Buy Chiliz

Chiliz is a blockchain built for sport, and CHZ is its token. The thing most people actually encounter is Socios.com, the app where football clubs and other sporting organizations sell branded fan tokens, and CHZ is the currency those tokens are bought with as well as the gas and staking asset of the chain underneath.

That makes CHZ an unusual asset to assess. It is not a bet on a club. It is a bet on the business of selling club-branded tokens to supporters, which is one of the most heavily criticized products in cryptocurrency, and on a layer one blockchain that has been repositioning itself around that business. Our guide to altcoins explains where tokens like CHZ sit relative to Bitcoin, and our guide to staking covers the mechanism that secures the Chiliz chain.

What does Chiliz actually do?

The core product is the fan token. A club, federation, league or athlete signs a commercial deal with Socios, a branded token is issued, and supporters buy it, historically using CHZ. Holding a fan token can give you a vote in polls the club chooses to run, entry into competitions, access to rewards, merchandise, digital collectibles and sometimes tickets or experiences.

What matters is the boundary of that. The club decides what goes to a vote, and the questions have generally been peripheral: a captain's armband design, a song played at the stadium, the name of a training pitch, the choice of player for a social media takeover. Fan tokens do not give you equity in a club, a share of its revenue, a dividend, a claim on its assets, a vote at a shareholders' meeting or any influence over transfers, managers or finances.

That gap between what the marketing implies and what the token does has been the central criticism of the model, and it has come from regulators as well as supporters. The UK Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints against Arsenal over its fan token promotions, finding the ads misleading, socially irresponsible and lacking adequate risk warnings, and the ruling was reissued on revised grounds in August 2022 with the outcome unchanged. The Football Supporters' Association has argued that fan token deals either monetize trivial matters that clubs could handle without a blockchain, or put a financial barrier in front of engagement that should be free, and that the buyers have often been crypto traders rather than supporters.

Chiliz has worked with a long list of organizations, including Paris Saint-Germain, FC Barcelona, Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid, Manchester City and a number of national football associations. Partner lists change, and an announcement from several years ago is not proof that a deal is still live.

Where did Chiliz come from?

Chiliz was founded in 2018 by Alexandre Dreyfus, whose earlier business was the Malta-based sports and entertainment group Mediarex. CHZ was issued that year as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, with an initial supply of 8,888,888,888 tokens, and roughly a third of that supply sold through private placements that concluded in June 2018.

The corporate structure is Maltese. The token issuer is The Chiliz Group Limited, a Malta company that was previously called HX Entertainment Limited and took its current name in October 2025. A separate group company, Socios Europe Services Limited, was authorized as a crypto-asset service provider by the Malta Financial Services Authority in September 2025 under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regime, and a CHZ white paper was published under that framework at the same time.

Alexandre Dreyfus remains the public face of both Chiliz and Socios.

What is CHZ, technically?

It is the native asset of Chiliz Chain. The public Chiliz Chain mainnet launched in May 2023. It is an EVM-compatible layer one derived from BNB Smart Chain's codebase, and CHZ pays transaction fees and secures the network. It also still exists on Ethereum. The migration to Chiliz Chain did not move the whole supply, because the issuer did not control all of the original ERC-20 tokens. CHZ therefore exists in more than one place, and the representations are not interchangeable at the address level. It is the currency of the fan token economy. Fan tokens have historically been bought with CHZ, which is the main structural link between the token and the business. It carries no rights over Chiliz the company. Holding CHZ does not give you equity in The Chiliz Group, a share of Socios revenue, a dividend or a claim on any asset. Governance is validator governance, not token holder governance. Chiliz Chain runs on proof of staked authority. Network proposals are voted on by active validators, weighted by the CHZ staked with them, and require a two thirds majority. There is no separate DAO in which every CHZ holder votes directly.

Is the CHZ supply fixed?

No, and this is the part most third party summaries get wrong. CHZ was a fixed supply token for its first six years. That changed with the Dragon8 upgrade, applied in May 2024, which introduced ongoing issuance to pay validators and delegators, starting at 8.8 percent in the first year and stepping down each year to 1.88 percent from year fourteen onward. Around two thirds of that issuance goes to validators and delegators as staking rewards.

Two mechanisms cut the other way.

Protocol fee burning. Chiliz Chain implements the same fee burning design as Ethereum, so the large majority of gas fees are destroyed rather than paid to validators. Whether that offsets issuance depends entirely on how much the chain is used.

Fan token revenue buybacks. Chiliz takes a tenth of fan token and marketplace proceeds, buys CHZ on the open market and sends it to a burn address, publishing a monthly report of each transaction. This is a company policy rather than a protocol rule, it depends on fan token sales continuing, and the amounts removed have been small next to an inflating supply of nearly nine billion tokens.

Supply has also been increased by governance decision. The Pepper8 upgrade, applied in August 2025, minted new CHZ to cover balances migrating from Paribu Net, a Turkish exchange's separate blockchain that was shut down and folded into Chiliz Chain, and reduced the scheduled inflation for years three to seven to compensate. Whatever you think of the trade, the point stands: the supply schedule is something validators can change.

Can you stake CHZ?

Yes. CHZ can be staked to a validator on Chiliz Chain, and delegators share in the issuance paid to that validator. Rewards are claimable after a short waiting period of roughly two epochs. The official documentation sets out how delegation and validator governance work, and Chiliz publishes a separate staking risks disclosure worth reading before delegating anything.

CoinJar does not stake or delegate CHZ on your behalf. CHZ held in a CoinJar account earns no staking rewards and is not deposited into any protocol.

What has changed recently?

Three things are worth knowing, because most older material about Chiliz predates all of them.

Fan tokens left the Chiliz chain. In April 2026 Chiliz made fan tokens omnichain, issuing them natively on Solana and Base alongside Chiliz Chain using LayerZero's cross-chain token standard, after first migrating them to eighteen decimal places so they behave like ordinary tokens. This opens fan tokens to outside decentralized finance liquidity. It also weakens the argument that activity has to happen on Chiliz Chain, which is worth thinking about if you are holding CHZ for its role as gas.

A push into the United States. Socios announced its first American fan tokens through a deal with Playfly Sports covering college athletic programs, beginning with Louisiana State, Maryland, Michigan State, Penn State and Texas A&M, with more signposted over the following year.

A regulatory taxonomy that names fan tokens. In March 2026 the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a joint interpretation sorting crypto assets into five categories, and it cites fan tokens as an example of a digital collectible rather than a security. That is a meaningful piece of clarity for the product, though an interpretive release is not a license and it does not settle how any particular token is treated in other countries.

Alongside these, Chiliz has published a plan it calls Vision 2030, which reframes the project around sports finance, tokenized sporting assets, prediction markets and ideas such as linking fan token supply to match results. Treat that as intent rather than product. Very little of it exists yet.

What are the risks of holding CHZ?

The product it depends on is unpopular with the people it is sold to. Fan tokens have drawn sustained criticism from supporter groups, journalists and advertising regulators, and multiple club token prices collapsed after their launches. That reputational overhang is a genuine business risk, not just noise. Partner concentration and churn. The value of the network rests on club and federation deals. Those are commercial contracts that expire, and clubs have walked away from crypto partnerships before. No claim on the business. CHZ produces no revenue for holders and holds no assets. There is no earnings figure or balance sheet to value it against, so there is no floor set by fundamentals. Issuance risk. CHZ is no longer a fixed supply asset. Issuance is set by a schedule that validators have already amended once, and the offsetting burns depend on chain usage and on continuing fan token sales. Validator control. Proof of staked authority concentrates network decisions in the active validator set. If you hold CHZ without running or delegating to a validator, you have no direct vote on network changes. Omnichain dilution of the chain's purpose. Moving fan tokens to Solana and Base broadens their reach, but it also reduces the reason for transactions to settle on Chiliz Chain, which is where CHZ derives its fee demand. Roadmap risk. Vision 2030 describes an ambitious pivot into sports finance. Pivots of that size, announced by projects whose original product plateaued, frequently do not land. Technical risk. Chiliz Chain is a young network derived from another chain's codebase, and CHZ moves across bridges between Ethereum, Chiliz Chain, Solana and Base. Bridges and cross chain token contracts are among the most exploited pieces of infrastructure in cryptocurrency. Volatility. CHZ is not a stablecoin. Its value moves sharply and can fall substantially. No consumer protection. Crypto assets are not covered by FDIC or SIPC insurance, and there is no government compensation scheme that will make you whole if the value of CHZ falls or a platform fails. You should be prepared to lose all the money you put in.

Buying CHZ with US dollars on CoinJar

CoinJar has operated since 2013 and lists CHZ against US dollars, so you can buy, sell and hold it without converting through another cryptocurrency first. Current charges are on our fees page, and live US dollar rates are on our cryptocurrency prices page.

CoinJar, Inc. is registered with FinCEN as a money services business, NMLS ID 2492913, and holds money transmitter licenses in a growing number of states. You can check whether CoinJar operates in your state before signing up. Registration and licensing cover how CoinJar operates as a business. They are not an endorsement of CHZ or of any cryptocurrency listed on the platform.

How is CHZ taxed in the US?

The IRS treats digital assets such as CHZ as property. A taxable event can occur when you sell it for US dollars, exchange it for another cryptocurrency, spend it or receive it as income.

The IRS sets out its approach on its digital assets page. Our guide to downloading a transaction history report explains how to pull the records you need. This is general information, not tax advice. Consider speaking to a qualified tax professional about your circumstances.