Calling CryptoKitties a "game" is a bit generous.
Everything is a game once you look for an equilibrium.
Newsflash: watching paint dry is a game (until the solvents reach an equilibrium with the air).
The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
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Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#42One thing I don't see addressed in this article is that as far as I know, it's basically impossible to trust the reported price or volume of NFT transactions, because there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones. So it's hard to draw any conclusions about whether the data reflects an actual peak in user activity, or just a peak in scams.
Correct, not possible if you dont want someone to know
But of you’ve ever traded NFTs its hard to really begin with the assumption that trading volume is fake because bots and market makers buy from you so fast. You know that wasn't a fake or wash trade, while there is a pervasive audience of onlookers that are trying to prove a negative.
You know that funds in bankruptcy court have successfully sold $30,000,000 worth of the NFTs on their books as ordered, without issue or further controversy about where the proceeds came from
You know that DAOs have liquidated $30,000,000 worth of NFTs on their books as determined by the community, without issue
How much convincing does anyone need to move off of “its all wash trading and money laundering” to “yeah thats possible there is also lots of liquidity”, it doesn’t really make sense to make the former perception their whole identity
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does that particular thing work? You run the exchange, then have dirty untraceable money traded on the exchange to dirty participant and you take the exchange fees? You'd have to KYC both participants, right?
Imagine you have $X million from a hack on wallet A, and you want to launder it. First, you run it through tornado cash (RIP) a few times and move them to wallets B1 to B1000. Then, you mint an "exciting NFT collection" on your public, KYC'd wallet C, list them on a "decentralized exchange", and have wallets B1 to B1000 buy those NFTs. Even better, seeing how fast your NFTs are selling out, a few suckers join in on t…
The Tornado Cash tumbler allows you to create sort-of-Sybils so it looks organic. The no-KYC Dex allows you to push from a no-KYC account to a KYC'd account.
The KYC'd account lets you withdraw fiat.
I see. Okay, each of the pieces are necessary. Thanks for the explanation.
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does that particular thing work? You run the exchange, then have dirty untraceable money traded on the exchange to dirty participant and you take the exchange fees? You'd have to KYC both participants, right?
Buy a “rare” NFT with clean money. Sell it a few months later for some multiple of the original price, the “buyer” is still you but using dirty money. NB: I work in fintech but have no particular experience on the fraud / KYC / AML side of things. This is just how I imagine it would work at a high level.
But if you do that, I think you'd be first on the list of people investigated for the dirty money. It has to be cleaned in some way by obscuring it.
The approach described here seems more plausible https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32857382
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#45I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it.
I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market to capture
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#46Know zero about NFT market caps, but if I pull up few years on the site below, hardly looks like a collapse: https://nftgo.io/collection/cryptokitties/overview Anyone with more knowledge able to clarify?
Market cap is not really significant, if the sales are down. Most of the market cap is from old sales. I could create a new coin with a huge market cap very easily: I'm creating 1,000 billion coins, and I'm selling to a friend one coin for $1, then never selling anything again. The market cap is now $ 1,000 billion right?
Yes, but to realize it, you have to get (bribe) a major exchange to list your coin.
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones Ah, like that $532M Punk wash trade that was clearly visible on-chain?[1] I guess we'll never know if it was real or fake. [1] https://decrypt.co/84756/no-someone-didnt-really-pay-532-mil...
Please explain your comment for the rest is us. Was that a sarcastic "it really happened because it made it to the chain" or a "we'll never know whether value was exchanged from one person to another because the owner of both wallets could be the same person" - or both, neither or?
Commenter said "there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones" and I showed a case where a wash trade was, to anybody looking at it, very obviously fake.
I agree with the other part of the comment. Blockchains do not track "persons" but "wallets" and so metrics like "number of users" will not be accurate. But it is not accurate to imply that it is impossible to recognize wash trades. In many cases they are very obvious, and even can be automatically flagged. In other cases - like with CEX mixers - only the authorities can detect the fraud.
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#48One thing I don't see addressed in this article is that as far as I know, it's basically impossible to trust the reported price or volume of NFT transactions, because there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones. So it's hard to draw any conclusions about whether the data reflects an actual peak in user activity, or just a peak in scams.
Correct, not possible if you dont want someone to know But of you’ve ever traded NFTs its hard to really begin with the assumption that trading volume is fake because bots and market makers buy from you so fast. You know that wasn't a fake or wash trade, while there is a pervasive audience of onlookers that are trying to prove a negative. You know that funds in bankruptcy court have successfully sold $30,000,000 wort…
"because bots and market makers buy from you so fast"
Does that still hold true today, or was that the case six months ago before the NFT market crashed?
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny you should mention MtG, since the first big crypto exchange collapse was MtGox. I always thought it was "Mt. Gox", like a mountain of sorts. Turns out it's Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange. Edit: MtG seems like it has some kind of evergreen popularity, and various format changes, changes in the list of banned cards, reprints, and changes in the metagame will mean that prices of individual cards can vary wil…
It did pivot away from its ancestry and at that point it was indeed referred to as "Mount Gox".
Indeed, and that's even the branding used in the Wikipedia article on it:
Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game
#50I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it. I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market t…
Gaming with being able to earn money is something I normally call gambling or work.
It's depressing to think about it.
And yes people who made gold in wow were also not gaming but working. It wasn't cool, fun or whatever 10 years ago