01/11/2021 A top crypto exec shares why GameFi is so hot right now - and lists 2 reasons why play-to-earn-games like Axie Infinity are taking the market by storm

Play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity allow users to make real money by earning tokens, creating NFTs, and selling them.Play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity allow users to make real money by earning tokens, creating NFTs, and selling them.

Axie Infinity

  • "GameFi" could transform gaming business models and power the digital economy, according to Huobi's Jeff Mei.
  • Investors are fired up by the rapid use case of decentralized finance and excitement around making money off NFT games likeAxie Infinity.
  • With a $10 million fund, Huobi aims to scale startups working on GameFi - or blockchain-based gaming integrated with DeFi mechanisms.

GameFiis one of the hottest technologies in the crypto ecospace, and early investors can expect gaming-related collectibles to power virtual economies, according to Jeff Mei, director of global strategy at crypto exchange Huobi.

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"Users want the hottest, most innovative, the most creative, the most promising assets on the market," he told Insider in a recent interview.

GameFi, the intersection of decentralized finance and the gaming industry, is attracting mass attention from the crypto community and the biggest gaming guilds in the sector.

The business model allows for players to obtain a share of the dividends brought in from game development, with their most common feature being "play to earn".

Mei laid out two reasons behind its rise: the evolution of financial mechanisms in games, and users liking that they can make money by playing.

He said Huobi, which has a$10 million funddedicated to emerging GameFi projects, is invested in coaching and incubating several early-stage projects because "this is going to be a very hot industry."

Huobi's fund will back GameFi projects in the start-up stage to make an impact in the blockchain world, via marketing and PR support, financial and legal advice, and introductions to potential partners.

"Our investment teams and our research teams are always working around the clock to find these products," Mei said. Supernova, Immutable, and Rangers Protocol are some of the first projects Huobi's investment arm funded.

Jeff Mei, Huobi's director of global strategy.Jeff Mei, Huobi's director of global strategy.

Huobi

"We want to help users find the best projects that might have value, the best projects that might have some type of innovation, some type of quick adoption," he said. "There's so many projects out there that are 'vaporware' - they're fake. They just want to make money and run away."

Huobi, which was founded in China in 2013, no longer operates in its country of origin. The exchange is now looking to expand its presence in countries with high crypto adoption rates and a large retail trader base, including India, Vietnam, and Turkey.

Mei explained that the rationale behind Huobi's expansion strategy, which seems concentrated in Southeast Asia, is that GameFi has huge potential in the region. "We'll be focusing a lot on more retail uses," he said. "For example, in Vietnam right now, one of the most popular GameFi projects is Axie Infinity."

The ethereum-based game, created by Vietnamese developer Sky Mavis, saw its daily active userstop a stunning 1 millionfor the first time in August, in just three years of its launch.

The game's main characters are axolotls called Axies, which are non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, that can be sold or purchased.

NFT collectionshave surged this year, driven by burgeoning demand for play-to-earn games, or as some call it - GameFi. The NFT market hit a record $2.5 billion in sales by July 2021, versus just $13.7 million in the first half of 2020, according to NonFungible.com. Huobi is set to launch its own NFT marketplace in November.

That boom comes from the emergence of layer 2 scaling solutions for ethereum, which has allowed crypto enthusiasts and web 3.0 gamers to trade and mint NFTs without exorbitant transaction fees.

"Gaming has always been hot in Southeast Asia, for example in Korea and Japan. That's the kind of area where we want to go in," Mei said.

While Huobi itself is building some unique projects, it's mostly testing the waters with new, cutting-edge players.

Arts

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/play-to-earn-crypto-gamefi-nft-games-axie-infinity-huobi-2021-10

Interesting NFTs
taro
conceptual art. drawing and digitally processed
Block Chain Dungeon
Once upon a time... a little boy named Leo loved to paint, draw and experiment. He also loved to play with blocks and chains, which drew him again and again into the rooms of his friends Michel and Angelo. Often they also met in virtual rooms of Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space or Sandbox to create new inventions, read books about new technologies, or just swing the brushes. But on this day something gigantic happened. A good friend of Leo came to visit and brought his girlfriend Mona, who wanted a piece of Leo's art on her skin. This was the birth of the NFT's, as Leo developed Non Fungible Tattoos in the Block Chain Dungeon of Michel and Angelo. From that day on people from all over the world came to get NFT's from Leo or one of his students, like "Skeenee the rat", who controls the NFT machine with his laptop. A new age began.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
"Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" is dedicated to the mysterious creation of Bitcoin, and acts as the showcase artwork within Javier Arrés’ exploratory series "Bitcoin, The Origin". "Who is the creator of Bitcoin?" The artist, Arrés, explores this question, and the feelings of doubt and mystery that accompany it, through his unique artistic language. An unknown, an enigma. It should be remembered that the name Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of Bitcoin's author or authors and gives us little insight into its true creator. For this Visual Toy, Arrés uses the signature claw machine, his famous half-operation, to symbolize our collective ignorance and unconfirmed belief: As soon as it has the stuffed animal within its grasp and appears to have solved the puzzle, the animal escapes again, and again. At present, there are three more public and studied possibilities who are either believed to be the creators of the currency or who directly claim the creation of it. It may be all or none of them, yet these three personalities leave us clues which are an important part of this interesting enigma. For this moment, it will remain unknown... In this artwork, Arrés elevates the claw machine from the apparatus, to an iconic pop art object serving as an important element to the Bitcoin creation narrative. Action is everywhere, with each movement serving an iconographical or metaphorical purpose related directly to cryptocurrency: Various ups and downs, roller coasters, mining points, robot, coins and more speak to a sense of hope, risk, mystery, randomness and possibility of pay out. Hundreds of manically thought out details make this creation one of the artist’s most complex Visual Toys to date. ------- "Bitcoin, The Origin" is a set of two Visual Toys, titled "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto" and "It’s Alive!" which reflect and explore the mystery and enigmas behind the creation of Bitcoin. Arrés presents these proposals to us in his signature style, full of iconography, fantasy, maniacal animations and a panoply of details (both subtle and overt) which simultaneously fascinate, hypnotize, and narrate this historical milestone through the singular vision of the artist. Through this series, Arrés freezes a crucial moment of cryptocurrency history, taking a still photo under his vision and turning it into two unique crypto artworks. ---- More info about Javier Arrés: https://javierarres.com/about.html
Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys
In this image, a giant sphinx spoons itself in erotic play within an aquatic styled environment littered by various denizens. These creatures include symbols and archetypes both current and nostalgic–each inhabiting a rootedness within mass cultural adolescence. Among the roster are Servbots, video game inspired mushrooms, a Pacman-like creature, a distant sea faring rubber duck, creatures sporting the symbols reminiscent of popular anime, and a Pokemon-like rabbit (a novel incarnation of Ganesha indicated by the Shiva trident on its nose). In addition, a few sea creatures partly inspired by sea monsters of western antiquity conglomerate along the mid left side of the composition. The Sphinx itself is an amalgam of aquatic, fetishist, ancient Egyptian, and 80’s style adornments, both living, as in a clown fish, or material, such as a cassette tape. Nautically colored antennae receive somatic signals from the atmosphere, perhaps from the 8 Ball moon or giant ringed planet beyond.
I Present to You (Coat Rack)
MISHA KAHN (B. 1989) I Present to You (Coat Rack) Printable 3D model (FBX with vertex colors) together with an MP4 (00:00:08 seconds, 2048 x 2048 pixels) Executed in 2021. This work is unique and is sold as a non-fungible token. token ID: 25589172339488513184097753251259367849292773157707017705630314476132370481153 wallet address: 0x3892f55253893325771bcebda2aaacdd5c793c4c smart contract address: 0x495f947276749Ce646f68AC8c248420045cb7b5e