tack (gym arc)

Bitkraft 2024 Summit was extremely well put together, kudos to @BITKRAFTVC team for that! some key observations from this lovely summit: • AI x Gaming mostly a meme in most ways people are trying to sell the narrative. What people are truly excited about AI x Gaming is on (1) improving game asset generation, and (2) AI in PvP. (1) consistent asset generation is extremely hard to achieve using AI today, but is required for it to be usable in game production. pretty independently generated images without context is nice to look at but if you cant achieve consistency, then its unusable. teams mainly still using AI for ideation phase. current AI tools benefit mostly veteran studios with large amount of assets to feed into models, there is still a gap in utility for newer studios. 2D side of things is seeing very good progress but 3D is still no man's land. (2) AI in games have existed since time memorial (its not something new guys), just not in your today's AI agent context. What is interesting is that if AI can be developed to play more like a player in both PvE and PvP games (obviously does not fit all types of games, ie. never being able to beat boss patterns in Elden Ring). User experience can be massively uplifted if cold start problems / matchmaking for multiplayer-based games can be solved. Imagine playing Dota2 with no more MID OR FEED / BUY WARDS OR AFK teammates. • games need existing well-known IP to do well - THIS IS A MYTH. statistically most of the successful games out there creates IP rather than license IP. ie. for mobile games - other than FateStay / DragonballZ IP, most are original IPs. there are huge limitations on unit economics / what you can do with games by licensing IP. of course some there are some exceptions like Ragnarok Mobile Eternal Love and Fate/Grand Order that did exceptionally well, but the odds are against you. • unfortunate to still see a substantial lack of understanding of the East from the Western crowd on both the supply and demand side. still seeing games from the China being stereotyped as extractive / of lower quality / not able to go international, and this is even after Black Myth Wukong smashed the leaderboards. most do not know about a mobile game called Dungeon & Fighter Origins that grossed $500m in revenue in its first month just within China alone. • Telegram games - remain cautious on jumping onto the bandwagon just because its the new "trend" for distribution. vanity metrics distribution is not the same as real distribution. • Discord games are getting a lot of attention given its latest update allowing users to play mini-games without leaving the app. will be on the lookout for new developments in that space and for any novel applications. • Japan / Korea / China are still very isolated markets where its difficult to understand the lay of the land unless you are actively engaging within the ecosystem. interesting - most popular dating app in Japan is like tinder but with full AI matches and conversation, but no one really know of this outside of Japan. • huge monetization potential from Chinese IP that is extremely under-utilized internationally. we have mostly seen Japanese / Korean IP being internationalized but Chinese IP remains largely within China. #1 IP is 斗罗大陆 (Soul Land) with >50 billion playback of its Season 1 animation series, bet no one heard of it before. • difficult to push through game innovation from large gaming companies as generally risk adverse (RIOT / Valve amongst the most adventurous) and tend to want to build sequels on top of old successful franchises. but there are a bunch of GOATed OGs who left to pursue creating new groundbreaking games.

@XtineFang Luosifen?

@Tonin_eth You forgot hiring a pornstar as head of institutional

💀 BODY COUNT #3 So... where's the money? > Crypto lending platform. "Unbank yourself." > Raised over $750 million in funding. Some sources say closer to $950 million. Series B led by a growth equity firm and a Canadian pension fund. Valued at $3.5 billion. > The CEO said it would double or triple the next year. Over 1 million customers. Promised up to 18% yield on your crypto deposits. The CEO went on TV every week telling people their money was safe. It was not safe. > The CEO was secretly selling his own tokens while telling customers to hold. > He personally made $42 million doing this. The platform froze withdrawals in June 2022. $4.7 billion in user funds, gone. He pled guilty to fraud. => During the bankruptcy process, creditors who were already devastated received phishing emails pretending to be from the company. => People who had already lost everything got scammed again while waiting to get their money back. => A Canadian pension fund invested hundreds of millions into this. Retirement money. From teachers and public workers. Into a platform run by a guy who was dumping his own tokens while going on TV to say "your money is safe." Name this corpse.

@samthekorean Lfg

i’m looking for ambitious founders across asia (SEA included) to come and work at our zerobase hq located in seoul for 1 month. -4 weeks of building -1 demo day -get funded up to $250k -referred to a16z speedrun -unlimited kbbq & soju flights included. comment if you’re interested in coming to seoul!

@gabrielleydon @DigiDaigaku Throwback to oldschool jap vibes gg

OK this time @DigiDaigaku stickers printed in Japan 🇯🇵

@TheyCallMeCheng @Fiskantes I think you cannot subscribe for the IPO, but you can buy after it starts trading through the hk connect

@Fiskantes Oh nice

Pretty crazy China now gives better IPO opportunities than US

@ClaraChengGo People are just not ready to accept that the next generation is asian

@carlhua So honest opinion i think playtoearn is basically just yield farming with more steps. What we should be thinking is how blockchain can improve / create new experiences rather than today’s model

So we don’t invest in blockchain games. But I have been a hardcore gamer for most of my life. I do think it makes sense to have blockchain in gaming but not in the way most games use them today. The most valuable (at least for me) thing in gaming are the items I have acquired. And most game developers hate game interoperability. Because each game they make they want you to pay for it all over again. At least, this is the current model. Ideally - we can have indie or smaller game developers team up and allow item interoperability across games. This would be the perfect use case of blockchain. - items can be sent cross game with a fee charged and that carry sentimental value as well. We can even have unique attributes only can be gained in specific games. Make the items tradable as well - on blockchain!

Awesome but im like 99% sure they still havent fixed my disputed status…

@samthekorean Pivoted to marketmaking

@0xTack what happened to it

so this year i’m building a $10m fund to invest into our zerobase founders. first time making a fund. dm me if you can help!

@KieranWarwick Should always be game first, and the rest will come. Else its basically yield farming with more steps

2,000+ web3 games have launched. Yet all I hear is "there are no fun web3 games." Statistically, that's almost impossible. Even with debut studios, the sheer capital deployed makes "zero fun games" an anomaly. Something deeper is happening, and nobody talks about it. Here's the uncomfortable truth: Gamers weren't born "web3 gamers." They were gamers who discovered web3. And the moment you can earn money in a game, something irreversible happens in the brain. Earning becomes the dopamine. Not the gameplay. Not the progression. Not the story. The money. And once that switch flips, the monkey doesn't go back in the bottle. This is the overjustification effect in action. When extrinsic rewards are introduced, intrinsic motivation gets crowded out. The game didn't get worse. Your brain just rewired what "reward" means. So when earning slows or stops? Game = not fun. Doesn't matter how polished it is. Doesn't matter how good the combat feels. Your brain already decided what it's playing for - and it's not the gameplay. This is why the "play-to-earn" framing was always a trap. It trained an entire generation of players to optimise for extraction, not enjoyment. The solution isn't removing earnings. It's reordering priorities. There are two honest paths: Lean fully into earning. Make it the point. This is what we're doing with Deathmatch: real money stakes. Would I play it without the ability to earn? Honestly, probably not. And that's fine. It's designed for that. Build fun-first, earning as the cherry on top. This is Overworld. The entire game is built around progression systems, creature capture, quest completion, discovery, and boss battles. The loop is fun because the game is fun. Getting loot and being able to sell it? That's the cherry. But even here, the balance is razor-thin. Lean too hard on earning, and you topple into the same trap. The studios that unlock this will define the next era of gaming. But it's insanely hard to achieve, which is why it's easy to say that everyone who's tried is retarded and knows nothing about gaming. Some are getting it right, though. And being brutally honest, I didn't realise this when I first discovered web3 gaming 6 years ago. I just thought: people love games; people have always wanted to own their items so they can sell them (black markets prove this), so it is blatantly obvious that it will work, but it's way, way deeper than that. This is also why I get frustrated when I see people saying "rewards are the future." They're not. If monetary rewards are the first thing you push down a gamer's throat, you change their psychology immediately. You don't even stand a chance. Monetary rewards don't grow on trees. They run out. For everyone. Regardless of how big your treasury is. At one point, we had $1.6 billion of rewards sitting in our treasury. I fucking know. If your game isn't fun without the money, it was never a game. It was a job with better marketing.

@PoonBerry01 @NonFungibleCats @loshmi One party doing shady shit does not excuse FTX from doing shady shit. Its like saying stealing is ok cause some dude from your high school steals. Crime is crime man

@NonFungibleCats @0xTack @loshmi All valid points but you guys forget when it’s time to bail banks out gets who they steal from? 🛎️

maturing is realizing that FTX was one of the best investors in crypto industry: > $500M in Anthropic would now be worth roughly $30.4B > $1B in Solana would now be worth roughly $5.1B > $648M in Robinhood would be $5.7B > $100M in Sui would be $1.2B > $1.15B in Genesis Digital Assets would be $3.5B > $700M in SpaceX via K5 would be $3B did some estimates and their total portfolio would be up from $4.7B to $52.5B which is a $47.8B in rise absolutely nuts

@kekdubbin @PoonBerry01 @loshmi I think you are confusing between a bank and an exchange, they are not the same

@PoonBerry01 @0xTack @loshmi Seriously if people were to go to a bank to withdrawal like they do CEXS on a run you honestly think they could stay solvent lmao

@NonFungibleCats @PoonBerry01 @loshmi On top of that, banks are also insured for deposits up to a certain amount, licensed and under strict surveillance. An exchange is not a bank, the business is not meant to use your deposits.

@PoonBerry01 @0xTack @loshmi Yes, banks get examined, audited and don't operate on bespoke software that literally was programmed with back doors. Security and controls is kind of a big deal when adults are concerned.

@breenayuen smash hard buldak bokkeummyun lfg

smash or pass: buldak :p

@subvert_hk Jesus immediate artery clog up

how it started how it’s going

Building @PlayAetherDawn - ACG roguelite 3D action RPG. To build high fidelity games like this generally takes upwards of 20/30m in development phase but rather than scaling headcount, we built an autonomous AI development pipeline where an orchestrated team of AI agents handles research, implementation, code review, QA testing, and deployment on an end to end basis. Bringing dreams to reality is no longer limited to giants but anyone can do it now.

we’ve been sourcing founders across asia to a16z speedrun since last year. we’re now looking for more builders in the region working on interesting projects. if you’re building something cool, dm or reply here. we’d love to catch up online! @speedrun @a16z

@degennQuant @HyperliquidX How is this being routed? Just need to make sure my sg bank account does not get frozen

Introducing the first $SGD (Singapore Dollar) offramp on @HyperliquidX Receive it in your Singapore bank account or any other $SGD account within 5 minutes. Liquid banking.

@pierskicks Gm if really wanna go, might have some friends who can help lmk

Offering 1 Million V-Bucks to whoever can help me procure a ticket to Shanghai F1 this Sunday