How does the click-to-earn money game "Hamster Fight" realize Satoshi Nakamoto's dream?

By Ryan Gorman, CoinDesk; Translated by Baishui, Golden Finance

If media reports and anecdotal information are to be believed, we are on the cusp of a wave of mass cryptocurrency adoption, with a group of people who don’t even know they are using the technology, despite the benefits they are reaping.

Click-to-earn games are not a new idea, but when applied to Web3, there is an unprecedented Cambrian explosion of participation in the industry, and Hamster Fighter is just the beginning. In many cases, the rewards can bring a small amount of economic freedom that didn’t exist before.

A ray of hope

Iran is currently one of the worst performing economies in the world, with residents facing very slim job prospects and rising prices. This has led the country to embrace cryptocurrency at a higher rate than most. Iranians have consistently ranked among the top users of Tonkeeper and many other non-custodial wallets as they try to find new and different ways to use money and protect the value of their earnings.

What is more surprising, however, is the country’s focus on Hamster Fighter. Take this AP account of a recent afternoon in Tehran, Iran’s capital.

During an early June heat wave, taxi drivers and cyclists in the Iranian capital frantically tapped away at their phones as they waited at red lights. Some pedestrians in Tehran were doing the same thing. They all believed they could get rich.

For these people, wealth is relative to the West when you consider that the currency has depreciated from 32,000 rials to the dollar in 2015 to 42,000 rials currently. Meanwhile, meat prices have soared by more than 10% in the past year, according to the AP. 70%, and the cost of shared taxis has doubled.

It’s no wonder Iranians are jumping at any money-making opportunity they can find, but they’re not the only ones using mini-apps that promise big returns.

Kids and their games

Kids have been playing video games for as long as they’ve existed. I played them growing up, and still do—and so have many of my friends. So have you, or, if that wasn’t you, so have many of the people you grew up with. That’s where this becomes even more striking.

Many of the people I spoke to— — colleagues, partners, attendees — have mentioned to me how much their kids love Hamster Kombat. Some of these kids are as young as 11 and 12, and they play nonstop.

These kids, like many Iranians who tap furiously using a variety of methods, including, in some cases, massage sticks to optimize their gameplay, may not know that cryptocurrency is the basis for the rewards and eventual airdrop. But they do know that the top players will receive a windfall that would not otherwise exist — whether they are in Iran, Iowa, or anywhere else in the world.

Yes, the rewards on offer may well have attracted the 300 million+ players of Hamster Kombat to continue playing the countless other click-to-earn games that come online every week, but that’s not really the point. One only needs to look at how video games replaced board games in the 1980s to understand what’s happening.

For the first time in history, 300 million people are interacting with Web3 platforms powered by cryptocurrency, and across all generations, backgrounds, and locations. As younger generations gravitate toward cryptocurrency, it’s only a matter of when, not if, these platforms begin to overtake existing ones.