Tap-to-earn games have become highly popular this year, with Hamster Kombat and TapSwap leading the way. The two networks have accumulated over 300 million and 70 million users globally and are expected to receive significant valuations when they start trading.
Hamster Kombat’s YouTube channel has grown to over 36 million subscribers, while the number of views has jumped to over 800 million. TapSwap’s YouTube and other social media activities have improved in the past few months.
Still, there is a big risk that Hamster Kombat and TapSwap players need to know of. The prices of already publicly traded tap-to-earn tokens have imploded. Notcoin price peaked at $0.029 in June and has now plunged by 60%.
Similarly, Pixelverse’s PIXFI token has fallen by almost 80% from its highest level in July, while Avacoin’s AVCN has plunged by 83% and is at its all-time low. These price actions mean the same trend could happen when Hamster Kombat’s HMSTR and TapSwap’s TAPS start trading this year.
The other risk is that user activity typically fades after a network launches its airdrop since existing holders exit and go out to find another tap-to-earn or play-to-earn platform to use. Notcoin’s platform has seen little activity since the token launched a few months ago.
This trend explains why Notcoin’s developers have started to pivot the ecosystem to social gaming and NFTs. Historically, these pivots rarely work.
Finally, there is a risk that the tap-to-earn industry will become the next play-to-earn or move-to-earn platform. At their peak, play-to-earn platforms like Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and Gala Games were hot, with thousands of daily active users.
Today, these platforms are virtually empty, and their tokens have crashed. At its peak, Decentraland’s MANA token had a valuation of over $8.5 billion, which has now fallen to over $511 million. Axie Infinity’s market cap has tumbled from over $9 billion to $679 million.
Similarly, move-to-earn platforms like StepN and Sweatcoin attracted millions of users globally, helping them attain over $1 billion in valuations. However, activity on these platforms has died in the past few years.
Therefore, while mining TapSwap and Hamster Kombat makes sense, there is a risk that their tokens will not perform well in the long run.
