Why Is Experience Points Valued at $400 Million?

Anyone who took a look at Experience Points (XP) over the summer is undoubtedly wondering how the project grew from a tiny US$350,000 market cap to over 1,000 times that. XP is currently trading at about 1/5 of a penny, and sits at rank #61 on CoinMarketCap.com.

Experience Points, which first launched in 2016 and was relaunched this past summer, is reminiscent of coins launched in 2014 and 2015. Compared to those coins, the only real distinctions XP provides are its mining algorithm, distribution rates, and total supply. XP does provide an interesting approach to Proof-of-Stake, giving small holders a higher PoS rate than large balances.

Beyond that, XP doesn’t really offer anything. There have been a few initiatives by community members: a faucet, a game, and a store. The store allows users to purchase XP gift cards from places such as Steam. However, the XP costs of these cards are, at least currently, very inflated. A $20 Steam gift card costs 36,000 XP, which is $72. The game, which pays players in XP, barely works. It is a simple match’em game, where players allegedly earn more XP for attaining higher scores. However, pieces often fail to fall after matches are completed, creating an unplayable board filled with holes. It may be possible to earn multiple XP, but the game breaks so quickly that earning more than one XP per play is impossible. What’s more, the game mines Monero using coinhive while you play. In the end, you are actually paying to play a broken game. Fortunately, the faucet does appear to work. You can use it to receive five to 50 XP every eight hours.

While the XP team claims that a plugin will soon exist to allow game developers to implement XP, no current developments have been revealed. In the initial reboot announcement, there were a number of milestones on the road map that should have been completed already. That thread has since been locked, and a new reboot announcement thread was created, with later dates listed.

With zero substance behind the project, it’s illogical to think that this coin’s growth has been natural in any way. The coin is primarily traded on Coinexchange.io, which has built a reputation as a playground for market manipulators. The exchange has made it clear it doesn’t mind bots forging volume or manipulating prices. Because of this, Experience Points is a strong candidate for a massive pump and dump.

Other evidence that indicates foul play is Binance’s coin of the month competition. In this competition, users of the exchange can vote for their favorite coin to be added to the exchange. When voting opened this morning, XP instantly received over 600 votes, which suggests some heavily coordinated botting activity, as there is no major community in place to explain the huge support. Experience Points has less than 200 followers on Instagram, under 400 subscribers on YouTube, just over 400 subscribers on Reddit, and 350 members of its Facebook group (of those, 324 joined within the past month). There are a large number of users on Discord, but that can be attributed to general Discord users exploring the most popular global channels.

With just a few minutes of research, it is clear that this project is pure vaporware. Unfortunately, some unlucky buyers have helped contribute to this massive dump. Anyone who unknowingly invested in XP within the past few days will surely get burned.