No Man's Sky players invent their own cryptocurrency and it's worthless (but it's supposed to be)

pcgamer.com:

Have you ever thought to yourself that the one thing No Man's Sky(opens in new tab) really needs to make it great is cryptocurrency? Maybe not—probably not—but some players have, and they've taken it upon themselves to create one. According to this Vice(opens in new tab) report, though, the goal isn't to make money, and in fact the people responsible for the project hope to keep it worthless.

The cryptocurrency was created by members of Galactic Hub(opens in new tab), a No Man's Sky community that operates across Discord, Reddit, and of course No Man's Sky itself that aims to provide a deeper deep-space co-op experience that the game does on its own. The group has been around for more than five years, building itself up into a significant presence and inspiring other groups to create their own in-game societies.

HubCoin, as the group's cryptocurrency is known, is intended as an extension of that community-building effort. It's aimed at players in No Man's Sky's endgame who have effectively transcended the need for the game's built-in currencies but «still desire access to those things which can only be achieved by player activity,» Galactic Hub founder 7101334 said.

«They want to commission ByteBeat tracks under certain parameters, they want to pay for an artistic canvas in their base, they want a PC player to save-edit a custom fauna companion for them, they want a skilled architect to help design their base or do interior decoration, or maybe they just want the simple convenience of not gathering their own resources.»

The goal of HubCon is to fill that void by incorporating a cryptocurrency that's not a real currency, but instead runs on an Ethereum «testnet.» It's kind of like a crypto-PTR: It works the same as «real»