The cryptocurrency talk is just the mumbo jumbo to catch the idiots. It’s like those alternative healthcare practitioners who sprinkle in the words “study” and “research” to make their quackery sound legit to the unsuspecting.
Imagine an MMORPG that uses a blockchain economy not only for currency transactions but also for secure storage of items. Today, we take for granted the 'vault' space offered in games, but by storing items and currency both on the blockchain, new opportunities for in-app purchase become available that players will surely enjoy interacting with.
In this article, a 'bank' is sold for $800,000 USD, and the purchaser of that 'bank' will, presumably, get a fractional share of the revenue from all 'vault this item' paid transactions. Since payment can occur either using in-game currency and/or real money transactions, and presuming they get a blockchain currency listed on Coinbase, the owner of the castle will be able to cash out their revenue stream into their real world bank account.
I'm probably missing some subtle aspect of the specifics here, but that's what I took away from it. I assume the creator of the game is hoping that the SEC will not realize that this is an $800,000 investment in a public offering of stock in their still-vaporware game. I also assume that by taking advantage of the Coinbase tax-paperwork infrastructure, the game's operators will attempt to have no legal obligation to register as a financial institution, or otherwise owe any regulatory debt.
You may find value in reading the novel 'REAMDE' as it spends some amount of time walking through the implications of a world where you can earn real money using virtual gameplay.
https://egamers.io/this-new-mmorpg-sells-5-citadels-for-1-36...