Disclaimer: a handful of the blocmates team, not including the author of this article, are holding one or more of the tokens mentioned.
If there were ever a gambling match made in heaven, then the crossover between crypto and sports would be exactly that.
Luckily for all of us professional couch athletes out there, the gambling gods never fail to provide!
It is estimated that there are around 4.6 billion gamblers worldwide and that 56% of the world's population have slung bets of some kind in the past 12 months.
We are surely the most degenerate space apes in our universe, and we are only getting worse (or better).
Of the ridiculous amounts of cash that flow across this planet of punters, about $85 billion is spent on sports betting, and the sector is expected to grow to around $182 billion by 2030.
That’s a lot of gambling transactions to be hitting your bank statement every month, just waiting for your wife to discover and most likely dump your ass to move in with her boyfriend.
However, as we all know, crypto is here to solve the world's most important problems. And clearly, decentralized gambling on dyslexically spelled sports memecoins is exactly the solution we have all been craving.
It just so happens that the summer of 2024 is stacked with major sporting events, giving the global community of gamblers plentiful opportunities to hit the jackpot, tell their boss where to stick it, and leave their shitty day jobs for good.
Read on to reduce your future FOMO.
Before we dive in, I will say that nothing in this article is financial advice or shilling of any kind.
If you are unaware of the risks involved with low-cap, illiquid, total ponzi shitcoins then you should educate yourself first and never ape more than you can afford to lose. It really is the Wild West out here.
EURO 2024
First up on the sporting agenda, we have the UEFA EURO football tournament kicking off on the 14th of June in Munich, Germany.
Football fans across the globe will be salivating at the chance to get down to their local watering hole, sink a few pints, and watch their country's finest athletes chase a ball around a big green rectangle for the nation's glory and total bragging rights.
The EURO 2024 tournament lasts for one month, and the final match will be played on July 14th in Berlin. That gives hooligans a 30-day window to cash in on their “expert” opinions before the fun is over and the hangovers roll on in.
Expect some serious ape-like behavior to unfold and anything that allows a chance to bet on the outcomes to get some solid attention.
With all this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the shitters that have the potential to run with this football narrative looming at large.
$ECI
Euro Cup Inu is the largest of the EURO 2024-themed coins and lives on the Ethereum blockchain. The stated goal is to unite crypto chads and football fans worldwide, which seems like a pretty noble task!
These guys are more than just a memecoin. They intend to build some kind of GambleFi betting dApp.
This GambleFi dApp will allow for the use of your $ECI tokens to bet on your favorite teams during the tournament, which is a pretty cool feature in itself and adds an extra element of degeneracy that I’m sure many will appreciate.
You can find all the info you’ll need, including tokenomics, social accounts, contract address, and news on when the betting dApp goes live, on their website here.
$YURO
Yuro 2024 is the current market cap leader (at the time of writing) in the EURO-themed shitcoin arena on Solana and certainly encapsulates the entire tournament in one.
If you aren’t a big football fan and don't really give a shit who wins then this could be the play for you.
The guys behind YURO have been hard at work pumping out memes on Twitter and have even built a website, which is kind of admirable considering the narrative will likely only last for a month.
There are YURO NFTs, potential airdrops, and some interesting event-based burn mechanisms baked into the tokenomics making $YURO deflationary.
Not that deflationary tokenomics matters much for a coin with absolutely zero reason to hold longer than the tournament itself. Keep that in mind!
Battle of the nations
There are 24 countries in total that will be competing at the EURO 2024 Cup and I wouldn’t be surprised to see tokens from all of these nations pop up at some stage. Take your pick at whoever you think has the best shot at taking out the tournament, and you will likely be rewarded if correct.
At the time of writing, Germany ($GER), England ($ENG), and France ($FRA) seem to be the favorites in the world of crypto football but keep an eye out for other nations to make their appearances. This will be especially important if these three major nations don’t make it to the later stages of the contest.
One positive about taking a punt on these country coins is that they have slightly more staying power than some of the EURO cup-only shitters and, therefore will cross over into the other big sporting events coming up this summer.
For this reason, they may potentially reach higher valuations or at least have enough time to make this a possibility. Of course, this is purely speculation at its finest.
Player tokens
Adding an extra layer of degeneracy to the nation coins are the player-themed coins.
If you’re a football nutter and think you know who will be the top goal scorer or player of the tournament then these could be your cup of tea.
First up, we have JOODonSOL ($JOOD). Launched via Pumpdotfun, like many of these tokens, $JOOD is looking like a future Ballon d’Or.
A cool feature of this one is that for every $100k in market cap achieved, the team at $JOOD will donate $50 to Prostate Cancer UK.
Sticking with the British ballers, we have CANEonSOL ($CANE). The English captain will surely be one to keep an eye on, and I know there are a few lads here at blocmates who fancy England as champs.
They’ve been pretty damn accurate with predictions so far this cycle, so I’d think twice before doubting them!
$CANE is also in it for a good cause and has been donating to the Harry Kane Foundation for Children's Mental Health awareness. Although I’m more worried about the holders than the kids.
Moving away from En-ger-land and onto the French, we have the Kylian Mbappe coin ($MBAPPE). If you like the Frenchies and want to add an extra element of degen to your bets, then this one is right down your alley.
Good chance he’s going to net a fair few goals as well!
Many other player-themed tokens might tickle your fancy and I would expect to see more pop up over the coming month. Some that currently exist are:
Now I will say that all these coins are seriously low-cap shitcoins, so tread with caution.
This is merely an awareness piece to let you know about the potential for a short-term football catalyst, so treat it as such.
If you met me in real life, you wouldn’t even take directions from me, let alone investment advice.
The Olympic Games
Next, we have the Olympic games, one of the oldest sporting spectacles known to mankind. They begin on July 24th in Paris, France. This one runs a little shorter than the EURO cup, with the closing ceremony taking place on August 11th.
There is a pretty good chance that cash will be thrown down like a boxer behind on points, trades will swing like a Russian gymnast, bets will be slung like an angry shot-putter, and any Olympic-related crypto coins could potentially run faster than any man can cover a 100-meter distance (most likely with some hurdles along the way).
First up, it is worth noting that the country-related tokens mentioned above will all most likely play a part in the Olympic narrative. I certainly don’t see why not, but I obviously have no idea to what extent.
I also have no real clue to what extent this narrative will catch the attention of crypto folk, most of whom have never seen sunlight, let alone played any sports.
However, where attention goes, money flows. This is the crypto way, and I can definitely imagine the Olympic narrative gaining some form of traction.
Currently, there is only one note-worthy coin: Olumpec Terch ($OLUMPC). This one is brought to us by self-proclaimed Stoics and stays lit. What more do you want for fundamentals?
Check out their website here.
I would certainly expect more Olympic-related coins to pop up as the event gets closer, most likely in the form of countries, different events, and, of course, athletes themselves.
Watch this space.
Final thoughts
Once again we have more narratives for memecoins to make an attempt at capturing some value from.
It seems that any future event, viral happening, political power struggle, and basically anything worth looking at will, from now on, be packaged into a memecoin and fed to the degenerates to blindly throw money at like a pack of wild creatures.
These two major sporting events are really some of the biggest this year, with the Olympics only taking place every four years.
For this reason, they will certainly dominate television sets in homes, pubs, and bars all over the world.
The beauty in these plays is you would have to be a complete space cadet to get stuck holding the bag. They have a set time frame to play them and then move on to the next thing and the next thing there will always be.
It has become clear that memecoins will be front and center for as long as prices are bullish, and the only thing that could stop this now would be some kind of divine intervention.
At times, it gets tiresome, but we shall continue on for the glory and future of finance. Stay strong out there, anon!
