Answers
What is move-to-earn?
The answer
Move-to-earn is rewarded physical activity: verified movement — steps, workouts, distance — earning digital rewards. The first generation proved demand and then collapsed on its economics, because rewards were paid in tokens whose value depended on new participants arriving. The second generation re-denominates the reward in real assets.
The category's boom and bust is the cleanest natural experiment in incentive design the consumer crypto era produced: tens of millions of users demonstrated that people will change daily behavior for rewards, and the token charts demonstrated what happens when those rewards are emission-funded. The lesson generalizes to every to-earn vertical, and the firm's Play for Gold research formalizes it.
Asset-backed move-to-earn — the ecosystem's Move-For-Gold expression — pays verified activity in gold-denominated rewards funded by issuers with something to gain from healthier, more engaged audiences: insurers, employers, consumer brands. The reward floor changes the retention math, and the funding source changes the sustainability math.