Paraguay and Türkiye meet today at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, with both teams staring down elimination after opening-match defeats. It’s a Group D fixture where the loser’s World Cup is essentially over. But for the crypto industry, every single match in this expanded 48-team tournament is a different kind of high-stakes game: a months-long, globally televised advertisement for digital assets.

Crypto’s World Cup starting lineup

On June 9, Kraken was announced as FIFA’s first dedicated crypto exchange supporter. That’s not a jersey patch or a halftime logo. It’s a structural partnership that embeds a major exchange into the operational fabric of the world’s most-watched sporting…