Big Time only became popular for less than five days, is it a wealth creation myth or a scientific harvest?

Was Big Time's brief popularity a myth of wealth creation or a scientific achievement?

Big Time’s popularity lasted less than five days, and its wealth creation myth was shattered. However, the plummeting token price, reduced mining rate, and withdrawal restrictions continue to plague high-entry players, leaving them in a dilemma.

There are several doubts surrounding this brief period of popularity during the bear market, such as insufficient token liquidity, market makers attempting to hide on-chain traces, intense promotion by Chinese institutions and KOLs, and the project team using KYC to prevent withdrawals.

One obvious fact is that Big Time, as an international project, only gained traction within the Chinese community. Its popularity in mainland China over the past week is equivalent to the combined popularity of the other top ten countries and regions.

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| 15% Plummet in 10 Minutes

“I’m done playing. The project always has issues, and I don’t feel secure.”

“Has your KYC been approved? Mine has been pending for over 48 hours, and I can’t withdraw even if I want to.”

On the morning of October 18th, the token BIGTIME of the blockchain game Big Time plummeted by 15% in just 10 minutes. The related community was full of complaints, with Big Time users facing difficulties in getting their KYC approved, unable to withdraw their earnings, price drops, and longer breakeven periods.

As of the time of writing, BIGTIME is priced at $0.16, a 50% decrease from the previous high of $0.32.

Big Time is a popular 3A blockchain game launched recently. It was initiated by Ari Meilich, the founder of Decentraland, and the team members come from companies such as Epic Games, Rockstar, and Riot.

The project was initially launched in 2021, gaining moderate attention. However, after the token was listed on exchanges like Coinbase, Bitget, and OKX, it suddenly skyrocketed, with a short-term increase of over 20 times.

What drove users crazy was the money-making effect of the project. Many KOLs claimed, “You can recoup your investment in just a few days” and “Guaranteed monthly income of $200,000.” This led to a frenzy among many Chinese users to join. However, several users told Techub News that they mostly ended up losing money, unless they were early adopters.

According to users, the cost of entry during the peak reached over 10,000 USDT, and it was “difficult to get in.” Big Time operates on an invitation mechanism, where current users need to provide invitation codes to new users.

Techub News found that there were people selling Big Time invitation codes in various communities and online platforms, with prices ranging from 40 to 70 yuan. After the sharp drop in prices this morning, the lowest price dropped to 30 yuan.

However, users who entered the project soon discovered that it wasn’t as rosy as expected. There were various pitfalls, starting with many users not being able to withdraw their earnings after mining. Withdrawals require KYC verification.

According to users, many people were stuck in the KYC process. “It takes at least two to three days to get approved, and some users have reported that they still haven’t been approved. They earned coins through mining but can’t withdraw them. Even if the KYC is approved now, they would still incur significant losses due to the price drop.”

Secondly, users found that the project party had lowered the rate of gold bursting when they entered. Some even said that the bursting rate had decreased by 10 times.

A user said that the current situation of Big Time is “can’t get in, can’t get out, low liquidity, high cost”, and now they need to add the difficulty of “recovering costs”.

In addition, a video that appears to be a bug in the Big Time game has been circulated on social media, where users can infinitely brush tokens. Some users revealed that the Big Time staff are trying to contact the relevant users.

Crypto influencer “RichDog” on X stated that several large holders are starting to exit one after another. When everyone is talking about it, it’s time to cash out and exit.

| All the heat is in China

The popularity of Big Time, in fact, is only within the Chinese community.

According to Google Trends, the search popularity of Big Time in the past week is almost concentrated in China, with the top five in terms of popularity being Mainland China, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The popularity in mainland China alone is equivalent to the total popularity of the other nine regions.

From various signs, it can be seen that the concentrated popularity among the Chinese community has been fueled by hidden hands behind the scenes.

Crypto influencer “RichDog” said that the popularity of Big Time is not as high as that of the “elimination game” a few months ago. The elimination game was sparked from players from the ground up and initially had no official marketing or restrictions. But this time, the promotion of Big Time is more mainstream, with official advertising on various platforms and Chinese influencers gathering because of this project. It was rare to see overseas bloggers promoting it in the early stages.

An on-chain analyst, Yu Jin, once wrote that the market makers on OKX for Big Time are Amber Group and FBG Capital. The two companies each received 60 million Big Time allocations in the past few days. Currently, most of the Big Time held in OKX addresses belong to market makers.

According to media reports, Amber Group and FBG Capital transferred a total of 30 million BIGTIME to Coinbase and then transferred it to a new wallet, seemingly hiding their on-chain footprint.

CoinMarketCap data shows that Big Time has a maximum total supply of 5 billion coins, and the current circulation is 147 million coins. However, the market makers Amber Group and FBG Capital have each received 60 million Big Time coins. Based on this calculation, the holdings of these two market makers account for more than 80% of the total circulation.

It is worth mentioning that both Amber Group and FBG Capital originated from China.

The Amber Group website shows that its headquarters is located in Singapore, with offices in Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Dubai, and other places. However, according to reports from various media outlets, Amber Group was established in Hong Kong in 2017 and has received multiple rounds of financing from Temasek, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and others.

According to media reports, FBG Capital was established in Beijing in 2017 and is a digital asset investment fund focused on blockchain.

An industry insider advised Techub News, “This wave of enthusiasm is caused by domestic teams in China. Be careful not to be fooled.”

Another industry analyst said,

The Big Time project team is very clever and has made good use of the loopholes in Chinese policies. On the one hand, they have effectively tapped into the large user base in China for rapid growth. On the other hand, they have utilized China’s encryption policies to delay user withdrawals by implementing KYC requirements for mainland Chinese users. This is done to prolong the process of users withdrawing their tokens and thereby delay the decline in popularity.

A player commented, “Big Time is really something. They advertise in the Chinese community, attract Chinese players, but don’t allow Chinese users to buy their coins. And they make it difficult with the KYC process. It’s great to exploit Chinese investors, without any legal risks.”

According to the “Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with Virtual Currency Trading Speculation Risks” issued by the People’s Bank of China and 10 other departments on September 24, 2021, activities related to virtual currencies are considered illegal financial activities, and any civil legal actions resulting from these activities are invalid, with the losses to be borne by the individuals themselves.

Dumping and selling off tokens is a death spiral that blockchain games cannot seem to escape. For users, most blockchain games are a “who can run faster” game, but Big Time takes it a step further by being a “game that won’t let you run.”

“If I lose, I lose. I’m ready to move on to other projects,” said the aforementioned player.

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