Australian venture capitalist Mark Carnegie has joined the play-to-earn crypto gaming industry through Crypto Gaming United. In a partnership with Sergei Sergienko, they have led the gaming platform to a $5m seed funding round. The seed funding was oversubscribed according to the projection the founders had.
Already the gaming platform has more than 1500 gamers, which is expected to grow to 100,000 within the next 18 months. At the moment, around 40,000 gamers are lining up to join the gaming platform.
The game has attracted most of the players from the Philippines, with others coming from various countries such as Ukraine, Russia, India, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
The play-to-earn crypto model is where the gamers earn real money from playing. Crypto Gaming United is all about making it easier for gamers to access these platforms. They provide the gamers with knowledge on financial and economical literacy as they upskill their knowledge while gaming. It also offers scholarships to the gamers such that it pays the entry fees to the gaming sites and the continuous learning facilities. In return, the platform will have part of the earnings the gamers win when playing.
Mark Carnegie is a renowned venture capitalist with an interest in various ventures. Sergienko on the other hand is a crypto investor having founded various blockchain and tech start-ups such as MHC Digital Finance and Chrono.tech. Together they are looking to make crypto-to-earn a wealth-creating opportunity to reduce wealth inequality. They understand most of the gamers are individuals who are highly skilled yet from economies with high unemployment rates. They have also been the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
The team looks to secure both financial and social benefits from the success of crypto play-to-earn access.
Is crypto play-to-earn the future of gaming?
With a worth of over $178 billion in 2021, gaming is one of the biggest industries in the world. Even though these figures are likely to increase over the years as the technology becomes more accessible, it comes with various concerns. The centralised gaming system means the game is a property of an individual gaming developer or the company. They can decide to delete the game servers and the players would have no access or control.
At the same time, there are concerns over the cost of in-gaming purchases. By using real money to purchase items like player upgrades and skins, the money goes to the developer while the gamer becomes poorer. Blockchain technology looks to solve these traditional gaming challenges.
Blockchain technology through the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have made gaming more decentralised. Instead of the developer owning everything about the game, the player has stakes as well. These crypto gaming platforms allow the players to treat the games as NFTs. One can transfer their upgraded characters or gaming skins to any other platform or sell them to other gamers.
Better, instead of playing for in-game purchases from their own money, the gamers can earn the native token of the gaming platform which they can use for the purchases or convert to real money.
As most people are looking for ways to make money online, play-to-earn is the ideal future of online gaming.
