Cryptocurrencies sit at the vanguard of a sea-change in the way society thinks about finance thanks to their decentralized, highly secure nature and freedom from fiat restrictions. Yet with so much ink spilt on crypto as the next big thing in international monetary policy, it can be easy to miss the diverse ways in which they, and the blockchain tech that underpins them, are already irrevocably reconfiguring a huge number of diverse market sectors.
Let’s take a look at some of the most compelling of these below, each of which are making their mark on the 2023 crypto space.
What you'll learn 👉
Play to Earn Gaming
One of the more exciting applications we’ve seen for crypto assets in recent years is the rise of Play to Earn games. The principle of gamification tells us something key about why this new modality has become so successful – gaming is as much about incentivization as it is fun. A classic RPG game will progressively reward players with new items and equipment, new spells and abilities, and higher experience levels – thus opening up new areas for exploration within the game world.
Crypto-integrated games, known colloquially as Play to Earn games, simply insert crypto currencies into this process. Without a doubt the most popular example of a Play to Earn game today is Axie Infinity. This title, which plays somewhat like Pokémon, has players training and battling unique monsters, known as Axies.
This NFT-based title utilizes a cryptocurrency tied to Ethereum in order to incentive play by rewarding gamers with actual monetary earnings in crypto form. While the sums involved are small, there’s no escaping the fact that players are at liberty to cash out their earnings from playing at any time.
Early P2E games like this are considered more a proof of concept than anything else. Talk by major publishers including EA and Activision Blizzard suggests that big studios are watching these developments closely, and it’s easy to imagine a future Call of Duty integrating such mechanics into ranked deathmatches. This could even pave the way for esports events wherein tangible, large-sum cash prizes are awarded online through this mechanism.
Closer Integration with Entertainment Services
Increasingly, we’re beginning to see popular cryptocurrencies offered as a payment option in future-oriented entertainment sectors. For example, the iGaming market, as exemplified by the likes of leading recommendation platform CasinoBonusCA, is pivoting to become increasingly hospitable towards offering play and sign-up bonuses exclusively for patrons willing to transact using Bitcoin. This makes sense, given its privacy-focused design that serves as a good fit for an industry that respects discretion.
Likewise, independent creative artists are taking back control from corporations through the use of cryptocurrencies. The platform Audius, for example, provides musicians with a suite of tools that make purchasing and leasing their creations through crypto transactions easier and simpler than ever.
Growth in CFD Trading
Over time, the value of crypto as a speculative market has come to represent a significant source of investment. Whereas it’s still highly commonplace for traders to own quantities of popular coins – especially those based upon the Proof-of-Work verification protocol, CFDs have been notably in the ascendancy.
Simply put, CFD stands for Contract for Difference, it refers to the act of opening a position on an asset with a view to banking on its price going up or down. In this way, those interested in engaging with crypto trading as a market can do so without having to invest in acquiring crypto funds themselves.
In one sense, this can be used to insulate oneself from the relative volatility of crypto markets, but only up to a point. In fact, because you’re effectively opening a position that isn’t tied to the ownership of an asset, the risk is actually higher should you take a big swing in one direction or another.
Even so, CFDs have enabled traders to speculate on the market as a whole, or track the fortunes of a new or novel coin and be rewarded for their predictions without having to commit to owning it first.
It’s hard to say whether CFDs will remain as popular in this sector as they are today over time, especially once major markets create more robust and stable means of holding coins, but for now it represents an emergent trend that shows little sign of slowing.
