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

Axie’s economy has an inflation problem (much like our real-world economy!), as more players are cashing out than are putting money into the game. With such nuanced economies, it’s easy for things to quickly fall out of whack.

Games where earning is at the core are also inheriting a difficult sustainability problem. It’s impossible to create an economy that constantly grows. Axie earnings have already started to decline, which will soon make the game undesirable for their current player base who are primarily playing to earn. If new entrants cannot win and turn a profit,... See more

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

Being an investor is bleeding into new forms of work. Online, capital and labor are both borderless. You can earn income on Axie Infinity, or turn a profit by investing in certain player cards on Sorare. The intersection of crypto and gaming is our closest modern analogue to the future jobs of the metaverse.