Why do hamsters play hamster and who will really make money on it
Billions of dollars, casino advertising and token price manipulation – how popular tapalki work and where they get so much money.
Hamster Combat recently confirmed the distribution of tokens to users, before that Notcoin and a couple of smaller projects poured out. Why tapalki are multiplying like mushrooms after rain, and who pays for this party of life – we will figure it out now.
How do slippers work?
These are games where players get in-game currency for tapping the screen. Some developers complicate the plot. For example, you need to upgrade characters and participate in battles or develop your own crypto exchange, like in “Hamster”, for this currency. But the central idea is “tap the screen – a coin drips”.
The downside of this approach is that most people are too lazy to tap the screen all day long. People still have a job, study, family, and ideally, they need to sleep sometime. That's why most projects introduce passive income: first, you tap with your hands, then you upgrade some characteristics and start receiving coins automatically. You only need to log in once in a while and collect them. In Notcoin, you had to collect once every eight hours, in “Hamster”, once every three hours. This is how projects make the audience return to the app.
The second reason to get more coins is the competitive effect. Projects support it through different leagues, levels, and leaderboards. The names change, but the essence is the same: whoever collected more is cooler.
Subscriptions and other tasks
A separate way to earn coins is to complete tasks. For example, subscribe to the social networks of the project and partners, create a wallet, buy some token and conduct a transaction, go to the site. Usually such tasks give a lot of coins, so most users complete them.
And in the end there is money
Games are great, but most people come to these projects for the drops.
Drop is the distribution of rewards for activities in crypto projects. The in-game token becomes a cryptocurrency and begins to be traded on exchanges.
For example, Notcoin has distributed about $1.6 billion to users. The capitalization is constantly changing, the figures are taken at the time of writing. At its peak, the project's capitalization reached $2.92 billion. On average, users received from $100 to $1,000, depending on the token sale price.
Many laughed at Tapalka, but now it has a capitalization like VK, and at its peak it was greater than Kaspersky Lab. Data from Forbes for 2024.
Funds, exchanges and advertising – where do projects get their money?
We're getting to the most interesting part: how a young project became a unicorn in a couple of months and where the money comes from.
Advertising. Projects sell advertising space in the app and in tasks. For example, Notcoin advertised bloggers, crypto projects, and even casinos.
Moreover, the casino offered users to subscribe to the channel and make a minimum deposit – for this they were given 100,000 game coins.
It's hard to say how effective the ad is because we don't know its cost. But here's the subscriber dynamics after posting in Notcoin: from 13K subscribers to 500K with change.
Notcoin also advertised other crypto projects. For example, Solidus AI. One of the tasks was to buy a token for $1.
Now here's a riddle from Jacque Fresco: what happens if you tell a multi-million audience to buy a token for $1? The answer is they'll send the price into space.
Such advertising is expensive. Hidden bonus – you can earn some extra money yourself. If the team knows when such a task will be released, then who is stopping them from buying a few tokens in advance.
Funds and private investors. They give projects money at an early stage in exchange for tokens. Usually the price for them is lower than the expected listing price on the exchange. This way the projects get funding for development, and the investors earn x if the project takes off.
Some speak honestly about investments and assistance from partnersfor example, BLUM does this. Others say there are no investors – for example, Notcoin. But for some reason the developers were so grateful for Pasha Durov's help that they sent him coins worth 6 million dollars.
Exchanges. After the token listing, users will want to withdraw the coins to exchanges and sell them. It doesn't matter whether it's right after the listing or later – the main thing is that it's a huge number of commissions. Exchanges benefit from this, so they are ready to help with organizing the listing and promoting the tokens.
Own project. The most difficult option is to turn a tapalka into a project where the token will become useful and there will be real demand for it. For example, BLUM is creating a crypto exchange inside Telegram, and the internal token will be used to pay commissions in the future.
Notcoin launched a platform to attract users to projects. Advertisers buy the NOT token, place themselves in the application, users complete tasks and receive NOT as a reward.
But this is the final stage – for development the project still needs investments and support from partners. For example, in advertising or provision of infrastructure.
That is, the central idea of tapalok looks like this: gather an audience in anticipation of a drop – sell the audience – distribute part of the money received.
And the audience is coming willingly! Look at the top channels in Telegram by subscribers. There are four tapalki in the top 5.
It's all a pyramid!
Haters will say: “This is a typical pyramid scheme, they'll shave everyone soon”, and cryptans will foam at the mouth to prove that this is not a pyramid scheme, you are not forced to invest. The truth, as usual, is in the middle.
Trading is a zero-sum game: for one to win, the other must lose. For example, you earned coins and sold them for a dollar, then the buyer resold them for two dollars, the next one for three, but one day the chain will end and the last trader will be left with expensive coins in his hands, which no one wants to buy.
That's why the market resembles a pyramid: new people must constantly come so that old participants can make a profit.
On the other hand, if you play and then sell coins, you only risk time. The main thing is not to get into a vicious circle: sold the coins you've mined – saw the price rise – bought at the peak and couldn't sell them for more.
Another advantage of tapalok is that they help a large audience learn about crypto in a game form. For example, in “Hamster” you need to pump up your own crypto exchange, so users get acquainted with different markets, trading pairs and coins. Notcoin had tasks to study the TON blockchain.
After the drop, users have to figure out in practice how wallets work, how to pay fees, how to transfer tokens to the exchange, how to sell them there, and what to do with the money they receive next.
The biggest moneymakers on hamsters will be exchanges, funds and project creators
As a result, users will receive a drop, sell some of the coins on the exchange and earn money. Some will want to earn more and start trading. As a result, most of the money will loseThe exchanges will make money on commissions, the funds on investments, and the project creators on advertising.
Keep in mind that any distribution of money is a marketing project. They give you something now, but only so that you will come back in the future and spend your time or money.
