“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs
A thought exercise you should undertake if you&#x27;re thinking about &#x2F; talking about crypto&#x2F;NFT&#x2F;web3-related projects:  If the financial instrument that underlies the project were to stop going up in value XX% per month, would you still be interested in the project?<p>I do this a lot because I&#x27;ve made the conscious (and perhaps financially foolish) choice to stay away from everything crypto&#x2F;blockchain related (for now, at least).  So I have some perspective in being able to ask myself &quot;Why is this interesting?&quot; without any emotional-financial attachment.  I do this little exercise every time I read about some new brain-twisting scheme to move money around and capture some of the XX%&#x2F;month rise.<p>Play-to-earn seems to fit the same mold:  You can talk all you want about how play-to-earn is &quot;the new new&quot; and how it&#x27;s helping people out of poverty and changing the dymanics of gaming and yadda yadda yadda.  But just ask yourself:  If the money music stopped tomorrow, would you play the game?<p>Is there a &quot;there&quot; there without an underlying token that&#x27;s gone up XX% in the last N months and everyone hopes will still go up XX% in the next N months?<p>It sounds like the answer, at least when it comes to Axie Infinity, is no.  It doesn&#x27;t sound fun.  It doesn&#x27;t sound compelling.  It DOES sound like an opportunity for people to extract money from the crypto system that&#x27;s fundamentally based on the assumption that the crypto system will continue rising in value forever.