Mbappé’s World Cup moment sparks fresh wave of unauthorized meme token speculation

Kylian Mbappé scored the only goal in France’s 1-0 World Cup Round of 16 victory over Paraguay on July 4, then found himself at the center of a post-match dust-up with Paraguayan goalkeeper Orlando Gill. But while the sports world dissected a snubbed handshake in Philadelphia, a different kind of chaos was unfolding on-chain: unauthorized meme tokens bearing Mbappé’s name were seeing renewed trading activity.

What actually happened on the pitch

France advanced past Paraguay at Lincoln Financial Field thanks to Mbappé’s composed penalty conversion in the 70th minute. The drama came after the final whistle. Mbappé was celebrating with the crowd when Gill approached for a handshake. Mbappé stepped in front of the goalkeeper without acknowledging him, and Gill responded by throwing the ball at the French forward. Gill later admitted publicly that he “lost his temper” during the incident.

The unauthorized $MBAPPE token ecosystem

Mbappé’s only confirmed blockchain partnership is with Sorare, the Ethereum-based fantasy NFT platform where he became a player-investor in June 2022. That’s it. No official token. No endorsed memecoin.

Yet multiple Solana-based tokens trading under the $MBAPPE ticker exist in the wild. Their market caps range from a few thousand dollars to, at one point in 2024, a staggering $464 million for the largest variant. That peak was followed by considerable declines.

What crypto investors should actually watch

Tokens named after athletes with no official endorsement carry near-zero intrinsic value. Sorare represents a model where athlete partnerships create actual utility through fantasy sports mechanics tied to real match performance data — a fundamentally different proposition than buying a memecoin because someone scored a penalty on a Saturday.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.