116% Surge for WAX Coin: The Amazon of Virtual Goods
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WAX Coin, the crypto for a platform with plans to be the ‘Amazon’ of in-game items, has been the biggest winner in the recent uptick in the crypto market.
Having sunk to $0.08 last Friday, WAX coin has since doubled in value, with its market cap surging by 116% from $59m to 128m. At press time, WAX is trading at $0.15.
Established last year, the WAX protocol is building a platform and a secondary market for users to buy and sell virtual items used in blockchain-based games.
The coin, which began trading in December, went from its initial value of $0.78 to $2.76 by mid-January: a billion-dollar increase to a total value of $1.3bn, according to CoinMarketCap. WAX coin experienced a significant cutback in its value, falling to $0.42 by the beginning of February. By mid-June, the coin was valued at $0.13: a 95% fall from its early-year high.
Created by developers from OPSkins, another virtual marketplace but for conventional video games, WAX has said that it wants to be the “Amazon” of virtual items. A trade would see a singular item pulled off a game and made tradeable on the platform before being reuploaded; WAX would take a small cut for each transaction made on the platform.
Why Is WAX Going Up?
Mike Novogratz, an early-stage Wall Street investor into cryptocurrency and WAX, recently tweeted that not only was the size of the video game industry substantial but that it also marked a “powerful intersection” with cryptocurrency.
In the next six months, $wax will amaze. I am constantly amazed at the size of the gaming world. It dwarfs the crypto world right now. We invested because we see this as a powerful intersection. https://t.co/VOclA9wC3c
— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) June 29, 2018
Although controversial, with some game developers criticising the project for profiteering from objects that don’t belong to them, WAX announced earlier today that its trading service was the third most popular dApp over the past week.
Called ExpressTrade, it allows users to trade in-game items amongst themselves; and the virtual item customizing company, VGO, has transacted over 630 ETH in the past week.
Blockchain Games
Since the Crypto Kitties debacle, there has been a concerted effort to improve the compatibility of gaming with cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
As Crypto Briefing has already pointed out, the virtual and crypto-world share a lot of characteristics. Ever since games started to become complex around two decades ago, most have utilized some form of in-game currency needed to buy in-game items.
Last week, developers at Enjin announced the launch of a new Ethereum token, the ERC-1155, which recognizes the different characteristics of fungible items, like ammunition or health-packs, with non-fungible goods, such as customized armor or weapons.
Because of the fact that most gamers are already au fait with using virtual currency, albeit centralized ones, the industry is conceptually further ahead than many other sectors and has already being adapted.
The Loom Network, which enables users to build their own social media-friendly computer games, has received a lot of attention from the community following the beta-release of its Sidechain Development Kit, a few weeks ago.
The author is invested in ETH, which is mentioned in this article.
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