coindesk.com
BIGTIME has surged 250% in just five days.
The blockchain-based game is fast becoming in accessible to new players, one observer said.
The token's FDV to market cap ratio suggests supply inflation ahead.
BIGTIME, the native token of blockchain-powered multiplayer game Big Time, has more than tripled in the first week of its existence. The market-beating performance does not convince some analysts.
Last Wednesday, the cryptocurrency went live on several exchanges, including OKX and Coinbase. Since then, its market price has risen by 254% to $0.251, reaching a high of $0.32 at one point on Friday, Coingecko data shows. In the past five days, the total crypto market capitalization has increased just 2% to $1.056 trillion.
Big Time takes its players on a journey through different eras, with a cosmetic-based economy that puts control of the creation and selling of cosmetics or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the hands of the players. To start crafting, players first need SPACE or Big Time's version of virtual land, with utility NFTs – Armory, Forge and Time Warden – attached to it.
Time wardens are workshops for crafting, upgrading and recharging hourglasses, one of the most sought-after NFTs, that players need to receive BIGTIME tokens.
BIGTIME tokens can be used to craft Forge, Armory and enter exclusive zones called prestige portals. The cryptocurrency has a total supply of five billion and can be acquired through in-game drops. Players intending to collect BIGTIME need to equip themselves with hourglass collectibles as they go through adventures.
Per Delphi Digital, only 5% of the total supply has been airdropped to players and is being traded in the open market, which has likely skewed demand-supply dynamics in favor of the bulls. The price boom, however, could be short-lived.
"The token price could be propped up by limiting the circulating supply for a time, but it will inevitably dump this early into the game’s lifecycle, and the reputational damage is going to be hard to come back from. This will soon illustrate the risks associated with launching a fungible token too early in a game’s development cycle before there are enough players to absorb the sudden increase in supply," Delphi Digital said in the weekly report published Friday.
The report said that long-term players now earn as much as $200 to $2,000 per day, so playing the game for fun is no longer a consideration and there is strong incentive to cash out.
"When faced with the option to kill in-game boars in order to earn enough gold to upgrade a piece of armor or to do the same amount of work for an almost instant cash payout if all else remains equal, most rational players would choose the latter. This is almost exactly what has happened in Big Time," Delphi noted, adding that the game is fast becoming in accessible for to new players due to a sharp rise in the price of NFTs needed to collect BIGTIME.
The token's fully diluted value relative to market cap is quite high, indicating a supply inflation and potential sell-side pressure.
"The tokenomics are quite dubious. No one is sure about the exact market cap. The FDV is ridiculously high at around $1.2 billion, while the market cap is much lower at around $40 million," blockchain sleuth Loch said on X.