Tokenized Pokemon Card Sales Soar Over 10x in One Year, CARDS Market Cap Surpasses $580 million

BlockBeats News, June 15th, according to GMGN data, the Solana ecosystem entity card trading platform Collector Crypt's token CARDS continues to surge, with a market cap rising from $200 million in early May to over $580 million, with a nearly $5.4 million 24-hour trading volume.

The on-chain tokenized Pokémon card market has seen explosive growth, with the top seven platforms achieving a $230 million gachapon sales volume in May, compared to just $32 million in the same period last year, representing a growth of over 10 times. The core driving force is the gachapon machine mechanism. Users can invest funds to randomly receive NFT card backs, simulating the physical pack opening experience while providing instant liquidity.

Collector Crypt founder Tuom Holmberg revealed that the gachapon machine accounts for 90% to 95% of the company's business, with total sales on the platform exceeding $1 billion over the 18 months since launch. To dispel concerns in the market about a potential "exit scam," the company has a 28,000-square-foot vault in Montana to store physical card inventory, and some competitors also access this vault to gain liquidity and endorsement. Holmberg positions the gachapon machine as a "gamified shopping experience" and claims the machine offers positive expected value—on average, users can expect to receive $55 for every $50 spent.

The global physical card market reached $15.8 billion last year and is expected to grow to $23.5 billion by 2030. Despite the fading NFT frenzy in the crypto space, tokenization technology is once again becoming a key infrastructure for the card speculation market.