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I am starting to write here to keep track of my inevitable failures as I am venturing further into the crypto world for the first time (I know I am very late to this… ;) ).
While there might be successes, too, I plan to focus this outlet on the failures to force myself to acknowledge them. I am doing this mostly as a personal project to structure my thoughts but maybe this can serve as a cautionary tale to someone else in the future and help people avoid these mistakes.
Some background on me: I am in my early 30s and have been working in business roles in startups for a couple of years now. I grew up in Germany, have lived in London for a while but moved back to Germany after the Brexit referendum. If you run a cool crypto project and you need help on the business side of things, feel free to get in touch with me; I cannot promise to reply to all inquiries, though.
As I am writing these lines, I have some ETH, BNB, NEO (and GAS), VET (and VTHO), TLM, WAXP, and my favorite: CXO in my wallets. In addition to these coins, I own NFTs from Gods Unchained, Sorare (this is my invite link; if you sign up to Sorare via this, we both get rewards), Alien Worlds, and Synergies of Serra.
Coins
Depending on how things develop, this part may or may not become the focus of my articles. Right now, I haven?t really learned a lot about pure crypto investing, so I will keep it short for now.
I bought ETH, BNB, and NEO in late March/early April 2021 and VET in late April 2021. I have bought all of these via Binance (another referral link) which I can recommend so far (I have heard about several people having issues with Binance, though; especially from outside of Germany).
In addition to the investments mentioned above, I own some TLM and WAXP because I started “playing” Alien Worlds and would not have bought either for any other reason.
Games
This is where I feel I can contribute a bit more than to the topic of investing in cryptocurrencies and where my focus will be for now. After reading up on a few blockchain-based games and trying a number of them, there are a few failures I can already share so people reading this can avoid them.
Of the four games mentioned below, I have spent the most time on Gods Unchained but the one where I made the most errors certainly is Sorare.
Gods Unchained
My first introduction to NFTs came through Gods Unchained, which I have been playing for a few weeks now.
From their website:
Gods Unchained is a free-to-play tactical card game that gives players true ownership of their in-game items. Led by the former game director of Magic The Gathering: Arena, the game focuses on competitive play, which means players must strategically outsmart their opponents by building decks that are able to combat a wide variety of tactics. In Gods Unchained players completely own their digital items, giving them the freedom to trade, sell and use their cards any way they like — just like owning real, tangible cards.
I have not spent any money on this but also not earned anything, yet, due to the fact that “forging” and trading cards currently is limited until the move to Immutable X has progressed further. Judging by the cards I have won so far and past trading activity, I would suspect that I have “won” cards worth around 100$ from playing Gods Unchained.
If you are into this kind of game, I can wholeheartedly recommend Gods Unchained.
Sorare
As a life-long football fan, signing up to Sorare has been an obvious choice for me.
Wikipedia describes Sorare as
Fantasy game of soccer, where players buy, sell, trade, and manage a virtual team with digital player cards. The game uses blockchain technology based on Ethereum and was developed in 2018 by Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort.
In general, it might be possible to play Sorare without spending money on it, but only if you utilize the starting cards you get (and can use in the Rookie tournaments) to the best extent and earn enough “rare” cards to compete in the real tournaments.
As I have not been successful enough with my starter cards (not even close), I did spend money on Sorare and I will cover my many mistakes in a future article.
While my own experience with Sorare has not been as good as the one with Gods Unchained, I?d still recommend this to anyone interested in football. Keep in mind, though, that some initial cash outlay might be required to really enjoy this.
Alien Worlds
Alien Worlds is still in its infancy but the developers certainly have ambitious plans for their project.
From their website:
Alien Worlds is a game where you can earn Trilium (TLM) for mining and have a chance to mine an NFT game card each time you mine. This DeFi Metaverse is a blockchain-based game and free to play for anyone. After getting a WAX Cloud Wallet login, and logging in at play.alienworlds.io explorers will receive a tool to begin mining. With the simple mining activity, one receives Trilium (TLM), a blockchain token. Trilium can be used to stake to one or more of six planets and register as a candidate to become a planetary councilor and potentially rule the planet. NFT game cards are used in new and creative ways over time, including “shining” to upgrade the cards and battling in the Thunderdome.
And from Binance Research:
In the Alien Worlds metaverse, players can acquire NFTs (digital game items) to mine TLM, engage in battles, and complete in-game quests. Depending on their strategy, players may purchase and assemble NFTs that best suit their gameplay. Additionally, players may engage in governance by electing the Councillors of six Planet DAOs, and thereby influence the direction of the game.
Currently, the functionality still is very very limited and only allows players to select a plot of land to mine TLM and repeat this process a few times per day.
I have spent a little money on this, to buy an additional tool to increase my mining yield and I have roughly earned that same amount of money within 3 weeks of mining (assuming the price of TLM does not drop any further).
While it may even make financial sense to “play” (read: “click the mine button a few times per day”) this game to earn a few $ worths of TLM each day (my yield is ~3–6 TLM per day worth around 0.30$ each), the gaming experience of it is still far from great. This might improve quite a bit with each new release but, as of today, I wouldn?t really recommend spending time or money on this.
Synergy of Serra
This one is even earlier in its development than Alien Worlds and not even in their closed alpha phase, yet.
I am very intrigued by the description on their website and looking forward to getting a first glimpse of the actual game.
Synergy of Serra shapes a new game genre, merging classic Strategy Card Games with the infinite game experience possibilities of Deckbuilder Card Games. Join the six factions of biological and mechanical creatures in the defense of the planet Serra from an alien threat. Become the leading commander of Serra!
I have spent a little money on this to help move the project forward and be on board from the start but I cannot make any recommendation on whether this project will evolve into a great game or not.
