Have you ever wanted to tap mindlessly on Elon Musk’s face for hours on end with the vague promise that it might, one day, make you some cash? No? Well, millions of people have been doing just that over the past few months as part of the latest craze to hit the world of crypto; a collection of Cookie Clicker-style games on the messaging platform Telegram.
This craze started earlier this year with the launch of NotCoin, an incredibly simple app on Telegram where you would tap on a virtual coin, as you would the cookie in Cookie Clicker. It was simple enough that it was inoffensive, but it lacked any of Cookie Clicker’s charm.
Despite this, the game racked up millions of players, likely due to the promise of a crypto token that would be given to players based on how many coins they earned in-game. These token giveaways, known as airdrops in the crypto world, are often done when a new cryptocurrency is launched to generate hype when it finally goes on sale in the open market and, in the process, boost the price. With millions of $NOT tokens given away to players, the crypto reached a peak price of $0.02896 shortly after the airdrop, meaning some players, had they sold all the tokens they were given at the right time, walked away with hundreds of dollars for free. At the time of writing, the Notcoin token is worth significantly less at $0.007754.
Obviously, this success resulted in copycats, hoping to cash in with their own tap-to-earn games. One such copycat was the Banana game that rose to the top of Steam a few months ago, while hundreds of others have since appeared on Telegram, trying to capitalise on the large crypto community who already use the messaging app.