Bloomberg interviewed the executives of Axie Infinity, behind the metaverse coin AXS, and one of the players who bought the project’s play-to-win (P2E) vision, then suffered five-figure losses. Here are the details…
Full-time job instead of “real games”
Boomberg Crypto tells the story of Alejo Lopez de Armentia, an Argentine immigrant who started playing Axie Infinity amid GameFi enthusiasm in Q3 2021 . Armentia has injected $40,000 of liquidity into the Axie Infinity world’s in-game assets and items since October 2021. At first, this strategy was profitable: the player saw 300-400 percent in weekly profits. Armentia made money in Axie Infinity either way, but mostly by producing in-game characters. But after peaking in November 2021, Axie Infinity’s popularity and all its economic metrics began to fade.
This reduction strengthened the fundamental flaw of Axie Infinity’s tokenomic design. The SLP token is inflationary by default. Therefore, it is under crazy selling pressure, which is growing day by day. Bloomberg’s article uses the following terms:
The game is designed to offer ways to both earn and spend SLP in-game. All tokens spent in-game are lost. However, game winners cash out instead by selling all SLPs on crypto markets, meaning the total number of tokens increases over time. The additional supply drives prices down in the crypto version of hyperinflation.
At the same time, according to the media outlet, Axie Infinity’s gameplay and graphics remain very primitive; One of the Bloomberg reporters refused to even call it “the real game.”
Armentina: “I could have worked at McDonald’s and done more”
As crypto market capitalization fell in Q1 2022, Axie Infinity Problems with their tokenomics became more and more dangerous: people began to aggressively withdraw their SLPs to reduce losses. Up until May 2022, the average Axie Infinity player (Philippines had certain big gaming guilds with thousands of esports players) earned around $0.6 per day. Armentia calculated that she only managed to earn $5,000 during her eight-month journey:
I’ve been in this business since August, so $5,000 in those months is nothing to be proud of, right? I could have worked at McDonald’s and done more.
Metaverse coin, 90 percent below record
Recently, the Sky Mavis team hired Philip La, former product manager of Pokemon Go. He emphasizes in his vision that Axie Infinity should not be seen as an alternative to a full-time job. Instead of; “It has to be a game first and foremost,” La told Bloomberg Crypto. At the time of writing, the AXS token changed hands at $17.03, a 90 percent drop from its all-time high, while the SLP token lost 98.95 percent of its net worth.
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