- Fantasy Top will shut down in June after concluding its NFT trading card economy was unable to support the business long term.
- The crypto gaming platform distributed more than US$20 million (AU$28 million) to players during its two-year run.
- Co-founder Kipit said speculative crypto behaviour undermined the trading card game model and prevented sustainable growth.
NFT-powered fantasy gaming platform Fantasy Top is preparing to close down at the end of June, ending a project that once became one of the most talked-about applications in crypto social media circles. The shutdown follows two years of operations and several attempts to expand beyond its original trading card model.
Fantasy Top allowed users to collect and trade digital cards tied to crypto influencers, with player rankings determined by engagement activity on X rather than sporting performance. The game launched on Blast in 2024 before later migrating to Coinbase’s Base network in July 2025.
According to the company, the platform returned more than US$20 million (AU$28 million) to players and distributed US$3.2 million (AU$4.48 million) to influencers whose likenesses were used in the game. Fantasy Top also confirmed that investors would receive full reimbursements for their original investments.
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The Limits of Crypto Trading Card Games
The company said its core problem was that the economics of crypto trading conflicted with the structure of traditional trading card games. In a post on X, co-founder Kipit wrote that the project had “tried to put crypto on top of a model that was never built for crypto”. Kipit said speculative trading became the primary attraction for users instead of the gameplay experience itself.
“Once an economy is financialised from day one, every decision becomes harder…. You stop building a game and start managing an economy. That’s the trap, and we walked straight into it.”
Fantasy Top stated that trading fees and NFT card activity were unable to support long-term operations despite ongoing experimentation with new products and social-finance features. The company said several alternative concepts were explored over the past 12 months, but none achieved lasting traction with users.
The platform’s final fantasy competitions are scheduled to finish on 18 June, while remaining rewards and payments will be distributed shortly afterwards before the service is permanently shut down. Prediction markets and several other game modes have already been discontinued.
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