Live data from Hacker News

Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

ft.com

111–120 of 147 posts

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#111
post #8

> The number of Axie daily users increased by more than four times in under three months to 2bn in October, according to figures released by Sky Mavis. Analysts have now begun watching for signs of slowing growth. In case anyone else was confused by the 2B DAU figure which would dwarf TikTok by a couple orders of magnitude, this seems to be a typo for 2M. E.g. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/05/axie-infinit…

I was going to say... I've never even heard of Axie.

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those confused about the difference: A Ponzi scheme "pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors" A pyramid scheme "recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products"

Can anyone outline how either of those are different than pre-IPO investors in WeWork etc cashing out on the retail masses? Or pretty much any non-dividend stock that exists?

Buybacks are examples of return of money to investors without dividend. In fact, this is a more tax-efficient way to return money.

But return to investors is not even the important thing, it is that normal businesses should get outside money by providing some kind of goods or services.

The problem with axies is that they claim everything is exchangeable back into money so there is essentially no “outside” money.

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#113
post #89
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just looking at that home page, they are saying the APY is 725,002.4%. If that isn't an insane red flag, I don't know what is.

That APY is misleading in several ways. It implies that if you put $100 in it will be 7250x bigger in a year. But this assumes that the price won't change, i.e. you get one token for $100 now and in a year you can exchange 1 token for $100. In reality this seems unlikely, given that Eurphoria($WAGMI) are giving out 0.81% per 8 hours 12% per 5 days, and doubling the amount of tokens in 30 days. So in 30 days I should…

>So in 30 days I should be able to get $200 back out, and in 1 year I should be able to get out ~$725000. 2 years and I can take out over 3 billion. Yeah okay.

That's why these APYs make zero sense, I don't understand how anyone can pass this off with a straight face (unless this truly is just a game to sucker in people bad at math).

You can't turn $100 into $3 billion in two years. Obviously.

They are claiming a return of 2% per day. Please.

A penny stock can claim it's "average return" is 100% per year because it went from 1 cent to 4 cents in 2 years.

That isn't saying much.

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#114
post #110
post #51

I'm heavily invested into axie (5 figures), happy to answer any questions.

Can I play this for free?

They are working on that feature where you can play for free without earning tokens. I expect that to be done within a month or 2.

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#115
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you even call it a game? It seems like work more than anything else. Its a shitty boring job where you’re paid less than a contractor to do work that is completely meaningless and unproductive.

Have you ever played it yourself? The game is better than the majority of mobile games.

If I spent US$ 1,000 to play a mobile game my wife would kick me out of the house...

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a Hackernews take "I thought it was gambling and immoral, but now that it has made billions there might be a point". It can still be gambling and/or a Ponzi schemes. Adding obfuscation over methods to tap into greed and gambling euphoria does not technical innovation make. Cryptocurrency already attracts people who like to gamble and want to get rich quickly, so this is just docking onto a natural pipeli…

> "I thought it was gambling and immoral, but now that it has made billions there might be a point" That is an inaccurate/misleading summarization of my post. It is a least-charitable interpretation structured to forward your own viewpoint. When I thought the game was simply gambling I ignored it (and in fact I assumed it was earning high revenue). This financial times article explained that the game is not gambling…

> Sky Mavis has acknowledged that Axie relies on new entrants for growth and promised to release new features that will make the game more desirable for people who are not primarily motivated by cashing out their earnings.

Right now, it's difficult to differentiate from a pyramid scheme. There are RNG elements related to breeding, which means the best this game can hope to be compared to is poker, except it has the added layer of cryptocurrency "investment" which taps into the same energy as gambling and pyramid schemes, which I guess makes sense.

Without being mean spirited: do you also see something profound and interesting in GME and other meme stocks? Because in my opinion, just because it got a lot of attention and money doesn't mean that there is something meaningful there. Bernie Madoffs scheme took from the 90s (maybe 70s) to 2008 to implode, bitconnect rose and fell faster.

And as I clarified in another comment, what is causing me to voice disgust is the fact people are using these schemes to get rich off of others. And I think that even if we cannot to anything else, social shunning still has its place as a soft regulatory mechanism. If it people want to go to Vegas, let them have Vegas, if they want to gamble in this, let them gamble, but we can still express our distaste and deny respect. (Not that I think I matter much here, even if people were to follow my lead I'm sure the founders will dry their tears with dollar bills)

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a Hackernews take "I thought it was gambling and immoral, but now that it has made billions there might be a point". It can still be gambling and/or a Ponzi schemes. Adding obfuscation over methods to tap into greed and gambling euphoria does not technical innovation make. Cryptocurrency already attracts people who like to gamble and want to get rich quickly, so this is just docking onto a natural pipeli…

Not every person or every culture has the same sets of values around gambling. Not every ethical philosophy thinks of gambling the same way. In many developed countries gambling is legal and regulated in many forms. Governments around the world spend a lot of energy deciding what the lines for regulating gambling is. When I see ethical takes like this, I feel like I'm missing a _lot_ of context. The Islamic world for…

Answering directly to your questions, I don't have any religious background on this, I just see hijacking of our primitive vices for personal profit as immoral and shun-worthy. I think prohibition is bad (just creates Shadow markets) and the main thing to stop is running profitable gambling houses and advertising/incitement - if nobody could make a profit off of it, people would still gamble, but at least it would be intrinsically motivated and you don't get the consolidating and exploitative effects that arise from privatised gambling. Same with all other "sins" - don't stop the sin, stop the profiteering and the exploitation. The sins are fine and fun

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#119
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever played it yourself? The game is better than the majority of mobile games.

If I spent US$ 1,000 to play a mobile game my wife would kick me out of the house...

Yes, but most people don't consider that $1000 as lost money.

Re: Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure but that's not what GP is saying. GP is purely laying into gambling by itself. > I have nothing but disgust for these types of games, even without the block chain veneer That's where my question arises.

I'm specifically laying into people getting rich off of other people gambling and making a business out of it. If a group of friends wants to play poker, or if the Axie platform was a co-op owned by all of the players (and no 20% dev stake like most premined cryptocurrencies) I'd say "eh, it's their choice". But making money off of hooking into and pushing our vices is something I personally disagree with.

Sure but what about the folks that run casinos, pachinko parlors, mahjongg dens, card clubs, horse race betting owners, claw machine owners, etc, etc. There's a _lot_ of gambling around the world and it's the owners' job to market these gambling houses. Why are these crypto scams so deleterious when there's probably an order of magnitude more people gambling their money away in more traditional gambling houses designed to keep you inside, fed, and spending money for as long as possible? Is your position that all gambling like this should be run by the state?
Post reply on HN