(Bloomberg) — Venture-capital investor Mark Carnegie is backing the nascent play-to-earn cryptocurrency market through Crypto Gaming United, a coalition of more than 1,500 players that he expects will grow to 100,000 over the next 18 months.
Crypto Gaming United raised $5 million in a seed funding round that was oversubscribed, Carnegie said in an interview Wednesday. The majority of the players are based in the Philippines, where many users of the popular Axie Infinity game for tradable tokens currently reside, with some also coming from countries including Indonesia, South Africa and India.
The coalition works across multiple games, providing education to current and aspiring players on financial literacy and the digital economy. Gaming guilds offer “scholarships” to players of NFT games, funding the entry costs for indiviuals and their ongoing training costs. In return, the guild splits the revenue made within the game with its players.
“Everyone knows crypto is a speculative asset class from the money point of view, but I feel unquestionably in a decade’s time for eSports and stuff like that, a huge number of players will have come from these,” Carnegie said. “I bet a lot of these sports stars in a decade are going to have their starts on games like Axie.”
Carnegie and co-founder Sergei Segienko, who have nearly 40,000 gamers waiting to join, said they chose Singapore as the headquarters for their non-fungible token gaming company because it is a “forward looking” jurisdiction in terms of cryptocurrency adoption.
“The opportunity for wealth creation in the NFT space is no longer limited to those with the means, such as sports celebrities,” said Carnegie, a former banker who sold his boutique to Lazard. “At Crypto Gaming United, we are overcoming the cost barrier required for admission to play, thereby allowing players to generate income through their gaming exploits.”
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