In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: Nah This Is Crazy (by PhoenixxDown)

• Treeverse Season 1 Beckons: A Q&A With Loopify (by PhoenixxDown and Flower83)

• Market Manipulation (by Flower83)

You’ve seen the trend lately of people using AI to create action figures of themselves, and thanks to LeBoomington and ArtForBytes, Neo Tokyo is now one step closer to having our own range!

Citizens such as Photoshopped AF, BlockchainBuck, Ktrap, and Cryptographer have had theirs brought to life:

And we notice that the boss of Shibuya Mall, Crasher, has taken advantage of this offer too.

It makes you think, what if… what if these delightful digital designs did a reverse upload special move and were here in the IRL realm?

Nah this is crazy. It looks like LeBoom and Crasher are already on it.

Fingers crossed!

This Week’s Neo Tokyo Content

Interlinked #74 – In this episode, hosts Cryptoetheus and Jarred dive into the shenanigans of the SEC, and the Ghibli takeover that’s recently gone viral.

Discussion includes recent legal actions against crypto companies, the lack of regulatory clarity, and the potential impact on major players like Coinbase and Ripple. They also touch on how AI-generated content might affect creative industries, and the challenges around IP rights.

Market Monday #117 - Market Monday went live deep in the thick of the pure carnage going on across all markets earlier this week, and there was plenty of tariff talk, speculating on what’s driving them and much more.

Away from that, AI girlfriends were a hot topic of conversation. Yes, they’re coming, and probably sooner than we think. If the SkyNet takeover was just AI gfs, would that be acceptable? Perhaps more palatable than the death machines we all originally imagined?

Listen back here.

NT x Unfungible Space - And in just a couple of hours’ time from publish, the panel this week will be discussing whether AI in gaming is enhancing gameplay, or is it just stretching time with no real payoff?

There’s a stacked lineup on the panel as always, so set your reminders or listen back here.

77Bit AMA – 77-Bit is an anime-inspired, story-driven franchise reminiscent of Naruto or DBZ, centered around a high-quality cyberpunk MMORPG. The CEO of this cutting-edge cyberpunk browser-based game, Fanfaron, joins the AMA team for a deep dive and to take questions.

Listen back here.

Interlinked #75 – In the second of a double-bill of Interlinked episodes this week, Ben and Cryptoetheus are joined by Zac Meta from Slingshot, a community-driven platform where players, creators, and developers collaborate to ideate, fund, and launch gaming projects, primarily on Roblox.

The conversation touches on the monetization of Roblox games, the potential for AI integration in gaming, and the importance of community involvement in game development. Zac also shares insights on the challenges of game dev and the future of Web3 gaming, suggesting that successful games will need to prioritize user experience over token economics.

Short Scoops

Kerberus is not only one of the oldest (if not the only surviving) projects to be born in Neo Tokyo, it’s one of the most important. Read about how Danor and Metro’s creation was built not for NT, but with it, in this spotlight feature thread:

Did you know Neo Tokyo has a book club? Join Fractillians and many others for the next chapter tomorrow. Ask inside the Discord for more detail on how to get involved:

The next NT Plays event is scheduled for tomorrow also, this week they’ll be jumping into Tollan Universe. Easy access, as there’s no download needed. Be there tomorrow at 15:00 EST:

And here’s a taste of what you missed if you weren’t there for last Saturday’s Off the Grid event:

And as is tradition, a $BYTES bullpost to end.

Is a supply shock imminent? Ktrap’s bi-weekly update went through some interesting statistics that Digital Crypto Shark liked the look of:

Until next next week, citizens.

We’re thrilled to present an exclusive Q&A with Loopify, the visionary founder of Treeverse and Citizen of Neo Tokyo!

Treeverse is a classless MMORPG set in the lush world of Arboros, where players shape their own adventures with real-time combat, social hubs, and tradeable NFT items. It’s now available on iOS, Android, and PC through the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Epic Games Store.

With Season 1 and the $END token launch nearing, excitement is growing for a major milestone in Treeverse’s journey. 

Here, Loopify opens up about his shift from crypto investor to game developer, the grind behind four years of building, and the philosophy driving Treeverse to prioritize fun over hype!

Neo Tokyo News: GM Loopify, thanks for joining us! As someone who made the leap from crypto investor to founder, what’s been the biggest challenge in that transition?

Loopify: The biggest challenge is taking a completely different perspective to things. As a trader/investor you may be misaligned with the project itself as you are playing on a different timeframe. So when building a project, you need to understand you have investors, and take everything with a bit of salt.

Neo Tokyo News: You really listen to your community’s feedback. But how do you decide which ideas from holders make it onto Treeverse’s roadmap?

Loopify: Yes, you have to heed their advice, but also make a decision considering all variables. It could make or break a project. It certainly took some time to adjust, I think about long-term alignment of the project and short-term.

Neo Tokyo News: What inspired the game? Can you tell us a bit about the multi-year long process behind making it?

Loopify: The co-founder and I have been life-long gamers. Aizea also played Runescape, a lot like every other person in that time. From a technology POV, an MMO was a great fit to bring together NFTs and gaming. It's been a crazy few years. Here’s a quick breakdown that I've only shared to investors, but I will share here for the first time:

"To get a rough understanding of our development timeline over the last few years. Our official Plot launch in August 2021 that announced Treeverse, it was a completely different game with another vision (If you remember the pixel game?)

“The only similarity was the name. From that raise, we shifted plans to create something much bigger, and slowly started to build the team and come up with a vision. In Q1 2022, we started to explore the art direction of how you know Treeverse today.

“From that time stretch, we started to heavily scale the team (a rookie mistake) and ended up at about 60+ people soon enough. We launched a basic pre-alpha in January 2023, but made a drastic decision to cut more than half of the team in Q1 because of production pipeline issues and burn rate. If we wanted to compete in this field as a startup, we had to build differently, and our previous process was not going to cut it.

“In Q1 2023, engineering restarted and since then we've been about ~2 years in building the game you see today. The culmination of building a team from scratch, making mistakes along the way, learning about game design in real time, navigating market issues (the bear was brutal, even though we survived) and more, has been the current journey. Although on the outside it is simplified as "building for the last 4 years"."

Neo Tokyo News: That bear market was rough, but you made it through when many didn’t. Before that, back in the 2021 crypto gaming boom, lots of projects chased promises of quick wealth over fun. Did that shape Treeverse’s focus, or were you already set on making financial rewards a bonus, not the goal?

Loopify: In a bull market, everyone kind of loses their mind. We did it for a bit too, but I quickly understood it was a losing strategy. People love you when the price goes up, and hate you when it goes down. You can only control so many variables—we decided early on to focus on pure game development and build something very good. The market adjusting and projects dying reconfirmed it was and still is the correct approach.

Neo Tokyo News: Indeed, the results speak for themselves on that. So who is the target audience for Treeverse?

Loopify: The target audience is purely people who love the game for what it is on a high level overview. Digging a bit deeper, we are also adjusting for the modern era of short-term attention spans and past nostalgia from MMOs. Hence the Mobile focus, classless, future PvP elements and more.

Neo Tokyo News: Treeverse has NFTrees, Plots, and Timeless avatars. How do these NFTs tie together in the game?

Loopify: Our genesis NFTs exist as the core primary digital collectibles within Treeverse that have specific usecases. We do not plan to add any other major ones, and in future games these will play a part too. Other NFTs in Treeverse will just simply be tradeable items.

Neo Tokyo News: An age old question this one: how do you address pushback from “retail” gamers hesitant about crypto in gaming?

Loopify: Ignore the tech. Care about the end result: user ownership. Games are better in a world where users own, than in a world where they don't. It's normalized in the real world, so why not in the digital world? There’s a lot more to answer in this question, but that's the simplest.

Neo Tokyo News: Any plans for AI, AR, or VR in Treeverse’s future?

Loopify: AI — yes. In the context of trying to take into account where it can actually help us, but not just fronting like every tool significantly improves our workflow or end product.

Neo Tokyo News: Nice! And finally, how can players and investors jump into Treeverse right now?

Loopify: We just hit one of our big milestones where you can finally play on all devices (iOS, Android & Windows)! We still think, internally, we are about ~2 years away, but you can join us in this mission and participate in our community along this timeframe.

Neo Tokyo News: Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us! Wishing you all the best with Season 1!

Useful Links:

• Website

• Treeverse X Account

• Discord

• Epic Games Download

• Google Play Download

• iOS App Store Download 

It’s Crime Season baybiiii 🚀

Except this time around, the shitcoin in question that we are going to dump and then pump is the Nasdaq.

The 4D chess mastermind behind it? The Trump Administration (if you believe it.)

The insider TG group full of wealthy whales? Top senators, congress members and billionaires.

Our targeted exit liquidity? Other countries and unsuspecting retail trad00rs.

The method? Confusing the enemy, and yourself, and going back and forth so many times nobody knows what you are up to anymore.

It was Wednesday, and the headlines were all green:

Best day ever, they said.

And this was after last week, which was one of the worst ever in history, and certainly in this decade. So, you could say that markets are very volatile at the moment. It is not just up and down… its SIGNIFICANTLY DOWN and then SIGNIFICANTLY UP.

Plot twist: turns out that the “fake news” that pumped the markets briefly last week, about pausing tariffs for 90 days, was not fake. Rather, just leaked prematurely.

Turns out it's true and now markets can reverse again, it seems. But of course, let's play dumb.

Naturally, one must ask themselves who profits from this back and forth? There’s mainly two camps of thought at the moment:

1. those that think it’s all preordained, a huge conspiracy, and perfectly orchestrated manipulation that us mortals just don't understand.

2. and then there are those that think it's all just natural market flow, and that the Trump administration doesn't even know what they're doing, and that they themselves are also the victim of turbulent markets.

There’s almost nobody in between.

There are obviously quite a few interesting (and significant) consequences. The first, and most obvious, is that nobody can effectively trade this.

Second, and perhaps the most concerning, is that BTC isn't the safe haven that crypto bros thought it was… but gold is:

Also, there’s some other things, such as gas prices actually going lower (which is good, supposedly), Amazon announcing prices will go up, Canada and USA being best buddies again. Then there’s China’s tariffs skyrocketing while their currency hits all time lows against USD, all the while the rest of the world is hoping this resolves itself soon.

Oh, and recession risk pumped to 68% this week as well.

Also, it's worth noting how “embracing of the meme culture” the current intern running the White House account is. This was the second instance just this month where I thought the post was from a parody account.

Tweeting gems like: “Let him cook.”

And treating countries like airdrop recipients.

These are without a doubt very turbulent, but (dare I say) exciting times we live in.

Enjoy the ride, and see you next week.

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, is not financial advice, and does not reflect the opinions of Neo Tokyo.

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