Niantic and a crypto debit card company made an AR game where you earn Bitcoin
[PhilNote: this sounds like 'Job Simulator' for bitcoin mining.]
Fold AR is a new augmented reality game from Pokémon Go developer Niantic and the financial company Fold. The game — which a press release dubs part of the metaverse — is very loosely modeled on Pokémon Go but themed around cryptocurrency. As explained by Fold CEO Will Reeves, it runs with the metaphor of “mining” Bitcoin. So instead of capturing cute monsters, the central mechanic involves finding cubes of binary code and tapping them like Minecraft blocks until they reveal a prize.
The prizes include Bitcoin in the denomination of Satoshis, a very small unit currently worth around 1/20th of a penny. They also include power-ups for Fold, which already gamifies card purchases through an app that lets you spin a wheel and win Bitcoin rewards.
Unlike Pokémon Go and other Niantic games, though, Fold AR (which is launched from inside the Fold app) is not currently set in a world full of virtual places that correspond to real-world locations. Instead, the game spawns a block between 1 and 50 feet away from the player every 10 minutes, mirroring the rate of real Bitcoin mining.
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/23/22798523/niantic-fold-ar-metaverse-mobile-game-bitcoin-earning
