Yield Guild Game’s YGG token made headlines this weekend as trading volume eclipsed ETH’s, and the price pumped >250%. The main catalyst appears to be the recent listing on the Binance Futures market, but there has also been some alleged market manipulation.

At the time of writing, YGG has >$220M in open interest ($110M of which is on Binance) and a market cap of $108M (up from $32M 4 days ago). Many have been taking advantage of the short squeeze, with several reports of large investors exiting their positions.

As a result of the new excitement and increased number of eyeballs on the sub-sector, a number of other gaming tokens have also seen positive price growth. At the time of writing, GODS (Gods Unchained), ILV (Illuvium), TLM (Alien Worlds), and POLIS (Star Atlas) have all seen prices increase between 10%-30% over the past 7 days for no apparent reason other than a sector-wide increase in trading activity and speculation.

As the sudden price jump was not due to a fundamental change in YGG’s business, it is likely that we will see prices fall back down to last week’s levels (many tokens have already retraced). Savvy traders may be able to benefit from this reversal, but without a full picture of what the MM’s are hoping to achieve, this is a highly degen play.

On a similar but more predictable note, the price of PRIME token appreciated over the past month with a significant pump of 23% on July 28th in anticipation of Parallel’s open beta launch on July 31st.

Parallel is a Web3 trading card game (TCG) that has received a lot of market attention, raising $50M at a $500M val from Paradigm. PRIME is technically the ecosystem token for the Echelon foundation (a platform that will support several Web3 games in the future), but for all intents and purposes, consider it the native token of Parallel.

As the PRIME ecosystem grows (in part thanks to Echelon grants), the potential for value accrual increases (provided the number of users also increases). However, Parallel is undoubtedly the platform’s flagship product, and any potential long-term profitability heavily relies on the TCG’s success.

As someone who has been playing the beta over the weekend, my 5hr take is that the game is obviously still in early development but has received a lot of positive community feedback so far. My main concern relates to the significantly high skill floor, making it a real TCG-fan favorite but potentially difficult for onboarding enough users for the economy/earning component to be sustainable. Regardless, the Parallel and PRIME are on my radar, and I will keep you updated as things progress.

The alpha will be open throughout April, and if any reader wants beta access, feel free to ping me.