One company getting a lot of press in today’s crypto world is Sky Mavis, the maker of Axie Infinity.
People getting more interested in NFTs are looking at this company’s gaming operations as an example of the combination of gaming online and non-fungible token technologies.
“(Games like Axie Infinity) can make for lucrative businesses amid the hype around NFTs and virtual worlds, attracting millions of players plus billions of dollars from investors who see the games as a way to introduce more people to cryptocurrency,” writes Elizabeth Howcroft for Reuters, after starting out with an anecdote of a player gaining lots of money through playing in the Axie Infinity ecosystem. “In Axie Infinity, users buy virtual blob-like creatures with varying attributes as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – digital assets whose owner is recorded on the blockchain – for anything from tens of dollars to hundreds of thousands. Players can then use the pets to earn money by winning battles, as well as creating new pets, whose value depends on their rarity. The assets can be traded with other players on the platform, which says it has about 1.5 million daily users.”
Howcroft talks about the ‘play to earn’ philosophy evident in Axie Infinity’s scheme as quickly catching on around today’s gaming world.
As for a heist of $615 million from the Axie Infinity maker’s coffers, a Reuters writer (again not identified by name) talks about efforts to recover. After the Vietnam-based company was hit by the hack, players were unable to withdraw funds from the game. Now, big backers including Binance are coming to the rescue.
“Sky Mavis said it would reimburse the lost money through a combination of its own balance sheet funds and $150 million raised by investors including cryptocurrency exchange Binance and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz,” Reuters reported.
That seems optimistic, so look for this firm to become more relevant to your crypto holdings in the future.
