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In his work on the classic Mayan economy before 800, historian Philip Curtin tells of impressive discoveries. Archaeologists measured the ratio of cutting lengths of obsidian blades and found that it changes inversely from the source of obsidian.
Economist Deirdre McCloskey cites this as evidence that there is always a human impulse towards exchange and profits.
“If Mayans lived in a non-earning, profitless, non-market economy, it would not be important to them that the expensive obsidian was, but… that ratio changed inversely from the distance from the source of obsidian.
Formal markets add property rights and legal enforcement. But they guide the innate human behavior that was already there, contrary to the general belief that capitalism “causing” consumerism.
Modern Japan (and parts of Asia) provide clear illustrations of what its economic logic looks like at extremes.
The average Tokyo Street is packed full of cute, colorful gachapon capsule machines. People flock to them for a rare collectible outlook.
However, the meaningful share of buyers in these markets is not pure collectors. Many people are chasing the quick flip.
Take, for example, the latest love beast phenomenon in Asia. The resale price of the extremely popular Pop Mart series reportedly fell in half when the company announced a rise in supply.
There is also evidence that at least 40% of consumers purchase such toys for “possibility of gratitude.”
However, if seeking profits is the dominant motivation to make and sell these things, it is no surprise that the door to hyperfinanation is inevitably wide open.
As expected, crypto entrepreneurs are the first to kick the door.
Over the past few months, we have found platforms like Gachapon to be suitable for the product market. Total money spent on platforms such as Courtyard, Collector Crypto, Plants and Emporium increased from $10.4 million in January to $61.1 million in August. Commemorative research.
Last month, it recorded a monthly transaction volume of approximately $114 million.
These platforms have similar business models.
- The platform holds a safe inventory of professionally rated, collectable cards (usually Pokemon/baseball).
- The card is tokenized as an NFT.
- They are sold as randomized gachapon items to users who pay stable coins.
- Once published, the card will be sold to the platform at a pre-defined buyback rate based on the insured market value of the card, in the secondary market, or redeem physical cards from the safe for a fee.
There are exceptions. For example, Solana’s Phygitals platform doesn’t necessarily have unusual cards on hand, and relies on “dropshipping” sourcing if users decide to charge them. Otherwise, a refund will be provided to the user.
“It’s a drawback because they don’t actually own the cards,” Mento Research analyst Zukayape told me. “On the other hand, the Collector Crypt Rare Card is incredibly abundant and abundant, thanks to its strong sourcing from Web2 rails and connections (759 epic cards at the moment). They’ve been in the scene for quite some time.”
Gachapon’s spending is similar to a similar whale-like economic structure across all four platforms.
A Memento study shows that on the Polygon courtyard platform, 90.5% of total spending comes from just 5.9% of users. At Solana’s Collector Crypt, 93% of all Gachapon revenue came from 17.5% of users. Approximately 50% of users were $1,000 above the “whale” threshold.
Revenue is ultimately driven by gachapon spending, not secondary market transactions.
As far as I know, these platforms do not use verifiable RNGs, so users believe that the platform assigns cards with the tier probability listed.
Do users care?
The average consumer of a real-world gachapon or blind box certainly isn’t. No blind box collectors complaining about the non-transparency involved in these products know.
However, financial speculators are different types of consumers. These are people who live in the probability mathematics of “expected values” and are trying to optimize the edge optimization of all the base points.
The platform is designed to purchase cards from users at fair market value (to keep users gambling). So, at least there is a limit to financial shortcomings.
Still, the trust gap remains. Verifiable randomness and zero knowledge proofs mean Gachapon was not only promised, but could be auditable.
