Key takeaways:
- On the heels of a recent Coinbase listing, GALA has become the best performing blockchain gaming token of 2021 in terms of price value
- The crypto gaming sector has experienced exponential growth due to new monetization mechanics and metaverse hype
- Certain gaming tokens are reaching market capitalizations larger than their more established non-blockchain counterparts
Blockchain gaming token GALA, a centerpiece of the broader Gala Games ecosystem, has hit a new all-time high as investors flocked to the token after the Coinbase listing on November 16. GALA joins the likes of Decentraland (MANA), The Sandbox (SAND), Enjin Coin (ENJ), and several more gaming-focused crypto projects that have been experiencing massive growth lately.
Gaming tokens are outperforming BTC and ETH and setting new price records despite the market pullback
As Bitcoin dipped below $60,000 on Thursday, most crypto assets, except certain outliers such as Crypto.com Coin (CRO) and Avalanche (AVAX), followed suit. However, digital currencies from the rapidly growing gaming sector appear to have weathered the pullback completely unaffected by the broader market trend.
As is always the case, several different factors play a role in the gaming sector’s low price correlation to other crypto assets in the market. One of the critical reasons for the current gaming token rally is undoubtedly the hype surrounding metaverse projects. Virtual reality building companies reached unprecedented heights after the social media giant Facebook announced its rebrand to ‘Meta’ late last month and proclaimed VR worlds are the future.
The second potential reason for the gaming token rally is the introduction of a new monetization model, the so-called Play-to-Earn (P2E), which allows players to collect digital tokens and expand their in-game inventories with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based gaming items. By simply playing the game, players are able to earn income – a stark contrast to many of today’s most popular video games, which often require players to purchase items if they want to stay competitive (Play-to-Win (P2W) concept) but allow no (legal) way of converting their gaming items for cash.
Although we have introduced the P2E model and the long-term prospects of metaverse as the key drivers fueling the large gains in the sector, and for a good reason, the top blockchain gaming companies are currently boasting market valuations that can only be explained by massive market speculation.
The prices in the sector seem to be inflated, and many projects are reaching market capitalizations larger than established gaming companies with millions of users while having tiny communities and only alpha versions of their virtual gaming worlds currently available. For instance, Decentraland has a market cap of $6.75 billion while having less than 1,000 concurrent daily users. On the other hand, a non-blockchain metaverse, VRChat, regularly tops 1 million daily active users while having an estimated market value of $1 billion.
Which gaming tokens have performed the best so far?
For most of the year, Axie Infinity (AXS) was the best performing gaming token in terms of price gain. AXS was the second-biggest gainer in the market for a couple of months, only trailing behind the red hot Shiba Inu (SHIB).
In the last week, AXS was overtaken by GALA. The recent listing on Coinbase pushed the token to new heights. At the time of this writing, GALA is up more than 300x since the start of the year, ahead of AXS and SAND by a considerable margin.
Although the crypto gaming industry is still in its infancy, the long-term potential is clear, and investors realize that. However, it is worth noting that the list of top gaming tokens will likely look very different a year from now.
We’ve compiled a list of nearly every gaming token on the market in our brand new gaming assets category, where you can follow the latest news updates and price movements of your favorite coins.
