Axie Infinity price prediction: Will gaming boom lift AXS?

Blockchain-based gaming space Axie Infinity’s AXS coin has plunged close to 85% year-to-date (YTD), from an opening price on 1 January of $93.30, to $14.23 as of 6 September 2022.

The organisation has faced a number of difficulties in 2022, particularly a $625m hacking scandal in March, which was followed by the coin dropping 54% in April. But the AXS price did see some respite in early May, when the price rose by 10% in one day following the launch of its token burn tool for its SLP in-game token.

AXS reached an all-time high of $165.37 in November 2021, but at the time of writing was trading more than 90% below that mark.

While being based on a specific game has its downsides – the most important being that players lose interest if new challenges or scenarios are not updated – the fate of AXS also depends on its fundamentals.

The main question concerning the token right now is: Given the rollercoaster ride it’s been on over the last few months, can Axie surpass its all-time high?

Let’s look at the AXS coin price prediction for 2022 and beyond.

What is Axie Infinity (AXS)?

Axie Infinity was conceptualised by game developer Sky Mavis in 2018, and co-founded by Trung Nguyen and Aleksander Larsen. Axie Infinity is promoted as a fully player-owned cryptocurrency that is used within a digital pet universe. The fundamentals allow players to seamlessly sell and trade their game assets for digital currency, as all in-game assets exist as tokens. 

Inspired by cartoons and real-time games like Pokémon and Tamagotchi, Axie Infinity allows players to collect, breed, rear and trade token-based critters known as Axies. Players can also send their Axies into battle against one another.

The player-owned economy enables users to own, buy, sell and trade resources, or Axies, and all art assets and Axie genetic data can be easily accessed by third parties. This allows the community developers to build their tools and experiences in the Axie Infinity Universe.

From the game viewpoint, there are more than 500 different parts available, including aquatic, beast, bird, bug, plant and reptile body parts, and Axies can be classified as common, rare, ultra-rare and legendary. 

Every Axie is a non-fungible token (NFT) with its own features and strengths. These come into play to compete in 3v3 battles, complete quests, defeat bosses and unlock in-depth storylines. Completing challenges and winning battles help to level up an Axie’s stats or upgrade body parts.

Further, these Axies can be bred to produce new and unique offspring, which can be used in the game or sold on the Axie marketplace. As the body parts of the Axie play a crucial role, it also has its unique card art for players to collect.

What differentiates Axie Infinity from other real-time games like Pokémon GO is that the Axie Infinity universe engages players with its social network and earning platform. The community gets the opportunity to truly the own resources earned within the games. The blockchain economic design enables the creation of complex player-owned economies and rewards players who reach advanced levels of skill. All of this brings the ‘play-to-earn’ concept to life. 

The gameplay revolves around these ideas, and players can gain more resources to advance in the game by:

• Battling to win leaderboard prizes, as well as Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens

• Breeding Axies to produce offspring with unique characteristics (body parts)

• Collecting and trading unique or rare Axies.

Axie constantly uploads NFT gaming and related content on YouTube to engage the community. The Axie Infinity ecosystem also has its own unique governance token, known as Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), which gives the community control over the token and enables them to keep the treasury in check and transactions of funds transparent.

The AXS token is an ERC-20 token launched on the Ethereum blockchain, making it secure, with Ethereum’s proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.

Early in 2021, Axie Infinity migrated its NFT tokens, including Axies, Land, and other in-game token items, from the Loom Network to a custom-built sidechain on Ethereum known as Ronin. Ronin, which is an application-specific sidechain custom-built for Axie Infinity, supports almost instant transaction confirmations and reduced gas fees, and is capable of helping Axie Infinity scale.

As of 6 September 2022, CoinMarketCap data showed the Axie Infinity token price at $14.23 with a market cap of $1.19bn and 83.65 million AXS coins in circulation. The coin was ranked #44 globally.

Is AXS coin a good investment?

The prospects for AXS may look promising. Its fundamentals highlight that community plays a prime role in Axie Infinity and it is incentivised, along with the core development team, to work together to grow the network. In January this year, the company announced the launch of the Axie Infinity Builders Program. This allows players and developers to experiment with Axie’s resources. 

Community developers will have resources, promotion, support and tools designed specifically to help them continue building compelling, valuable gaming experiences on top of Axie Infinity. As a part of the programme, there is a minimum $5,000 grant in AXS for the project, with a total of 5,000 AXS (roughly around $80,000) in grants available.

The project team will have exclusive access to integrations such as Ronin SSO, Ronin Network testnet and Ronin Wallet, and the project itself will be promoted to the community by Sky Mavis. Previous creativity programmes led to early mini-games like Flappy Axie and Axie Sushi, which helped drive community engagement in 2018 and 2019.

Axie has a tie-up with MetaMask, a software cryptocurrency wallet to smoothly transact and navigate in the Axie marketplace. 

In more recent AXS coin news, in February 2022, AXS and esports and video streaming platform VeraEsports expanded their partnership, giving Axie exposure in the global blockchain gaming community.

In March, in a bid to increase Axie Infinity’s community growth and engagement, Bit2Me became the official exchange partner for Axie Infinity players in Southern Europe and Latin America.

Bit2Me, the provider of the B2M token and the only cryptocurrency exchange recognised by the Bank of Spain, will be able to boost and sponsor events organised by Axie in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

AXS price prediction 2022: What are analysts saying?

Axie Infinity crypto price predictions from various algorithm-based forecast websites can give us a sneak peek into its potential future trajectory. 

In a short-term technical analysis on 6 September 2022, CoinCodex was bearish, with three indicators giving bullish signals compared with 23 bearish signals. Despite the negative technical outlook, CoinCodex forecast the token could rise by 0.78% to $ 14.30 by 11 September.

In its most recent Axie Infinity price prediction, algorithmic forecasting website WalletInvestor had a highly pessimistic outlook for the token. The platform expected the coin’s price to crash to $0.713 by the end of the year. In five years’ time – by September 2027 – the website reckoned it could be worth $0.0160. WalletInvestor did not provide an AXS price prediction for 2030. 

The Axie Infinity price prediction for 2022 from PricePrediction, however, was highly optimistic. Based on historical data, the website suggested a potential average price of $15.07 by the end of the year, followed by a doubling of its value to trade at an average of $32.02 throughout 2023. 

According to the website’s Axie Infinity price prediction for 2030, the token could be poised to reach an average $487.13 that year.

DigitalCoinPrice set its Axie Infinity coin price prediction at $18.46 by the end of 2022. The platform’s Axie Infinity price prediction for 2025 saw the token trading at an average price of $58.60. DigitalCoinPrice forecast that AXS could hit $198.28 by 2030.

According to Gov Capital’s forecast for the token, AXS could reach $157.61 in a year and $1,257.06 in five years’ time. 

If you are planning to put your money into crypto, always keep in mind that price predictions are based on algorithms that trace past performance to predict the future. The crypto market is highly volatile and these algorithm-based predictions may go wrong. You should always do your own research, looking into recent initiatives that include collaborations, partnership deals and fundamentals, before making investment decisions.

Investing in crypto depends on your attitude to risk and expertise in navigating market gyrations. You should gauge how comfortable you are about losing money and never invest money that you cannot afford to lose.