NFT games win fans in Venezuela

Zacary, 32 years old juega plant vs. Undead, in which grows virtual plants that you can sell, after an initial investment that generates a profit if all program instructions are followed.

These video games are based on NFTs (“non-fungible tokens” for its acronym in English), digital assets exchangeable for current money on blockchain technological platforms, the same as those used with crypto-currencies.

He was a police officer for nine years, but hung up his uniform because of the low salary he earned, in a country going through its eighth year of recession and fourth year of hyperinflation, and where local currency and capacity savings have been broken.

“What do I want with that? To come together to have a house of my own to have my family”, This man who lives with his mother in an apartment complex in a popular district of Caracas tells AFP. “It’s a long term projection.”

With around $ 300 he saved up by working as a motorcycle taxi driver and delivery driver for a home delivery app – his current job – he upgraded his computer and started playing games.

Previously, you opened a digital wallet to process NFTs, in order to exchange your winnings for real money.

Your first investment: $ 80 for a sunflower and a few digital sprouts, which will eventually allow you to buy a seed to “plant” a tree, which you can then sell for $ 2000 when it grows.

In a school notebook he keeps the details of the behavior of his trade, with market data like a stock broker.

“At 6 o’clock in the morning I stopped waiting for the game. After I went to work in the street I was waiting (at the laptop) to water the plant, so that there was not a crow” it hurts him, he explains.

“One night I was asleep and woke up excited … ‘the plant!’ And I went out to log in. But everything is fine, ”he recalls, laughing.

It is more and more common to hear about NFT games on the streets, especially in working-class areas of Caracas.

A grocer gets up and interrupts a group talking about the problem. “Are you talking about ‘Plant’ ?!” he asks enthusiastically. “I want to come in.”

An example of the appeal generated by these games is that among the 50 most visited websites in Venezuela, according to Amazon’s Alexa index, Plant Vs. Undead appears in 18th place, and in 35th position is Axie Infinity, another. NFT game in which the user fights with creatures called “axies” which are also digitized as tokens redeemable for cash.

The Axie Infinity game requires a much higher investment, around $ 1,000, to participate.

“These gaming platforms that pay their participants have become, in hyperinflationary countries like Venezuela, options to generate income in addition to formal work, by playing one hour, three, four a day”, explains Aaron Olmos, economist and academic researcher in the field of crypto assets.

Olmos warns that the games They “create their own economy”. NFTs “come out with a base price that starts to increase as players get excited,” but they can also lose value, he points out.

One method that is growing is that of “scholarships”: an investor pays to access the game and hires a player, often a teenager, to generate income and make his investment profitable.

“An Axie account (…) can bring in on average 500, 400 dollars per month with a scholarship”, and that is enough “to support a family”, explains Yerson Rivero, who invests in crypto assets and plays NFT.

The food basket is $ 220 in Venezuela, according to private estimates. And a minimum wage is equivalent to $ 2.5 per month.

Yerson has set up a low-key office with Jesús Almerida and other friends at the back of a mechanical workshop to invest in crypto assets. They have three computers and spend their days watering virtual plants.

“Cryptocurrency is a business of the future,” says Jesus for his part. “I decided that as long as I had good capital, I was going (…) to create a crypto wallet for each of my children (…) to pay for their university.”