This Little Device Can Hold Your Bitcoin, Play Games—And Farm Airdrops as You Sleep

Plans for a Game Boy cartridge that turns that classic gaming handheld into a functional Bitcoin cold wallet were sadly abandoned last year, but here’s a new project that bundles Bitcoin gaming, play-to-earn rewards, and a hardware wallet all into one portable device.

The BitBoy One—no apparent relation to crypto influencer BitBoy—was officially revealed this week by Ordz Games, a Bitcoin-centric gaming project. The gaming handheld replicates the basic silhouette of Nintendo’s iconic handheld but with a bold, see-through orange shell that conveys the Bitcoin vibe.

Broadly, the design is reminiscent of third-party gaming handhelds released by brands like Anbernic, which develops affordable devices built to emulate classic video games.

In fact, the BitBoy One will utilize a RockChip RK3566 processor, the same of which has been used in devices of that sort. It also has a 3.45-inch 640x480 screen, 32GB of internal memory, a 256GB TF storage card, 4GB RAM, and a 3,500 mAh battery pack rated to last about six hours on a full charge.

But the BitBoy One is designed to do more than just play old-school games. It’s set to run Bitcoin-based games from Ordz, and provide potential play-to-earn incentives and airdrop rewards for players. Given the ecosystem in question, rewards will likely be Bitcoin BRC-20 or Runes token—or perhaps NFT-like Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions.

Furthermore, the device is billed as a Bitcoin hardware wallet, with support for wallet apps like Xverse and Unisat, and will let users manage their assets from the system’s interface.

In addition, Ordz says that users may be able to mine tokens from decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) simply by leaving the device running. To be clear, this modestly powered handheld will not be able to mine Bitcoin—a task typically left to expensive, power-hungry, specialized mining computer rigs.

And then yes, indeed, the BitBoy One can run emulators to play digital copies of classic games. It’s said to be powerful enough to run games from the original Sony PlayStation and older game consoles.

An Ordz Games representative told Decrypt’s GG that the device is targeting a price point of around $500, and will launch pre-orders sometime this month ahead of a rollout later this year. The company will first showcase the device at the Web3 Gaming Expo in Hong Kong this weekend, followed by Paris Blockchain Week in the days that follow.

In addition to the physical device, buyers will receive a digital recreation of the handheld inscribed to the Bitcoin blockchain via an Ordinals inscription. The digital version will also be able to run games via the Ordz website, the company says.

Earlier this week, Ordz Games minted the first Ordinals inscription of the handheld, which Ordinals explorer website said was the sixth-largest inscription ever on Bitcoin (at least at the time) at 3.93MB. The 3D rendering can be freely rotated and viewed from any angle.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.