Pixelmon frenzy: Crypto game raises $70m in hours selling NFTs

8 February 2022

in Meta News

Reading Time: 4 mins read

An NFT collection for an upcoming blockchain game has just raised the bar on fundraising in the crypto space — and raised questions about just how overheated and frenzied the NFT market is right now.

Pixelmon raised US$70 million in a mint event this morning to build what it says will be an AAA-quality Web3 game that involves catching and trading Pixelmon creatures.

Pixelmon is sold out! After many months of hard work the team is so excited for the many opportunities that $70M will provide for the game and for holders.

We now have everything we need to build one of the biggest games in the NFT space. It’s time to get to work.

— Pixelmon (@ThePixelmon) February 7, 2022

Users paid as much as 3 Ether (US$9,450) to mint a Pixelmon today, with the price dropping by 0.1 Ether every 10 minutes in a “Dutch auction” format. The last of the 7,750 Gen1 Pixelmon available for minting today apparently went for 2.4 Ether, social media posts indicate.

Other recent NFT mints have been for 0.05 to 0.3 Ether (US$157 to $944) – although Pixelmon backers would argue their NFTs have “utility” since they can be used for this upcoming game.

But it’s not like the game is ready for release. The Pixelmon website says that typically these kind of projects take “at least” two to three years to develop, but with the expected increase in funding from the mint strategy, they expect to release an alpha product by the end of the second quarter and finish development by early Q3.

I don’t understand the process of first raising millions just so that you can “start working on something” 😀 Nobody wants to provide something BEFORE asking people for money? Instead, teams these days just mint out, collect millions and invest 20% of it (if that) in dev after.

— Novica Vukobratovic (Justificer) (@NovicaV89) February 7, 2022

people that are salty about pixelmon selling at 3 eth even though they’ve been building for 6+ months and already had a demo out before release…

are the same people that minted a mutant ape yacht club for 3+ eth when BAYC has done no actual development

change my mind 😷

— nftllama.eth (CANCEL NFTS, DOGE TO $1!!) (@NFTLlama) February 7, 2022

“Pixelmon making over 1980Ξ holding a 3 ETH Dutch auction with only a website and a twitter account is either very inspirational or terrifying,” posted one Twitter analyst, making a typo over how much they raised — more than 19,800 Ether, not 1,900.

The Pixelmon creatures were selling for between 1.3 and 2.0 Ether on Opensea this afternoon, with 4,700 in volume traded, meaning that anyone who had minted one in the hopes of making money on a quick flip was having to sell for a loss.

Like many crypto projects, the team behind Pixelmon appear to be entirely anonymous, at least judging from their website.

For what it’s worth, here’s the demo.

Have you seen our game demo? You can download and play it for yourself now at https://t.co/h0cilGdQV1!

Who wants a Mintlist?
Do one or both of the below:

1. Post a Screenshot in game with the hashtag #PixelmonNFT and tag @ThePixelmon 💙
2. Like, RT and Comment on this post 🔥 pic.twitter.com/KAj04N93bs

— Pixelmon (@ThePixelmon) February 7, 2022