Bitcoin and Ethereum Are Cooling Off—But Gaming Token Prices Are Down Bad

As the price of leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin cools off, gaming tokens are among the worst-hit tokens over the last week, with one major game’s token dropping 40% during the span.

After a broadly strong first half of the year for crypto, Bitcoin has dipped by nearly 6% over the past week to $66,830, while Ethereum has fallen a larger 10% to $3,460 as investors wait for spot Ethereum ETFs to start trading in the U.S.

But while the crypto market bleeds, the gaming segment has suffered some of the worst casualties. Gaming tokens tend to be highly volatile, like meme coins, due in part to the crypto gaming market still being relatively nascent. And this week, top tokens tied to gaming projects are taking some of the biggest hits of all.

Worst affected among major gaming tokens is Guild of Guardians (GOG), tumbling 40% to $0.105, with Parallel’s PRIME token falling closely behind with a 36% drop to just under $11.

Guild of Guardians launched on Ethereum scaling network Immutable zkEVM in May, earning a positive review from Decrypt’s GG after signing up over 1 million prospective players ahead of the wider release. But as the game plans to roll out a new Guardian, it couldn’t withhold market pressure with its token dropping. 

PRIME’s dip comes amid Parallel’s launch onto the Epic Games Store, a move that puts the NFT card-battling game in front of a monthly audience of 75 million active users. Once again, despite this apparently positive move for the game, it was still one of the worst-hit gaming tokens this week.

Other top losers include the layer-3 Ethereum gaming network Xai (XAI), which is down 30% to about $0.63 amid the launch of its Vanguard: Genesis campaign. This initiative will see several new games rolled out on the network in the coming months, on top of fresh rewards up for grabs for players and builders alike.

After a successful airdrop campaign earlier this year, Portal (PORTAL) has fallen 30% this week, while Clash of Clans-style mobile game Heroes of Mavia (MAVIA) fell 29%. Prominent Telegram-based clicker game Notcoin (NOT) has tumbled 19% not long after hitting 40 million players.

Most of the gaming tokens in the top 100 overall cryptocurrencies by market cap have seen similarly large drops, including Gala Games (GALA) at a 25% drop, Beam (BEAM) down 20%, and Immutable (IMX) falling nearly 19% over the past seven days.

In fact, the gaming market has been hit so badly that only six out of the top 100 GameFi tokens, as categorized by CoinGecko, are in the green over the past week. Most notably, real-time strategy game Apeiron (APRS) is up 5% while its esports championship rages on.

Edited by Andrew Hayward