On December 29, the world said goodbye to one of the greatest athletes in history. Edson Arantes do Nascimento, also known as Pelém, died in Brazil due to multiple organ failures after a long battle with colon cancer.
Pelé is regarded as the greatest of all time in the football community. With the honorary title of “King of Football”, the Brazilian athlete is the only player to have won three World Cup titles. And he also holds the record for most goals, scoring 1282 throughout his career.
The passing of the legend caused the entire world to mourn. Pelé’s family received messages from some of the world’s most important people, including U.S. President Joe Biden, and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
The King’s funeral is taking place today, January 2nd, in the stadium in which he played for his entire career, Santos’ “Vila Belmiro”.
Pelé’s Cryptocurrency Legacy
Like many other football legends, Pelé also got into the cryptocurrency world for a few projects.
In May of 2021, the digital artist “Kingsletter” in partnership with Visual Lab launched a collection honoring Pelé’s greatest moments throughout his career. At the time, Visual Lab announced that it intended on “immortalize” Pelé’s feats on the blockchain.
Pelé Turned Eternalized His Jersey As An NFT
Today in football, there is a common tradition to have the best and most noteworthy forward player in the squad wearing the number 10 on the team’s shirt. For example, Messi wears it for Argentina, Neymar wears it in Brazil and Zidane used to wear the number 10 on both Real Madrid and France’s national squad.
This tradition, however, was created by how influential Pelé’s number became to the football world.
The Brazilian team Santos’ number 10 t-shirt is to this date, one of the most famous and historically important jerseys in the sport’s history. It was with this shirt that the legendary plyer scored 87% of his goals and won most of his titles.
In a partnership with Kraken Holding Inc, Pelé turned the Santos shirt worn to score his 1000th goal into a non-fungible token in April of 2021.
Now with the passing of the legend, these incredible moments in history will remain eternal in the blockchain.
The heirs of Pelé, who now inherited his image rights, will also be able to introduce new NFTs and tokens in the future, if they so wish.
