VICTORIA, Seychelles, Aug. 12, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bybit, the third most visited cryptocurrency exchange in the world, announced the launch of its brand-new specialized NFT portal GrabPic, where Bybit users can purchase state-of-the-art NFTs at attractive prices, with no gas fee, and trade for profit in the secondary market.
This release is another product innovation from Bybit in response to user demands. With GrabPic, Bybit offers high quality, exclusive NFT projects from crypto-native and traditional artists, GameFi projects, Metaverse projects and many more. As a specialized portal on the Bybit NFT Marketplace, GrabPic enables artists and creatives curious about the NFT space to enter with minimal technological barriers, and serves a niche audience through showcasing affordable and unique NFT art. GrabPic aims to democratize the NFT experience for those underserved by existing offerings on both the creator and the collector sides.
In the coming months, GrabPic will gradually release a wide spectrum of features to open up earning opportunities for NFT traders through fun and rewarding experiences.
GrabPic Opens Its Doors With Zero to Hero Book NFTs and Two PFP NFT Projects
To further spur interest among the community, GrabPic is featuring exclusive NFTs from Zero to Hero, Mamo.wtf, and SIMP in the launch.
Zero to Hero marks the very first NFT book collection offered by Bybit. This new NFT collection is created by Anndy Lian, a celebrated thought leader in the crypto and NFT community. With its initial launch to the market on GrabPic, Zero to Hero is a call to anyone and everyone excited about the prospect of the world of NFT. Bound by imagination only, the NFT space is still in its early days and early adopters can be a “hero” in their search for new possibilities.
Mamo.wtf and SIMP are profile picture (PFP) NFT projects created by crypto native artists, both with 10,000 pieces. Inspired by artificial intelligence, outer space, civilization, and more, the projects engage the community in meaningful discourses beyond the pixels.
About Bybit
Bybit is a cryptocurrency exchange established in March 2018 that offers a professional platform where crypto traders can find an ultra-fast matching engine, excellent customer service and multilingual community support. Bybit is a proud partner of Formula One racing team, Oracle Red Bull Racing, esports teams NAVI, Astralis, Alliance, Virtus.pro, Made in Brazil (MIBR) and Oracle Red Bull Racing Esports, and association football (soccer) teams Borussia Dortmund and Avispa Fukuoka.
Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.
Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.
An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.
Market experts argue that GameFi is not gambling. It refers to the financialisation of video gaming and could transform gaming business models and power the digital economy, they say.
New Delhi: Crypto industry is betting big on the GameFi industry with billions of dollars invested, but in the Asian market, the segment is likely to face a stiff and severe challenge, thanks to strict and rigid regulations in multiple countries.
The existing laws and regulations are quite hostile for GameFi. Countries like South Korea and China have had laws about converting in-game tokens into fiat currency for nearly 15 years.
In South Korea, gaming is a serious industry and has its own regulatory code – strictly prohibiting speculative acts, gambling and free gifts. Its laws prohibit converting game tokens into cash.
Market experts argue that GameFi is not gambling. It refers to the financialisation of video gaming and could transform gaming business models and power the digital economy, they say.
Obasi Francis, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, DeSpace said that GameFi can be defined as the combination of video games (gaming) and decentralised finance (DeFi).
The People’s Bank of China has put a blanket ban on crypto trading, whereas Japan is convinced enough to consider it as gambling. In India, the Supreme Court has questioned the government to clear its stance on the legitimacy of cryptos.
Anndy Lian, Chairman, BigONE Exchange said that GameFi is not Defi. Playing hard to earn in the game and then allow it to turn into coupons so that you can buy some food is not gambling.
“There are games that are tokenised but not listed on any exchanges and only able to redeem very specific things and not cash directly,” he added. “They are only doing it in their own ecosystem.”
Crypto gaming has grown in popularity as it allows players to collect and trade virtual assets that can be exchanged and traded anywhere in the world. It has emerged as a way to earn money from the gaming industry in a safe and secure manner.
However, GameFi is more about the yield, than the game. Games like Axie Infinity, whose native token has delivered multibagger returns, do not have many daily active users, and most of its user base comes from developing countries.
Currently, the blockchain games have more talkers than players. These games lack an active gamer base as users want to reap the yield and not play the game. Also, the in-game economy suffers from crippling inflation.
Unlike conventional games, blockchain games enable users to make money by buying, selling and exchanging non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for various in-game items, said Francis.
On the other hand, Lian agrees that GameFi is not more developed in low per capita countries. “Game content and quality comes first and not the earnings,” he added.
Undoubtedly, GameFi is one of the hottest technologies in the crypto eco-space, and early investors can expect gaming-related collectibles to power the virtual economy.
But the games can’t go mainstream in Asia’s major markets because authorities would crack down using laws. Also, such GameFi are not getting too popular to gain the benefits of word of mouth.
“Ease of transactions, the ability to play anywhere, and the elevated levels of safety and security, GameFi enhances the overall gaming experience for game players while providing new sources of revenue for developers,” said Francis.
However, the concept involves giving players financial incentives to play and progress through games. Though, for the growth of industry, blockchain game developers must work harder to drive that.
“If regulators think that GameFi is gambling, then maybe they should ban NFT too,” said Lian of BigOne. “NFT is a lottery when it comes to mystery boxes. Regulators need to dive deep and not look at the surface.”
Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.
Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.
An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.
The gaming industry is worth billions of dollars, predicted to generate $179.7 billion in 2020, with by comparison the global film industry reaching $100 billion in revenue for the first time in 2019.
According to Statista, over 2.7 billion people in the world actively or passively play video games, with China ranked first as the biggest gaming market just ahead of the US. In this dynamic market, the latest innovation, a crossover genre between crypto and gaming is a new breed of play-to-earn games or GameFi. GameFi is a concept that provides monetary incentives to gamers through a play-to-earn model, as opposed to the traditional “play-to-win” model that has been popular in the gaming industry.
How is the metaverse taking shape?
The Metaverse concept has also recently gained popularity, thanks in part to incorporating blockchain technology into GameFi, but also clearly driven by the growth of the gaming market. Not surprisingly tech titans dominated by gaming including Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony are joining forces to form the XR Association, which is aimed at bringing this concept of an ‘experiential reality to life.
Not to be outdone at the end of June Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a big bold play, basically laying out the future for Facebook in the metaverse, before changing the company’s name to Meta, reflecting the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media. Zuckerberg declared that “the metaverse will not be created by one company. It will be built by creators and developers making new experiences and digital items that are interoperable and unlock a massively larger creative economy.” Microsoft, worth $2.5 trillion, and $731 billion Nvidia, quickly followed suit with their own metaverse visions, reported Forbes.
Of course, anyone who’s seen the movie The Social Network, or has seen recent evidence on how Facebook can do harm through manipulating its online users’ behavior, is certainly going to wonder if the metaverse is going to be safe with a giant like Facebook. As Tim Sweeney, the CEO of leading gaming company Epic, which has raised $1 billion to support their long-term vision of the metaverse, remarked:
“This Metaverse is going to be far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government, and be a god on Earth.” And as UK-based blockchain startup Outlier Ventures pointed out, the need to have a crypto decentralized core is therefore paramount: “The defining characteristic of a true Metaverse is that it needs its own economy and currencies native to it, where value can be earnt, spent, lent, borrowed or invested interchangeably in both a physical or virtual sense and most importantly without the need for a government.”
According to metaverse proponents, the success of GameFi coupled with the growth of NFTs may provide the solution required to make a more inter-operable metaverse which is free from domination by the likes of Facebook a reality. It’s also worth noting that China has itself started to take the metaverse seriously, presenting China with
“great opportunities and revolutionary effects,”
Zuo Pengfei, a researcher at the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argued in a September article. It’s interesting that more recently Zuo, agreed that the metaverse has “an inherent monopoly gene,” and that care must be taken to “avoid the metaverse being monopolized by a few forces”, according to a report in Quartz.
What’s also worth considering is that both Facebook, with its Novi wallet and cryptocurrency in the shape of Diem, and the Chinese central bank the PBOC, with its digital yuan, both have the DeFi capacity to monetize gaming in the metaverse to the tune of billions of dollars. So, any more decentralized version of the metaverse, reliant on using cryptocurrencies to power the virtual economy, needs to be aware of that reality from the get-go.
GameFi: Disrupting the online gaming industry
The play-to-earn model has shaken the online gaming industry, with traditional players looking to switch to GameFi projects like Axie Infinity. Cryptocurrencies have already been successfully integrated recently into virtual worlds created by companies such as Decentraland and Sandbox. For example, users in Decentraland can purchase virtual real estate such as theme parks and monetize them using cryptocurrencies.
BigONE believes that the rise in popularity of GameFi projects such as Axie Infinity played a significant role in GameFi’s mainstreaming. GameFi has been in the works since 2017, with the introduction of CryptoKitties. Still, it did not go mainstream until this year, with the popular game Axie Infinity reaching a market cap of over $1 billion in 2021. Before “play-to-earn,” gaming assets and tokens could not be used outside the gaming environment and had no real-world value. With GameFi, in-game purchases can now have real value and have applications outside of the gaming environment.
A key factor contributing to the disruptive power of GameFi is that it is built upon blockchain technology rather than traditional gaming apps built using Java and Unity frameworks. Plus, from a technical perspective, GameFi is generally easier to implement and develop. Such is the threat from GameFi that traditional gaming publishers such as Ubisoft and Epic Games have suggested that GameFi is the future of their blockchain-based games strategy.
BigONE believes that this is yet another indicator of GameFi’s meteoric rise and why it is the future of gaming. According to reports from the Philippines, Axie Infinity, the largest GameFi project, is a huge source of income for the people of the Philippines, paying some of the citizens more than the country’s average salary. In addition, reputable investment firms are beginning to invest more in GameFi initiatives, with Solana Ventures, FTX, and Lightspeed announcing a $100 million GameFi fund recently.
GameFi and the future of the metaverse
What’s clear is that whoever wins the battle to control the metaverse will need to use some kind of digital currency to power the virtual economy. The more monopolistic the approach the more likely this will result in something like a Novi, a dollar-based stablecoin as the de facto default currency.
Despite Zuckerberg’s awareness that by its nature the metaverse is inter-operable, rather than a ‘walled garden’, the amount of money and effort put into this virtual space shows that first-mover advantage will make a difference in the web3 world just as much as the current web 2.0 digital economy, where the likes of Amazon and Google reign supreme.
It’s up to the leading GameFi companies like Axie Infinity to show that the more choices there are for users to earn money from gaming or creating, the stronger the metaverse will be for all participants.
A more decentralized vision of the metaverse inspired by the likes of GameFi startups such as Axie Infinity would support the kind of metaverse that gamers, DeFi traders would welcome.
“While there is room for many different visions of the metaverse I believe GameFi is showing the way, with a decentralized model for gaming and earning money based on trading tokens and NFTs. This is the metaverse where people have greater choice and opportunity, to come together to form their own communities and economies.”
Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.
Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.
An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.
