On October 1st, the Chumbi Valley team burned 70,000,000 CHMB tokens, the third of six planned token burns. These burned tokens come from private investors who decided to divest themselves of their purchased CHMB.
Chumbi Valley has a problem with their CHMB tokens. As we have seen before with games that release tokens early with no use case or utility, the value of the CHMB token has plummeted throughout the year. Once worth as much as 10 cents each back in January of 2022, the CHMB token has lost over 90% of it's value and now is only worth 0.0003 cents per token.
So, rather than just acknowledging their mistake and moving onwards, the Chumbi Valley team implemented some stop gap measures. The first involved extending the investing schedule for private investors to 'protect CHMB from early dumps'. As you might imagine, a number of investors were not happy about this change. And so, they were given the option to remove themselves from investment in Chumbi Valley -- giving up their promised tokens in exchange for a return of their invested funds.
All in all, 560 million tokens were removed from private investors. And good for the team for burning the tokens rather than holding onto them. Though I do wonder why they're doing monthly burns rather than burning all at once. It feels like that's just done as a PR / marketing ploy to give them something to post about once a month.
In my opinion, this is one of those measures that targets the results of the issue rather than the cause. Why is the value of CHMB token dropping? Because, at the moment, the token is completely worthless. While the Chumbi Valley team regularly posts screenshots and concept art, there has been nothing for players to interact with. You can't do anything with CHMB tokens beyond selling them speculators (or staking them to generate even more tokens!)
And really, the short term value of the token shouldn't be such a concern to the parent company. It's a game token after all, not company stock. Right?? Those who invested or purchased tokens made their own decisions and took their own risks. And they can decide whether to sell or hold. Attempted price manipulation by web3 companies -- whether with good or bad intent -- really should not be a thing.
A word of advice for other token-enabled games -- don't release your token if it won't have any use for over a year. Or, if you do, then don't act surprised when players dump your tokens at the first chance they get!
Chumbi Valley is an adventure game with taming, breeding, and other such creature owning activities. Players explore the world with customizable characters, grow crops on their lands, fight Chumbi battles against cursed Chumbi and other players, craft items, and breed new Chumbis. Chumbis are generative, with different body parts and appearances.
Breeding Generation One Chumbis is coming soon. There are only 4096 original Seed Chumbis. But, there are some coat types which can only be found in the third or fourth generations, encouraging breeders to keep making Seed Pods and also providing value to later generation Chumbi. The game token, CHMB is already circulating. Plans for the token utility include a Chumbi marketplace, and a staking portal.