Probably the inventors of horse racing, blockchain, and live streaming never expected that these three inventions would be combined in an extremely bizarre way several years later: watching a group of hamsters race on Twitch and using tokens to bet on their favorite warrior, ultimately winning rewards.

Extremely simple gameplay

This is the entire gameplay of HamstersGG, a project that suddenly became popular on the BSC chain in recent days: living and adorable hamsters start from the same starting line, and the first one to pass the finish line wins. Of course, just like any horse, dog, chicken, or turtle race, you can support these little animals with your real money and cheer for them with the viewers in the chat room (although they can't hear it).

Just as there are celebrity racehorses, there are also celebrity race mice. Fierce champions like "Rocky" or "Buster" naturally have their presence on the winner's list, but there are also mice that are not as good, which disappoint the viewers who want to see an underdog. For example, this one below:

Unexplainable popularity

You may ask, "Would anyone really be so bored as to watch a group of hamsters race?"

The answer is yes. Since its launch on July 11th, the number of people participating in this game has been continuously increasing, and in the past few days, more and more people have come to watch the hamster races. The website now can maintain over 800 concurrent online users, and with that, the betting amount has also been increasing. Starting from 10u, 20u, and now even 300 or 400u, the "support rate" of each hamster can be visually seen below the live streaming page.

This inexplicable yet expected project captures all the imaginations that foreigners have about memes, and it also has interactivity. Although it's hard to say how much calculable game theory is behind the presumably pre-recorded videos, some people still tirelessly calculate the historical records and winning rates of the hamsters, trying to find the holy grail of betting on the race mice.

And of course... there's the skyrocketing tokens.

Like all projects that are born from the grassroots, Hams also has its own token. 80% of the platform's generated revenue will be allocated to the reward pool, and token holders will receive rewards based on their token holdings. The remaining 20% will be contributed to the team. In addition, a 5% tax will be levied on every token buy and sell transaction, which will be used for team marketing and technical updates.

As of writing this article, the price of HAMS token has reached $2.37, with close to $1 million liquidity pool and a 24-hour trading volume of $10 million. The price has seen an increase of nearly 10,000% since the early hours of the 20th.

The world of cryptocurrency can be perplexing, to say the least. Some have even exclaimed "Hams is the real RWA."

What lies at the end of a bear market?

In the past, we have seen similar project models based on racing and gambling. However, this time it's different. Players no longer need to buy NFTs for horses or cows. Instead, they can bet directly to complete all steps, which further confirms the notion that "cryptocurrency is a big casino."

Interestingly, projects with elements of gambling tend to thrive during bear markets. Whether it's the previous FOMO 3D, various blockchain casinos, or the current pre-programmed hamsters, they are all long-term negative expected value (EV) games. However, the short-term hype of rising token prices, the vulnerabilities inherent in the games themselves, and even the "which one to gamble on during the bear market" mentality, repeatedly lead to similar stories unfolding. Hamsters keep running on the path to break even.

How long can the hamsters keep running? No one can give a precise answer, but at least for now, they have not reached their stopping point.