A Billion-Dollar Crypto Gaming Startup Promised Riches and Delivered Disaster

The interesting thing about Axie Infinity is that, just like Ponzi and Madoff, it has a fundamentally unsustainable economic model that depends on inflows from new players to fund payouts to existing players. But here’s the weird, mind-bending part of it: everybody knows! The team knows, their investors know, ordinary players know—and they talk abo... See more

Immediately upon entering the Web3 rabbit hole, one realizes that it’s hard to talk about crypto without also talking about gaming — specifically a highly financialized form of “gamification” revolving around microtransactions and “play-to-earn” (P2E) incentive design, whereby players win real tokens with real financial value for specific behaviors... See more

The most famous example is Axie Infinity. In order to play, prospective gamers have to buy or rent an Axie from an existing player. The game economy works because new players buy Axies from old players in hopes of reselling those Axies to newer players who join after them. 

Friends with Benefits, the popular DAO with a $114 million market cap, has local channels for SF, Berlin, NYC, Asia & Australia, Miami, Canada, Lisbon, Paris, and more. Axie Infinity was started by a small team in Vietnam and is on track to do $1 billion in revenue, shake up the business model of gaming, launch the x-to-earn movement, and change em... See more