Author: Ryan Gorman, CoinDesk; Translated by: Baishui, Golden Finance

If media reports and anecdotal information are to be believed, we are on the cusp of a wave of mass cryptocurrency adoption, with a group of people not even aware they are using the technology despite reaping the benefits.

Click-to-earn games are not a new idea, but when applied to Web3, there will be a Cambrian explosion of engagement the industry has never seen before, and (Hamster Fight) is just the beginning. In many cases, rewards can bring small amounts of economic freedom that did not exist before.

A ray of hope

Iran currently has one of the worst performing economies in the world, with residents facing very slim job prospects and rising prices. This has led the country to embrace cryptocurrencies at a higher rate than most. Iranians have been among the top users of Tonkeeper and many other non-custodial wallets as they try to find new and different ways to use money and protect the value of their earnings.

Even more surprising, however, is the country's level of attention to the hamster. Take this Associated Press account of a recent afternoon in Tehran, the Iranian capital.

During a heatwave in early June, taxi drivers and cyclists in the Iranian capital frantically tapped their phones as they waited at red lights. Some pedestrians in Tehran were doing the same. They all believed they could get rich.

For these people, wealth is relative to the West when you consider that the currency has depreciated from 32,000 rials to the dollar in 2015 to 42,000 rials to the dollar currently. Meanwhile, meat prices have soared 70 percent in the last year, and the cost of a shared taxi has doubled, according to the Associated Press.

It’s no wonder Iranians are jumping at any money-making opportunity they can find, but they’re not the only group using mini-apps that promise big returns.

Children and their games

Kids have been playing video games for as long as they've existed. I played them growing up, and I still do—and so did many of my friends. So did you, or, if that wasn't you, so did a lot of the people you grew up with. That's where this becomes even more striking.

Many people I talk to – colleagues, partners, conference attendees – have mentioned to me how much their kids love [Hamster Fight]. Some of these kids are as young as 11 and 12 years old, and they play nonstop.

These kids, like many Iranians who were pounding away furiously using a variety of methods, including in some cases massage sticks to optimize their gameplay, may not have known that cryptocurrency was the basis for the rewards and eventual airdrops. But they did know that the top players would receive a windfall that would not have otherwise existed — whether they were in Iran, Iowa or anywhere else in the world.

Yes, the rewards on offer may well have attracted the 300 million plus players of Hamster Kombat to continue playing the countless other click-to-earn games that come online every week, but that’s not really the point. One only needs to look at how video games replaced board games in the 1980s to understand what’s going on.

For the first time in history, 300 million people are interacting with Web3 platforms powered by cryptocurrency, across all generations, backgrounds, and locations. As younger generations become more and more enamored with cryptocurrency, it’s only a matter of when, not if, these platforms begin to overtake existing ones.