Hamster racing, snail racing, and now marble racing. It’s all taking place in Web3.
Hamsters.gg, a platform purporting to be the primary ever to livestream hamster races, has quickly gathered a devoted following of betters within the Web3 house wanting to amass fortunes by means of races. Hamsters are put into specifically designed racing lanes outfitted with automated beginning gates. Previous to the start of every race, customers can place wagers on the racing hamster they favor.
The idea shortly grew to become in style, resulting in the creation of quite a few comparable platforms that includes totally different animals, akin to Snail Trail ($SLIME), Race (RABBIT), and Rat Roulette (RAT).
CoinGecko, a outstanding cryptocurrency analytics platform, has even taken the step to create a devoted class on its web site particularly for this area of interest. On the time of writing, the market cap for animal racing cash is $7.44 million.
Whereas stranger issues have caught the curiosity of the NFT house, the query stays: Why is there a rising fascination with these unconventional racing tokens?
How did we get right here?
It’s no secret that the crypto panorama is at present bearish, and NFT gross sales have been experiencing a downturn for some time now. At the beginning of 2023, we skilled an optimistic second the place gross sales had been up 43 %. Nevertheless, this development wouldn’t proceed because the 12 months wore on. The ground costs of in style collections — akin to Azuki and Bored Ape Yacht Membership — noticed regular declines, and highly-anticipated drops resulted in letdowns.
When the efficiency of conventional investments is lackluster, some traders discover various methods, notably people who might provide substantial returns, akin to coin presales, quick-flip NFT initiatives, and pump-and-dump schemes.
In step with this, the pursuit of extra profitable alternatives has performed a big function in fueling the elevated curiosity in playing tokens. Traders are attracted to those high-risk, high-reward avenues as they search to maximise their earnings, even towards the backdrop of a broader market downturn.
The scenario isn’t solely unfamiliar. Not way back, we noticed an identical development with the frenzy surrounding meme cash akin to $PEPE and $WOJAK.
Whereas this will likely current alternatives for some people to get wealthy shortly, it doesn’t assist with crypto’s already negative reputation related to scams, presumably hindering the business’s capability to achieve broader acceptance.
Parallels to conventional markets
The thrill surrounding the potential to capitalize on most of these fast-paced investments isn’t distinctive to Web3. It’s no totally different from people who proceed to spend on lottery tickets or on line casino video games in periods of financial downturn.
In actual fact, in line with a research from the National Library of Medicine, “contributors who skilled monetary issues as a result of financial disaster had been 52 % extra prone to have purchased a lottery ticket through the recession interval in comparison with those that weren’t affected financially by the disaster.”
In essence, this underlines a basic similarity between conventional and digital economies. Whether or not or not this development will final, it reveals the age-old human inclination to hunt alternatives for speedy wealth creation, even amid financial downturns and towards appreciable odds. The mix of thrill, novelty, and potential for revenue is a compelling proposition that continues to attract increasingly individuals to those streams of revenue.