It took Marathon years to build out its pricey infrastructure capable of mining 1,200 bitcoins per month. However, in the Roblox metaverse, it only takes a second. One of the most frequented metaverse platforms worldwide, Roblox recorded about 66 million users every day in May. Its Bitcoin Miner Beta, developed by Polandgamebuilders, enjoys a huge user base, proving to be a fun bitcoin mining simulator.
On the other hand, metaverse blockchain projects such as Decentraland see only about 500 concurrent active users. This inevitably raises questions about why a very Web2 bitcoin mining simulator in Roblox finds more popularity than very Web3 metaverse projects. While Roblox is not a Web3 platform and has nothing to do with BTC mining in reality, the vast difference demonstrates some truths about the crypto industry.
Roblox’s Bitcoin Miner Beta invites players to mimic real-life bitcoin mining by maximizing the bitcoin output of their virtual plot of land while slowly phasing out less powerful rigs for more advanced and expensive ones. Though it does sound trivial, it carries a resemblance to how actual bitcoin mining functions.
The idea of optimizing energy consumption and balancing it with energy production is prevalent in the crypto mining world, where vertically integrated miners such as Stronghold, Marathon, and Greenidge reign supreme. Mining bitcoin in Roblox as a fun task can let you mine thousands of BTC per second without needing any real resources.
However, this brings along some deeply entrenched irony. A simulated bitcoin mining experience in a non-crypto platform like Roblox is gaining more users and attention than actual cryptocurrency metaverse platforms. Does the popularity of Roblox’s Bitcoin Miner Beta indicate an underlying issue within these metaverse projects, or could it simply be an amusing coincidence?
If we project this idea further, we might see similar crypto mining projects in traditional games, where players can farm digital yield in return for tangible tokens or even real crypto or fiat money. However, that utopian world is yet to be realized.
Meanwhile, mining traditional tokens such as Robux in Roblox and farming yield in cryptocurrency metaverse platforms proceeds unceasingly. Thus, the discussion arises whether this trend will lead to a convergence of Web2 and Web3 metaverse gaming or maintain their distinct approaches to digital assets, gaming, and user experiences. Until then, Roblox’s virtual bitcoin mining continues to perpetuate the curious phenomenon of simulated crypto mining popularity.
Source: Blockworks
