Buy now, ‘play’ later: Halliday bags $6M seed round led by a16z

techcrunch.com:

Blockchain-based games have seen a surge in popularity, but playing them is getting expensive. Play-to-earn games like StepN require players to purchase an NFT before they can participate, while other crypto video games offer users pricey upgrades such as virtual avatars and distinctive skins or costumes.

Halliday, a startup founded last November by Akshay Malhotra and Griffin Dunaif, is building a “buy now, pay later”-style financing product targeted toward gamers who want to pay off in-game purchases over time.

“It’s quite remarkable that video games, these virtual worlds, now have fully-fledged market economies. In these worlds, you have digital property, digital ownership, and items with real-world value. One thing we were struck by was that because these things have real-world value, it can actually be quite difficult to acquire them and have ownership, and one of the fundamental tenets of blockchain is that ownership,” Malhotra, who previously worked in the hedge fund space, said.

As is the case with many traditional BNPL providers such as Klarna and AfterPay, Halliday’s product will be interest-free for users, CEO Malhotra told TechCrunch in an interview.

Unlike with traditional BNPL providers, though, Halliday won’t charge penalty fees to users who default on their payments, Malhotra explained.

Instead, he described Halliday as a “repo” product. Gamers can purchase an in-game asset with a Halliday extension at checkout and start using it immediately, but the asset will be stored with Halliday until it is fully paid off, Malhotra said. Once the payments are complete, Halliday will transfer custody of the asset to the gamer, he added.

If a gamer doesn’t pay what they owe on time, rather than reporting the delinquency to