There were a number of (possibly apocryphal) stories during World of Warcraft’s heyday about Korean teenagers and American prisoners hunched over computers 24-7, building up and selling off video game characters for real cash.
Huntercoin could potentially be that on steroids.
First, understand that the term Huntercoin encompasses an altcoin (HUC), a digital wallet and a gaming client. The game is a massive multiplayer online game, like WoW, but gameplay is incentivized by cryptocurrency rewards, i.e. players win Huntercoins.
Developers argue gameplay is a fairer system for cryptocurrency introduction than mining or proof of stake.
The game itself looks like top-down 2D games from the ‘80s (the company press release name checks “Gauntlet”; I’m thinking “Legend of Zelda”). Players move about the world, collecting coins that are stored in Huntercoin’s online wallet, and those can then be traded on exchanges for other coins or fiat currency. Game stats are recorded on the blockchain, “so your successes, failures, and transactions are immortalised,” the press release says.
The coin is essentially a modified version of Namecoin. At the time of writing, HUC is trading for just less than one MilliBit (0.0009 BTC).
The company says it has about 5,000 players at the moment, and the currency reached a market cap of $1 million in its first three days of trading.
Browser, Android and iOS gaming clients are in the works.
If you are curious to see what lies down this particular rabbit hole, go to Huntercoin.org.