to create FIFA Rivals.

The routes for FIFA to commercialise this technology through licensing is no longer there, realistically.

And so if they are to create something that generates value, I think they do so in removing waste, making their systems more programmable, and removing the inefficiencies in their entire organisation.

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