As reported by Cointelegraph, the online gaming sandbox Minecraft, known by many children, teens, and adults alike, has a server that incorporates a feature that makes gaming in the metaverse-like fun zone a lot more interesting. A community-operated Minecraft server by the name of Satlantis, through the assistance of Zebedee, a Bitcoin gaming and payments company, has made it possible to offer Bitcoin payments in-game.
The payments are earned through players completing in-game tasks inspired by real-life Bitcoin mining. Players in the server can participate in in-game mining pools, accumulate ASICs (hardware designed for Bitcoin mining) and increase their hash rate to win block rewards. This incentivizing of in-game mining may serve as an entry-level education for gamers unfamiliar with the inner workings of Bitcoin and why & how miners participate in the network.
Players can pull out their earnings and send them to the Zebedee’s app, where they can utilize their earnings on other games developed by the company or send them to exchanges that support Bitcoin’s layer-2 Lightning Network.
Despite the reputation and anticipation of Bitcoin equating new tax brackets and early retirements, this would be one of the moments where a cup of coffee would be a more sensible aspiration.
The payouts will be in the amount of 1 million satoshis per week. A satoshi is 100 millionth of a Bitcoin or 0.00000001 BTC, which equals $0.000291 USD.
At the time of writing, that would be $0.000291 x 1,000,000 = $291 per week to be divided among how many are involved with the mining quests eligible to earn BTC rewards.
Keep in mind that the active number of Minecraft users is around 17 million and of that number, approximately 500K - 1 million users per day.
So, that cup of coffee that I mentioned may even be a bit of an “aspirational stretch” when it boils down to it.
According to Cointelegraph, the Bitcoin-friendly integration is not through an official affiliation between Satlantis nor Zebedee and the Minecraft developer Mojang Studios, which recently banned the integration of NFTs into the game.
Mojang Studios, through its official Minecraft news page, shared its position on NFTs and the reason for prohibiting their integration into the Minecraft ecosystem: “Each of these uses of NFTs and other blockchain technologies creates digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together.
NFTs are not inclusive of all our community and create a scenario of the haves and the have-nots. The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players.”
“As such, to ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our Minecraft client and server applications nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content, including worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods. We will also be paying close attention to how blockchain technology evolves over time to ensure that the above principles are withheld and determine whether it will allow for more secure experiences or other practical and inclusive applications in gaming. However, we have no plans of implementing blockchain technology into Minecraft right now.”
Due to Mojang Studios' stance and recent ban of NFTs through the Minecraft platform, it’s safe to say that this unofficial Bitcoin integration has an unforeseen future.