HIGH TECH Altcoin is a crypto-education

Kate Wilson

ortunes were lost when the Bitcoin bubble popped. Near the end of 2017, one unit of the digital currency had been worth US$17,900. Just 52 days later, its value had crashed by 65 percent, with other major cryptocurrencies— like Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash—suffering similar shocks. Anyone who had poured their dollars into crypto at the height of its hype lost huge amounts of money.

Vancouver software engineer Tom Chan, however, saw an opportunity to help. His friends and family had invested in the currencies at the worst time, with few truly understanding what they were or how they operated. Deciding to put his knowledge of the gaming industry to work, he created a virtual trading game identical to the real-world crypto market in the hope that individuals would think critically and educate themselves before placing cash investments.

“About two years ago…people had just started getting into the crypto space without doing their due diligence,” he tells the Georgia Straight by phone during a visit to Hope. “The thought was, ‘I can get rich quick, because someone has already gotten rich, so I’m going to spend my whole life savings on it.’ For me, it’s not right. It’s not a sound way to invest.

“There was an information issue, where people created these ideas but there was no transparency behind it,” he continues. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we create an educational game where we introduce people to different blockchain projects and cryptocurrencies while having fun trading them?’ For us, we wanted to make sure that people don’t keep losing money, and we wanted to have a safe and a risk-free way to have people experiment with it.”

The game, named Altcoin Fantasy, is easy to play. An individual who signs