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
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By OthersideDeployer
The Moth Catcher
In this psychologically bed-headed portrait, a creature sets in a trance; his eyes devolved and vestigal, his third eye open but hardened and in a form resembling a Sharingan. The imagery therefore expresses an awareness existing in corporeal introspection. The creature’s mind sprouts, on the left side, an emerging face, grinning. To the right side of the head, red tentacles and fingers intertwine–a collaboration of invertebrate and vertebrate consciousness cooperatively handling paint brushes of the sort used to build an oil painting. The neck and throat bristle with random thorns, as from a rose or the upper portions of a beak sprouting from its flesh. The neck itself disassociates into layers of membranous material, terminating upon an abstracted base of convoluted forms composing its body. The nose is virtually non existent, more a sinus reiterative of the shape of the third eye. Set against the exposed teeth peering out of thick, meaty cheeks, a skeleton-like impression results. That impression sets behind a visceral set of lips and tongue, which is the creature’s prime seat of awareness. Sensual, organic, the tongue organ hangs, meaty, and with consciousness of a sea cucumber. It illuminates at the tip, drawing the attraction of a nearby moth–with mystery of purpose.
The Scion
A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.
The River of Emeralds
Golden conditions at one of my favorite locations in the Rockies. The light, the colors, the textures; what more can you ask for? I just loved the way this river flowed into the sunset and the mountains in the background. It's rare you find a scene as perfect as this one. But when you do, you have to take advantage of it.
CryptoKitties
Good morning! I'm Kitty #349562. I believe the world is flat. It wasn't heavily publicized, but I once had a brief relationship with Hobbes. In time you'll learn how purrfect I am.