STEPN announces the opening of its headquarters in Hong Kong

What’s new? Blockchain game developer STEPN will open its first physical office in Hong Kong's state-owned startup accelerator Cyberport. The announcement was made by the company's co-founder Jerry Huang to the South China Morning Post. He said the move comes as other cryptocurrency companies are leaving Hong Kong in anticipation of the new licensing regime for cryptocurrency exchanges. Quarantine measures related to COVID-19 have also led to their exodus.

Information on the South China Morning Post website

What else does Huang say? The co-founder added that the decision was also influenced by a visit from former Cyberport chairman George Lam. He visited Sydney to suggest that STEPN open its headquarters in Hong Kong. Huang said the company would not insist on moving all employees because many of them work remotely. He said the first move could involve a core team of more than 10 people, and then the company may consider raising additional equity financing. For now, however, the company has not announced a timeline for the relocation.

What is known about STEPN? It's an NFT Move-to-Earn (Move and Earn, M2E) game, launched in August 2021. Users purchase sneakers in the form of NFTs and can then earn from their physical activity. The game has two types of tokens: GST, in which payouts occur, and GMT governance tokens. The app was created by Australian and Chinese entrepreneurs Jerry Huang and Yawn Rong. It generated $20 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2022, mostly from reduced in-game transactions, Rong said. In January, the company received $5 million in seed funding from investors, including Sequoia Capital.

As of September 5 at 13:30 UTC, the GMT token is trading at $0,68, having lost 2,12% in 24 hours, according to Binance. Solana's GST price has risen to $0,036, up 0,3% overnight.

On June 5, the STEPN team reported that the app had been under a massive DDoS attack for several hours. In late June, crypto analyst Colin Wu released a report criticizing STEPN. According to him, the project had signs of a Ponzi scheme, and also resembled a virtual casino, because the rarity of purchased NFT-sneakers by users, on which the earnings depended, was determined randomly.