Cristiano Ronaldo starts for Portugal at 41, but his crypto legacy remains complicated

Cristiano Ronaldo, at 41 years old, has taken the pitch for Portugal against Colombia in their Group K match at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The game is being played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on June 27, 2026.

This is Ronaldo’s sixth consecutive World Cup appearance.

The on-field case for immortality

Portugal entered this match having already secured their progression from Group K. A 1-1 draw with DR Congo was followed by a dominant 5-0 demolition of Uzbekistan, a game where Ronaldo scored twice.

Those two goals made him the first player ever to score in six different World Cups.

As of May 2026, Ronaldo holds the all-time record for Portugal with 143 goals across 226 international caps.

The crypto shadow that won’t go away

Back in 2022, Ronaldo partnered with Binance to promote a series of NFT collections. In 2023, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Ronaldo stemming from those Binance NFT promotions. The lawsuit sought damages of at least $1 billion. The core argument was that Ronaldo’s endorsement had effectively driven retail investors toward unregistered securities, causing financial harm when values collapsed.

What this means for crypto investors

Despite Ronaldo’s continued global visibility, there are no blockchain projects or crypto partnerships tied to this World Cup match against Colombia. No fan token activations. No NFT drops timed to his sixth World Cup appearance.

During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the intersection of football and crypto was everywhere. Fan tokens from platforms like Socios were heavily marketed. Binance was running Ronaldo’s NFT campaigns. Crypto.com had its name plastered across stadiums.

If courts ultimately rule that celebrity-promoted NFTs constituted unregistered securities, every athlete, musician, and influencer who ran similar campaigns during the bull market could face legal exposure, and every platform that facilitated those sales would need to reconsider its compliance posture.

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