Is it true that Portugal decided to release coins with the image of Cristiano Ronaldo?

In the fall of 2024, the news spread on blogs and sports sites that Portugal would allegedly release coins with a portrait of one of the most famous football players of the country. We decided to check if this is really so.

November 23 Telegram channel "Rhymes and Panchi" (196,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) reportedThat Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the most famous players in the world, the former Manchester United player and Madrid Real Madrid, will be released in Portugal. The face value will be €7 - the athlete acts precisely under the seventh number. “Thus, the authorities want to emphasize the influence of Krisha on the country's football and culture. The coin will become a legal payment tool, but its circulation is limited, ”the publication said.

Back in September, numerous sports sites wrote about this (for example, Russian And Ukrainian), as well as bloggers in Instagram. In addition, large British tabloids also told about a coin with a Portuguese football player The Mirror And Express. True, these newspapers did not publish photos of coins, but they turned to the experts for comments with a request to evaluate the demand for such artifacts if they were released.

Each country in the euro zone has the right to produce coins of its own design. Avers (a side with a face value) of all countries is the same, on a reverse (which is often called an “eagle”) can be depicted, for example, monarchs, cultural figures, animals or national symbols. At Portuguese Eurocent and coins € 1 and € 2 Member Historical seals 1134, 1142 and 1144. Like any Eurozone Country, Portugal has the right to produce a limited number of memorable coins with a face value of € 2, as well as coins of a larger face value, including precious metals. He is doing this Portuguese National Mint.

All Portuguese euros are presented on his website, and there are no coins with the image of Cristiano Ronaldo among them. In this case, there are copies dedicated to football: for example, Coins € 5 with the symbols of the European Championship 2024 (including gold and silver) and a coin with a face value of € 7.5 with a portrait of the star of Portuguese and world football of the 1960s, Esebio.

Such coins have a special design, they are not intended for release, but for collectors. Moreover, each of them theoretically can be a legal payment tool.

However, despite the whole variety of design, there is one common feature: the face value is never separated from the name of the currency. In the images with Cristiano Ronaldo, the seed is accompanied by the initials of a football player (CR), and the word "Euro" is either located on the other side of the portrait or is completely absent. On the only coin where the face value is adjacent to the name of the currency, the word "euro" is written with a mistake: euros instead of Euro.

There are other letters on two images of coins. In the first case, this combination of its and RD (the meaning of which is unknown), in the second letters are a meaningless set of symbols. This allows us to conclude that the images are created by artificial intelligence (AI) - such shortcomings are characteristic of pictures generated by neuralities.

FACHECHERS from the Kazakhstani project Factcheck.kz Installed The primary source of the image: this Facebook entry Portuguese blogger Georges Rapoza dated September 6, 2024.

Rapoza published four photographs and signed them as follows: “A beautiful and completely incredible collection of coins with a face value of € 7 in honor of Cristiano Ronaldo, released by a national mint.” Already in the next line, the author hints that he did not do without the use of AI - he indicated the name of the album (Promptcraft) and set his copy. The English word Prompt means a team that a person sets the neural network, and Craft translates as “craft” or “create”.

A week later, September 13, Portuguese blogger I was surprisedHow widely spread the images created by him with the help of AI. Then he Objected New coins with Cristiano Ronaldo, while asking subscribers in no case to distribute them.

Thus, at the time of writing this analysis, Portugal did not release coins depicting Cristiano Ronaldo and did not report such plans. Photos spreading on the Web have nothing to do with either the Bank of Portugal, or to the national coin yard - they were created by the Portuguese blogger using AI.

Photo on the cover: social networks

Fake

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