Olympic Pay-to-Play Games Ruining the Games' Integrity? | 2.3.22

GM Ser,

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Olympic Pay-to-Play Games Ruining the Games' Integrity?

Game developer nWay along with the International Olympic Game committee have joined forces for a pay-to-play game titled Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022. 

This is a multi-player game, but just before you go thinking your skill with the controller will get you to the top of the pedestal, think again. NFTs will play a big role in this game as boosts for players to have an edge. In short – the more you shell out for the in-game bonuses, the more you’ll win. 

Here we thought the Olympics didn’t condone performance improvement enhancers. 

The game will feature mini games such as slalom skiing, snowboard cross, slopestyle, and ski cross. Players will be able to make their own avatars and compete against other people for the gold. 

Developers intend to update the game frequently with new sports and game play. 

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GameStop Sets Forth Towards Carbon Neutrality

GameStop has announced their upcoming marketplace to sell NFTs, but they’ve also just announced that they will be partnering with Immutable X for the launch.  

GS chose to go with Immutable X over ethereum due to their “zero gas fees for trading and minting NFTs in a carbon-neutral environment.”

The upcoming marketplace promotes digital real estate, in-game skins and assets and low costs. 

In an effort to further their environmentally conscious efforts, the gaming retailer has also chosen to partner with Trace and Cool Effect.

In conjunction with their marketplace news, GS and Immutable have launched a $100 million fund to go towards the development of gaming in web3. GS isn’t the first of its kind to launch a fund like this. 

Web3 Welcomes the Wedding March

It’s happening: the first wedding to debut in the web3 space is taking place on February 6, 2022. 

The couple, Dinesh Kshatriya and his fiancé Janaganandhini Ramaswamy, have taken their nuptials to a whole new level; the metaverse. Having already created an NFT collection around their big day, the avatars of the bride and groom sold out in seconds. 

Copies of the NFT sold for $10 with one of the copies being resold at 400x times the original price. 

“I feel so proud and blessed that I have seen and taken advantage of many great opportunities in this world before millions of people have seen them,” said the groom. 

NFT Wash Trading – Is It Worth It?

In the short answer; no. It’s not worth it. 

A handful of wallets have been found to have been “wash trading” their NFTs. A term the community uses to identify the reselling of an NFT to the same owner so that the price and value seem to be going up, even though it’s just the original owner on each end. 

It may seem like a useful tool in order to make more off what you bought, but in the long run experts say, it’s just not worth it. 

One of the highest NFT wash traded wallets made 830 transfers, only to make just over $8,000. The hope is someone else will buy the upsell NFT and cover the cost of all the gas fees the owner had to pay in order to hike up the price. 

Chainanalysis, a company that monitors technology on the blockchain reported that out of 152 wash traded NFTs, there was a “collective loss of more than $400,000.”

Kimberly Grauer, director of research at Chainalysis said, “The underlying sentiment is that all NFT activity is wash trading, but especially when it comes to times to pay gas fees, it’s not something that makes a whole lot of sense to do.”