Hi, guys, it's Mark.
So crypto gaming
is currently one of the hottest investments out there,
as it seems to be making early buyers millions of dollars,
with eye-watering, 1,000% returns.
I can't escape it now my Instagram's back up and running,
as many of you have been sending me DMs
asking how to invest in crypto games.
Even though this looks like an amazing opportunity,
are these crazy returns actually realistic
or are people just selling you a dream?
It's certainly hard to know who you can trust
as many influencers are being paid to promote certain coins,
or just making videos with the sole purpose
of trying to pump cryptos that they already own.
So today, I want to take an unbiased look
at the hottest crypto games,
give you an idea of what it's all about,
and explain how you can use this information
to make some money. (bell dinging)
Just to make it clear,
I'm not promoting any of these coins
or being compensated by them in any way.
So you can just sit back and relax
because I'm not selling you anything.
This is a topic that I'm genuinely interested in,
even as a traditional investor.
That's a kind way of saying I'm a boomer.
I've been researching lots of games
and I've narrowed it down to six I find really interesting.
As always, I think it's important
to put my money where my mouth is.
So I've decided to bring back the Wheel of Fortune
and I've placed different amounts on it,
ranging from $100 to $5,000.
After talking about each crypto gaming coin,
I'm gonna give it a spin
and invest whatever amount it lands on.
We're only gonna be talking about the facts
so you can make up your own mind without being misled
by the pump and dumpers.
Also, to make this interesting,
as we move through the different crypto games,
they are gonna get less well-known,
therefore, they could be seen as riskier,
but have a higher potential reward.
None of this should be considered financial advice.
I'm just keen to discover whether these games
are genuine investments or just glorified gambling.
So let's get right into this after you smash
that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
First, let's talk about Axie Infinity,
as it's currently one of the most popular crypto games
on the market.
It's seen explosive growth over 2021,
going from just 38,000 users per day in April
to over 2 million daily users now.
This fast growth could give it an advantage
over other crypto games as players have already invested
their money within the game.
And therefore, I'd imagine they're less likely
to jump to new games when they're released.
The Axie Infinity crypto coin has seen
an over 100,000% return since it was created,
meaning if you invested just $100
back on the 6th of November, 2020,
then now you would have over $106,958.
However, it was more than this,
but it's recently dip from all time highs.
But Mark, all I wanna know is should all invest?
Well first and foremost,
it actually has to be a fun game to play.
The aim of the game is to collect digital pets,
which you can raise and even battle. These are called axies.
Something to I find interesting is that each axie
is a unique NFT that can be bought and sold.
I mean, let's address the elephant in the room.
Axie Infinity is clearly heavily inspired by Pokemon,
but I see this as a good thing
that even I got drawn into playing Pokemon GO
with my son back in the day.
I'm not gonna lie, NFTs used to be a bit of a mystery to me.
I just couldn't understand why people would wanna buy
a JPEG when they could just take a screenshot instead.
However, I completely understand it
within a game like Axie Infinity.
This is because the NFTs
have an actual purpose inside the game,
other than hopefully just increasing value.
There is also a rule that players must have three axies
in order to play.
This is a good way to keep the demand high
for these digital pets.
Having a good concept is important,
but having a team that can pull this off is really crucial.
The team behind Axie Infinity is a Vietnam based company
called Sky Mavis founded in 2018.
They don't seem to have any experience
creating big games before.
However, they are keeping on track with their roadmap.
And the CEO is no stranger to running a business
and raising capital.
So judging by this, if a boomer like me
can wrap my head around this,
then the game seems quite simple and easy to pick up.
It also has clear goals for the players
and a reason to buy the NFTs and coins.
Like most crypto games, the more you play and contribute,
the more rewards you can earn.
One thing that might hold Axie Infinity
back from mass adoption is the complex setup,
which involves connection your crypto wallets.
Most people probably don't understand how to do this.
However, the game is still growing at a fast rate,
so it doesn't seem to be causing them any problems.
So let's spin the wheel and see how much
we're gonna be investing.
$250. It seems like we're starting off slow.
I'm gonna buy some Axie Infinity Shards on Coinbase.
This crypto represents a slice of the Axie world.
This is sort of like buying a stock.
Talking about stocks,
Public are currently giving away a free stock
worth all the way up to $1,000 if you live in the USA.
And Freetrade are giving away a free stock
worth all the way up to 200 pounds if you live in the UK.
I'll leave those links in the description below.
Next up is the Decentraland,
the second biggest crypto game on my list.
You've probably heard the term metaverse
being mentioned a lot recently, it's the latest craze.
And even I've made a video all about it.
It's essentially the idea that there is going to be
a digital version of our world,
where we can interact, work and play.
Excitement surrounding metaverse is surging lately
probably due to my last video about it,
and maybe partially due to a small company
known as Facebook changing their name to Meta.
This all seems to be driving the valuation
of Decentraland's token higher and higher to the moon baby.
Decentraland's name pretty much explains the concept.
The first part refers to its decentralized nature,
which means that it's not controlled
by one person or company.
The last part is referring to the digital land
you can buy and sell.
Decentra-land is quite clever, isn't it?
I like the sound of Decentraland
because it's like virtual real estate.
And my real estate investments
have been very profitable over the years.
There are 90,601 plots of land which are actually NFTs.
Which means each land token can not be replicated
and is completely unique.
This gives the players the ability to own develop
and rent out their virtual land,
as well as interacting with areas
and things other players have made.
Right, so who's visiting the Tilbury estate then?
Then the game also allows players to make art, play games
and even host virtual events.
This is all fueled by the game's own cryptocurrency
called MANA.
I've even heard of players building casinos on their land
and getting people to gamble in them, it's just crazy stuff.
The team behind Decentraland
are seasoned Blockchain engineers,
experienced venture capitalists
and Silicon Valley data analysts.
Once again, it doesn't seem like they've worked
on any AAA rated games,
but they certainly seem to have some credibility.
So as I've mentioned, MANA is the crypto
that fuels Decentraland.
So that's what I'm gonna be spinning the wheel
and investing in.
So that's $500.
MANA has been performing great over the last year
with one major pump in October,
causing it to jump from $1 to nearly $5 in one day.
This one is pretty easy to invest in
because it's on Coinbase.
There you go. All done.
Talking about Coinbase,
they're actually currently giving away
$10 worth of free Bitcoin to my viewers.
This is only for a limited time.
So I'll leave the link in the description
if you wanna pick that up.
Next on my list, we have Sandbox
which has recently been growing in popularity.
It has been creating a bit of a buzz lately
with some people thinking it could be the next
Shiba Inu Dodgecoin.
Sandbox is a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain,
very similar to Decentraland.
Where players can build and monetize their experience
using NFTs and their token.
You guessed it, sand.
Players can create in-game assets,
trade them on the marketplace and also create games.
Of course, it's a bit more complicated than this,
but that's the concept.
I think the artwork in this game looks really cool,
especially the dragons.
They just copy and pasted Deborah Maeden,
they didn't need to change a thing.
Just a little bit of extra fire.
You know I love your Deborah.
It may surprise you the Sandbox isn't actually new.
It's been around since 2012 on mobile devices
and it was a relatively small game
with 1 million active users from 2012 to 2016.
But recently with the excitement around virtual reality,
they've managed to raise $93 million
to grow the Sandbox metaverse.
But what I think is even more interesting
is that they aren't just putting that money
into building the game.
They seem to have also allocated a large budget
to promotion.
Just the other day, I was watching a (indistinct) vlog.
And out of the blue, he started advertising it.
Something positive I discovered is that the CEO of Sandbox,
is not new to this space,
and has been in the business since 2000.
He's also been involved in many other companies
over the years, and even sold to software businesses.
Other team members have multiple years
in blockchain technology
and tens of years in mobile tech and gaming in general.
So it seems like they know what they're doing.
However, there is a lot of competition rising
in the metaverse space.
So they're going to need a lot of promotion to keep growing.
So let's spin the wheel and invest
$5,000. That's the biggest one yet.
And we're gonna be buying it on Kraken.
This coin is around it's all time high,
so I do feel a bit nervous going into this,
because I always like picking up investments
at bargain prices.
But who knows this may turn into a bargain
as crypto gaming is exploding at the moment.
Next up we have the fourth biggest on my list, Enjin Coin.
I think we can all agree that crypto gaming
is a bit of a gold rush at the moment.
People are digging around everywhere,
looking for the next coin that will hopefully
make them rich.
But it's not just the gold miners
that profit from the gold rush,
it's also the people selling the shovels and the pickaxes.
That's why Enjin Coin looks so promising,
is it allows game developers to create NFT gaming items.
With the other games in the list,
there is always a high potential that it will flop
and your investment might decrease in value.
However, with Enjin Coin,
the games they use to build their NFTs can flop
and Enjin will still benefit.
Just think about how many people
are trying to create crypto games, the market is huge.
Take businesses like Amazon and eBay.
They make money from people selling on their platform.
These types of businesses typically work really well.
I would imagine that creating a crypto game
is really difficult.
Not only have you got the typical complications
of creating a game,
but you've also got the blockchain technology
making things complicated.
So I think that's why Enjin Coin is really useful
as it solves some of these issues.
It could also help existing games integrate a crypto aspect.
Let's take Minecraft for example.
You may just think of it as a simple building game
with annoying creepers,
but it's become so much more than that.
People now have custom service where you can play all sorts
of different game modes with people
from all around the world.
While playing in these servers, you can earn in-game items.
This is cool and all, but what if they could become NFTs?
Oh wait, they have.
Microsoft and Enjin Coin have already made this happen
earlier this year.
Thanks to the help of an Enjin plugin
that now allows Minecraft to support NFTs and crypto.
Minecraft is a pretty big game
with over 140 million monthly users.
So it's awesome to see them adopting something like this.
Just think if Enjin Coin can make it so easy to do,
how long will it be before other games
follow in their footsteps?
Enjin say they are a fully distributed team
spread across five continents in 20 different countries.
Unified by a mission to build
futuristic world-class products.
The team does look quite impressive as well,
with some core team members having over 10 years experience
in software development.
This has led to Enjin creating
over 1 billion digital assets since 2009.
So let's spin the wheel and find out how much I'm investing
in Enjin Coin.
$1,000.
I knew it had to come up eventually.
Looking at the chart here,
the only drawback I can see is the price is quite high,
but anyway, there we go.
I think there is still growth to come
and no one really knows what will happen.
Next on my list is Illuvium.
You could say this is getting a little bit more risky now
as we're going into the less popular games,
but many NFT experts believe that Illuvium
is a good investment to make in the current crypto market,
because of its huge growth potential.
The game is quickly gaining popularity
amongst crypto gaming fans,
especially after releasing their latest promo video.
And I have to say the game artwork looks absolutely amazing.
But Mark, what exactly is Illuvium?
The concept of Illuvium is that you play as a hunter
from space that crashes on an alien planet
with loads of creatures and have to explore
in order to find out what happened
and what these creatures are.
It sounds just like a much more complex version of Pokemon.
Illuvium is built on the Ethereum blockchain
and will be a free to play game.
No membership or crypto will be required to play.
What makes Illuvium different from the other games,
is it really does look like a AAA game.
The graphics look absolutely amazing,
and they do claim it will be polished in all areas,
which sounds awesome if they actually deliver.
But games like this are extremely hard to make.
So it's important to pay close attention
to the team behind it.
So I've done a bit of digging into the team at Illuvium
and I have to say it looks pretty good.
Of course, with any crypto project,
it's important to be skeptical.
But the team at Illuvium have worked on projects
like The Last of Us and Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Their animators have worked on projects like "Transformers",
"Avengers", "Guardians of the Galaxy",
"Godzilla" and "Ready Player One"
Maybe that's why the game looks so good.
The Illuvium game is set to release in 2022,
but that doesn't mean the Illuvium crypto coin
isn't already going absolutely bonkers.
It makes me wish I'd made this video a year ago.
I'm not gonna be diving any deeper into this game,
it's just not out yet and I don't wanna speculate.
But there's certainly a lot of hype for Illuvium.
So let's spin the wheel and see how it goes.
$500.
I first gotta use some of my Ethereum
in my MetaMask wallet,
and then go to SushiSwap and change my Ethereum
into Illuvium coin.
There you go, all done.
Lastly, we have Star Atlas,
which is the smallest game on my list.
A lot like Illuvium, this has a lot of growth potential
as the game isn't actually out yet,
but there is of course more risk involved for the investors.
The Star Atlas game is going to be based in the future,
the year 2620 to be exact.
It will have three factions,
the aliens, the Androids, and the humans.
They claim the game will have a cinema quality
real-time environment.
In essence, it's a strategy game
focused on exploration, role-play
and in space flight simulation.
They say this game will have the option
to be played in first person, third person, and even VR,
which sounds absolutely awesome.
I love a bit of "Star Wars",
so I wouldn't mind some virtual reality space travel,
that's for sure.
I have to say in terms of graphics and gameplay,
Illuvium and Star Atlas look the best.
But they're not out yet.
And it's very common for crypto gaming projects
to promise the world.
So the big question is, will they actually deliver?
Well, they do have a pretty big team.
Many members have been in the business for a while
and some even have a history
at the big video game development company EA Sports.
So this does give me a bit more faith in their abilities
to deliver on their promises.
Something that caught my eyes,
the game is actually built on the Solana a blockchain,
which is different to all the other games.
Solana is a rapidly growing coin
and I'm hearing about it more and more.
According to its developer,
Solana is the fastest blockchain in the world,
capable of processing over 50,000 transactions per second,
compared to Ethereum's 15 or less.
Solana's massive transaction capacity
means more apps and games will be able to run
at the same time without slowing down.
This could offer an advantage to Star Atlas
over the other crypto games.
Star Atlas isn't currently at all time highs,
unlike many of the other games we've mentioned.
But remember, I'm investing money that I can afford to lose.
So with that said, let's spin the wheel
$250.
Because this is a bit more of a complicated process,
let's hop on the computer.
So in order to buy Star Atlas,
I had to go on this website called FTX
and then put in my $250.
There we go. All bought.
Investing in these crypto coins
has been an eyeopening experience for me.
Although I do believe that crypto gaming is the future,
I also knowledge that there are a lot of hurdles
that need to be jumped
before these games get adopted on a mass scale.
Firstly, as I found out,
investing in some of these coins is difficult.
Maybe that's just because I'm a boomer,
but it involves a lot of different tools and websites.
And I think the majority of people
would just give up before investing.
Secondly, they aren't currently comparable
to big title games.
So I can see it being hard for them
to break into the mainstream.
Of course, as teams keep working on the games,
they will improve, but there is a long way to go.
Let me know if you'd like me to make a future video
in which I update you on how these investments are doing
in the comments section below.
So I'm gonna leave the next video right out there,
but don't click on it just yet.
Make sure to subscribe if you wanna grow your wealth.
And don't forget to pick up
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Okay. I'll see you over there.