In games with a blockchain layer, the player does not deviate from the rules: accumulate assets by completing quests, developing his character or winning battles.
Except that the assets received as rewards take the form of cryptos or NFT (skins, unique equipment), which can then be resold in-game or elsewhere.
A big difference that is helping to blow up the GameFi. Let’s meet 10 cryptos (and projects) that are outperforming in a prolonged bear market.
The best video game cryptos to buy
Here are the 10 video game cryptocurrencies that we think have the best bullish potential right now:
- RobotEra (TARO)
- Calvaria ($RIA)
- Tamadoge (TAMA)
- Battle Infinity (IBAT)
- Lucky Block (LBLOCK)
- Decentraland (MANA)
- ApeCoin (APE)
- The Sandbox (SAND)
- Enjin Coin (ENJ)
- Axie Infinity (AXS)
Top 10 best video game cryptos: analysis
Let’s take a closer look at our selection of the best crypto video games.
RobotEra (TARO): a game where creation is limitless
RobotEra is a new project that has just appeared in the already vast universe of crypto-currencies. This Play 2 Earn and PVP game offers you to enter an exciting world where creation is king.
In fact, the platform allows you to use its editing software to create your own world on the virtual terrains that you can acquire.
You will explore the planet Taro via your avatar, a robot, which will be in the form of an NFT. You will be able to create other robotic companions who will also be in the form of NFT.
The universe of RobotEra proposes a universe where it will be possible to participate in cultural events such as fictitious concerts (like the one of Travis Scott on Fortnite), visits of museums, etc.
With the ability to access an NFT marketplace, it will be possible to buy, sell and trade NFTs. RobotEra’s ecosystem will be powered by its native token, the TARO, currently in pre-sale.
Why invest in TARO?
- A Play 2 Earn game
- An NFT marketplace
- A strong potential for 2023
Calvaria (RIA): the new fantasy card game
Play 2 Earn crypto games allow you to potentially win money while playing. They have been very successful for some time. Among them, we can mention Calvaria as a newcomer in this market.
Calvaria is a P2E game that is set in an epic fantasy universe. The goal will be to collect playing cards and then challenge other opponents to win rewards.
What makes the project unique is that Calvaria offers two tokens. The $RIA token will be used to power the general Calvaria ecosystem while the $eRIA will be used to reward players.
Calvaria offers an experience worthy of the name by providing an epic universe where it will be possible to benefit from innovative and rewarding services and features, which is very promising.
Why invest in $RIA?
- A fun and exciting game
- Opportunity to earn rewards
- One of the best card games on the market
Tamadoge (TAMA): a retro video game with a record pre-sale
Tamadoge is a video game set to be released in 2023, taking codes from Pokemon Go, Axie Infinity and the Tamagotchis of twenty years ago. In this game, players can create their own Tamadoge, then feed it as it grows from puppy to adult doge.
Each TamaPets has its own statistics, strengths and weaknesses, and the way you take care of it as it grows obviously has its influence.
Once your Tamadoge has reached adulthood, it’s time for battle. Winners climb the leaderboards and earn TAMA token rewards.
Tamadoge’s gameplay takes place in the Tamaverse. Eventually, the Tamadoge development team hopes to launch an augmented reality app that will allow users to play with their Tamadoge in a more immersive way.
Why invest in TAMA?
- Already more than 800% gain after his listing on OKX, and it’s not over
- 50% of the offering (2 billion tokens) was reserved for pre-sale, 20% of the tokens will be reserved for future listings on crypto-currency exchanges.
Battle Infinity (IBAT) : excellent GameFi crypto at less than 1 dollar
Battle Infinity could potentially be the best crypto game ever. Based on the Unreal 3D graphics engine, the game developed by an Indian studio is inspired by both the aesthetics of Sorare and the codes of card games.
The player has access to six different battle arenas to compete against other players and earn rewards. Its flagship arena is the IBAT Premier League, where several disciplines see players compete against each other in teams of NFT avatars.
Battle Swap allows players to purchase the IBAT token, the platform’s native token, and exchange it for other currencies. The Battle Market attaches a floor value to assets and characters used in the game, which players can resell.
Hosted on the NBB Chain, the game allows players to play but also to monetize their land and display spaces, a form of sponsorship.
Why invest in IBAT?
- Staking possible Battle Staking
- Already $40 million in capitalization after a record pre-sale
Lucky Block (LBLOCK): an NFT game to win $1 million
Lucky Block is a platform where users participate in daily and weekly drawings to win a variety of attractive prizes, ranging from simple NFTs to a Lamborghini.
Hosted on Ethereum, the Lucky Block app differs from traditional gambling platforms in the transparency and fairness brought by the blockchain.
A big part of Lucky Block’s appeal is the weekly contests. You will need to purchase an NFT from the Lucky Block Platinum Rollers Club NFT collection to be eligible to participate.
The prize is a $1 million house, $1 million in BTC, an NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection and an all-expense paid vacation.
Why invest in LBLOCK?
- LBLOCK V2 is listed on LBank, MEXC and Gate.io
- Innovative platform with transparent prints, impossible to fake
- Deflationary token: a 1% monthly burn that began on September 30
- After V1, Lucky Block recently launched the LBLOCK V2, an ERC-20 token that allows quotation on centralized exchanges and does not include the 12% transaction fee of V1
Decentraland (MANA): pioneer of metavers
Built on Ethereum, Decentraland is an open world that players can freely explore and where they can interact, buy, sell. It is reminiscent of Minecraft and, going further back, the very popular Second Life game of the 2000s.
The particularity of Decentraland lies in the “land” aspect: it is possible to acquire virtual land, to rent it or to build a real activity on it. Banks such as JP Morgan, publishers such as Atari and other luxury brands have even decided to buy a plot!
Each parcel (a “Land”) is backed by an NFT issued on Ethereum. This NFT serves as a title deed, unfalsifiable and negotiable on the marketplace. In June 2021, a parcel was sold for over $800,000!
Why invest in the MANA and LAND of Decentraland?
- Investment of $3,000: a 16×16 meter plot of land is purchased at the low price of 4,800 MANA.
- Possibility to invest on a loaned land: if you don’t have a LAND, it is possible to create events on a borrowed LAND. A part of the revenues collected by the owner are transferred to you.
- Pioneer: despite a myriad of competing projects, Decentraland remains the most publicized.
ApeCoin (APE): the token of the iconic studio Yuga Labs
The ApeCoin is the token launched by Yuga Labs for its ecosystem including NFT collections (who doesn’t know BAYC?), games and its future Otherside metaverse.
While APE has not escaped the bear market that affects all cryptos, it did jump in July when Otherside’s demo was unveiled – causing traffic and fees on Ethereum to jump!
While Otherside will not open to the public until 2023, NFT sales related to the metaverse are already active, with impressive volumes. Otherside will be composed of plots called Otherdeeds, which can only be acquired with APEs.
Why invest in ApeCoin?
- Excitement around the future Otherside metavers
- Successful NFT collections from Yuga Labs, the most iconic NFT design studio
The SandBox (SAND): the playground for video game creators
Hosted on Ethereum, The Sandbox is a metaverse competitor to Decentraland, but more gaming oriented. It is an open world where players can buy plots of land (also called LAND and there are 166,464 of them) to set up activities of all kinds.
Again, monetization is at the heart of The SandBox universe, with NFTs and the SAND token. Three tools are at the heart of The Sandbox.
The VoxEdit NFT tool allows you to design various 3D models that will be used in the game (scenery, characters, creatures, etc.). There is also a marketplace to resell your assets to other users. Finally, there is a Game Maker to develop the main structures of the game.
The price of SAND and LAND plots has skyrocketed with the arrival of over 100 brands in The SandBox. These include Binance, Atari, The Walking Dead series, Renault, as well as celebrities (Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg …).
Why invest in The Sandbox’s SAND and LAND?
- Rain of partnerships: French project, The Sandbox multiplies partnerships with brands
- Progressiveness: you can buy LANDs and group them in ESTATE
- Possibility to invest on a loaned land: if you don’t have a LAND, it is possible to create events on a borrowed LAND. A part of the revenues collected by the owner are transferred to you.
Enjin Coin (ENJ): the crypto of decentralized gaming
Enjin Coin is a project of Enjin, a company that provides an ecosystem of interconnected blockchain-based gaming products .
Enjin’s flagship offering is Enjin Network, an online gaming platform through which users can create websites and clans, chat and host virtual item stores.
While gaming is the main target market, giants such as Microsoft, BMW and Samsung are interested in it to reward their customers. Enjin allows game developers to tokenize game elements on the Ethereum blockchain.
ENJ is an ERC-20 token that serves as an exchange currency. It was announced in July 2017 and launched on the main Ethereum network in June 2018.
Enjin Coin (ENJ) is a digital store of value: with each NFT created on Enjin Network, ENJs are locked into these NFTs and thus permanently removed from the circulating supply.
Why invest in Enjin Coin’s ENJ?
- Unique project, with no real competitor on the blockchain (its competitors are Steam)
- Strong community that has propelled ENJ into the top 100, valued at $500 million
Axie Infinity (AXS): the biggest success among blockchain video games
AXS is the token for the global hit Axie Infinity. Launched in 2018 by the Vietnamese studio, it’s a game built on Ethereum that borrows heavily from the Pokémon series. Players breed and collect creatures named Axies, each with an NFT identity.
The goal is to train your Axis, and to win battles against other players’ Axis (in teams of 3 Axis), or against monsters in the countless quests.
It is possible to sell your Axie on the marketplace integrated into the game: last July, an Axie even changed trainer for nearly $700,000!
The best Axies have qualities developed through special training or inherited from their parents. Indeed, it is possible to mate an Axie to another, their offspring inheriting the traits and skills of the parents.
The game is developed by the Sky Mavis studio, based in Singapore. The studio is paid with commissions from Axies exchanges and reproductions.
Why invest in Axie Infinity’s AXS and SLP?
- An initial investment of $200: you can get your first Axie for about 0.08 ETH or 206 euros at the current price
- A global success: nearly $4 billion in NFTs already exchanged, the game has risen from a mega-hack of the Ronin blockchain and the loss of $600 million
What is the use of a crypto in video games?
The usefulness of cryptos in the video game world is based on three logics:
- Giving players more power: over assets, characters, weapons, virtual terrain, … The same goes for governance, as in some even more elaborate titles, players administer the worlds themselves and define the rules.
- Refining the exclusivity of certain game resources: when you own armor in the form of an NFT, it is impossible, even for the game administrators, to take it away from you. This is a must when you know that some ultra-rare NFTs can be bought for insane amounts of money on the secondary market.
- Provide players with a passive income (“play-to-earn”): to give them a lasting incentive to stay, play and popularize the game among their friends.
Let’s go back to the example of the game Axie Infinity, which will allow you to see more clearly.
The use of cryptos in video games: the example of Axie Infinity
Two cryptocurrencies are at the heart of the economic model of the game imagined by the Vietnamese of Sky Mavis:
Axie Shards (AXS ~ 12 dollars) allow you to influence the development of the game, with 1 AXS = 1 governance vote. You also need AXS to reproduce your Axies: at least 2 AXS for the birth of a new creature. AXS are obtained by reaching the top of the ranking of a group of players.
Smooth Love Potion (SLP ~ $0.005) is also needed for your Axies to reproduce. 300 SLP = 1 reproduction, then it goes up to 6300 SLP at the seventh and last generation.
Why invest in a video game crypto?
There are at least three reasons for a crypto-investor to be interested in the blockchain video game sector.
The crazy growth of GameFi
GameFi (contraction of gaming and finance) is without a doubt the sector that is weathering the bear market best. Simply because it has real fundamentals: gamers play, regardless of the macroeconomic context.
Venture capital firms have understood this and are injecting huge amounts of money into this sector. The fundraising for metavers and gaming projects amounts to $2.4 billion this year ($874 million in 2021).
Major transactions:
- Epic Games (from whom we owe Fortnite), $2 billion raised last April. The first billion came from Sony, the second from Kirkbi, parent company of the Lego brand.
- Animoca Brands (key investor in Sky Mavis), $459 million raised in two rounds, in June and July.
- Temasek, $200 million raised for the Australian studio immutable.
The perspectives of the metaverse
Since announcing its decision to rename itself Meta on October 28, Facebook has helped fuel an unprecedented speculative rally in metaverse-related crypto projects.
Of course, Meta does not intend to rely on a third-party project, it owns its own – but this change of course validates the immense financial potential of this sector, already glimpsed with the success of Fortnite from the Epic Games studio (over 360 million players).
Passive income
We believe that the most interesting projects are those that put NFTs (non-fungible tokens) at the heart of their system, in other words, digital property certificates within an open world.
If you have an NFT in Decentraland representing a plot of land, you can build on it and resell it at a profit, or rent your plot. The games transform game assets into real passive income sources, which can be used in real life.
Diversify your portfolio
“Gamers gonna game”: GameFi is the sector least impacted by the bear market. In addition, more quality projects are developed in a bear market.
Projects that are not considered to be serious are no longer finding liquidity. The only ones that can still be financed are those that make sense.
It is therefore interesting to invest part of your capital in projects such as Robotera or Calvaria whose potential is more than interesting for 2023.
How to find the best crypto gaming?
To find the best crypto gaming, there is no miracle recipe. You have to dig into the pre-sales to position yourself as an early investor, or else jump on the bandwagon early enough. Three families of tools will help you detect the crypto gaming nuggets.
Data aggregators
Several sites track the information of hundreds of decentralized applications (dApps), the DeFi protocol and their evolution.
DexTools gathers information from dApps on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche and summarizes everything for you in dashboards. It’s a must-have!
DappRadar is similar to Dextools and supports a large number of blockchains to track the data of the present dApps in real time.
The crypto community
Reddit and Twitter are two epicenters of the cryptosphere. Reddit in particular is a favorite hangout for crypto enthusiasts and analysts.
r/CryptoCurrencies is the biggest subreddit, and certainly the best moderated. You will find very constructive exchanges on various GameFi projects, analyses and sometimes very useful unofficial information from observers close to the teams involved.
r/SatoshiStreetBets and r/CryptoMarkets are two other subreddits to follow.
News related to this field
Rather than browsing crypto news sites one by one, use a news aggregator and apply filters to follow GameFi projects.
Messari is our favorite aggregator to follow altcoins. In addition to aggregating news feeds by project, it works like CoinMarketCap (which was bought by Binance, ed. note) by giving price statistics on more than 2000 cryptos: 24/7/30d movements, volumes, market cap, etc. Note: free, but with paid packages.
CryptoPanic is a news aggregator in English. It works a bit like Messari but has the advantage of being 100% free. Our favorite mobile app to follow GameFi news.
How to buy the best crypto video games?
There are different ways to be able to buy a crypto specific to the video game world. Either on its official website or on a specialized crypto platform.
On the official website
Some cryptos like RobotEra or Calvaria are available, for the moment, in presale. To buy these tokens, you will have to go through the project website. Here is an example.
- Visit the official website of RobotEra
- Connect your wallet to the platform
- Buy TARO with USDT, ETH or credit card
On a crypto exchange platform
Other cryptos are now available on exchange platforms like OKX. Let’s take the example of Tamadoge to illustrate the buying process.
- Visit the OKX website
- After registering, purchase USDT with your card
- Then search for “TAMA” and click on “Trade” or “Invest”.
- Then complete the purchase order to finalize the transaction
Conclusion
Through our top 10, you will have glimpsed the diversity of cryptocurrencies you could invest in, as the GameFi sector is far from monolithic:
- Les play-to-earn : Axie Infinity (AXS et SLP), Tamadoge (TAMA), Battle Infinity (IBAT)
- The metaverse: Decentraland (MANA), The SandBox (SAND)
- Digital art and NFT related to metavers: Apecoin (APE), Enjin Coin (ENJ)
- Infrastructure projects: Bora (BORA), Wax (WAXP)
The integration of blockchain is intended to meet several gaming challenges: preventing in-game cheating, rewarding player loyalty, giving them more latitude in the management of their assets, securing transactions or giving players the opportunity to influence the development of their favorite game.
FAQ about crypto video games
What are the best video game crypto-currencies?
The best cryptos in video games are certainly RobotEra and Calvaria as we explain in this detailed review.
Why buy the best gaming cryptos?
For their bullish potential first of all, as they outperform BTC and ETH in a complicated macro context. For other reasons as well, which we elaborate on here.
How to buy crypto for video games?
On its presale site (ICO), on an exchange or on a CFD trading platform.