Ponzi game on Abstract gets CTO'd...
GC ALPHA 61
Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. DYOR + I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.
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Next week, we will explore The Duel Arena (hopefully…)
MARKET TALK
THE “BIGCOIN CTO”
Bigcoin, the Ponzi-like miner game that launched on Abstract in April this year, is experiencing a renaissance ($BIG is up 221% WoW). Why? Well, the project got CTO’d by BORED (or BoredElonMusk) and EJR (taken over from Bigtoshi)
BORED is a known shitposter, investor, and advisor in the crypto space. Last year, he tried to get his venture, Edison Metaverse, off the ground. However, unfortunately, the studio announced its closure last February
I am less familiar with EJR, but it seems he’s the owner of a “full-service NFT studio”
Back in April, the Abstract team got scrutinized for pushing the Ponzi game so hard, without educating users on the risks of participating. Something that isn’t in line with the “consumer crypto” thesis (more on this topic in my article)
This time, key figures (e.g., Cygaar) are pushing the game again
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the team members have a stake in the game
The fact that Bigcoin was CTO’d recently became more widely known after the stream with Ely. During this show, we got to know more about the new direction of the game:
One of the larger new features of the game is “merge mining”. A new and curated token launch platform and onchain distribution system for existing tokens
Each newly launched token will distribute 50% to miner rewards and 50% to the liquidity vault. Miners will be able to configure to “merge mine” any active token, and allocate their hashpower strategically
Luca Netz himself seemed rather bullish on the new feature and believes “this could be the biggest thing in the ecosystem” if they can pull it off. And apparently, the suggestion itself was made by him
Miners are being converted into ERC721 NFTs and can be traded on OpenSea soon
Overall, I am pretty bullish on the new direction for Bigcoin, becoming a gamified and highly curated Virtuals, but on Abstract
Note: I own a little bit of $BIG myself, and bought it last Friday
“CRYPTO GAMING” AS A SEARCH TERM IS TRENDING
Last week, multiple people reported how the search term “crypto gaming” is trending, and for this week, its popularity is forecasted to surpass peak 2021 levels. But without a clear catalyst right now, what’s fueling search volume?
A boring answer could be that volume is being manipulated/botted. Another answer could be that attention begets attention, i.e., once people started posting about it, more people started searching for it
Although when it comes to the second argument, search volume must be in the millions to surpass that 2021 peak
Or are there specific crypto games quietly succeeding right now, driving growth? Games that live outside of CT, or in specific geos
An interesting observation is how search volume for “crypto gaming” and “play and earn” differs in geos, whereas the latter search term is much more popular in South America, Africa, and South-East Asia than in the EU and US
Similarly, in countries like Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong, the term “gamefi” is much more popular than the other two
And yes, the term “Web3 gaming” barely ranks as a keyword
Last week, we also saw dino coins like ILV pump 100%. It's unclear whether the increased search volume led to more buyers, or if there was no correlation at all
When it comes to the market cap of the crypto gaming sector (according to CMC):
WoW: $21.58B (+14.3%) MC | $3.27B (+100%) in volume
MoM: $21.58B (+14.9%) MC | $3.27B (-7%) in volume
YoY: $21.58B (+34.6%) MC | $3.27 (+132%) in volume
So, over the last week, we did see a notable increase in market cap and volume, but this growth could also be attributed to ETH’s performance
Robbie Ferguson (co-founder of IMX) argues that “headwinds are forcing web2 games to search for new strategies for UA, monetisation, retention” are driving search volume
In his Tweet, he made a chart for the search term “crypto games” and the total gaming market cap overlap, to make a point that they are correlated, or that the search traffic precedes market volume
Overall, I can’t really make sense of the why behind this pump in search volume. Yet, it will be interesting to see how the overall gaming MC of crypto gaming and search volume for related terms develop, as we progress further in this cycle
ON THE RISE
LimitBreak introduces its own AMM: “built for onchain games, RWAs…”