There has been so much action lately on E2 with the release of features, which will serve as the foundation for the much-awaited eco-sim. Essence, and everything around it, is now the main discussion. The announcement that followed has confirmed that Essence will be tradeable, which is different from what was previously stated that only resources would be tradeable. But now with Essence becoming a tradeable item, several theories are being discussed and whether it may even emerge as a cryptocurrency in the future or not.
Well, whichever course this takes in the future, we envisage a tradeable crypto on E2 at some point in time - hopefully, once there is an economy that supports the native token. However until then, there may be another big opportunity - allowing crypto deposits (even if it's just ETH) on E2. This can potentially massively expand the size of the player/investor base as well as the overall market cap of the platform within a very short period of such a feature being introduced.
If E2 allows crypto deposits, conservatively we estimate it will ATLEAST double E2's market-cap very quickly (3-5x is not unimaginable in near-term)
Earth2 can potentially achieve this by building convertibility between E$ to select crypto and maybe allow integrating wallets like Metamask. Alternatively to fully realize its potential E2 could even host a small crypto exchange as well (maybe by partnering with an existing large exchange), as converting E$ (or E2's token) back to say ETH or BTC will go a long way to make this really attractive.
Some may argue that if these investors want they can simply convert their crypto gains to FIAT, transfer to their bank and then deposit into E2. This may not work for a few reasons
a) Converting crypto and depositing to banks and then back to E2 may create potential complications wrt tax (even in some cases create a tax liability instance for these investors)
b) It's a longer route than just have the ability to deposit say ETH directly into E2, so why not provide the path of least resistance.
Tapping into the freshly minted crypto-millionaires
We only need to look at the massive amount of transactions around NFTs or even virtual land in other NFT games that are getting sold using crypto. Many of these eye-popping transactions more often than not emanate from these crypto investors who have seen the value of their crypto portfolio surge massively over the last 12 months.
The capital sitting in crypto is difficult to ignore. Since the time Earth2 has launched the overall crypto market cap has more than doubled to now around a trillion dollars! ETH itself has grown 6x, since Nov-20 when Earth-2 launched.
Many crypto investors are sitting on these gains and would be looking to park or re-invest their profits somewhere. This is not a guess, we already have seen this money being rotated into NFTs by many such investors over the last 6 months. The famous $69m beeple purchase was done by such an investor who had made massive gains on his BTC holdings.
Surely, Earth2 may potentially count as one of the attractive avenues to put the crypto gains to work, it only needs to extend its hand to these investors.