Crypto investors have an increasing number of choices lately — including Enjin Coin (ENJ), which launched during the summer of 2018.
Unlike many other crypto investing options on the market, Enjin Coin (also referred to as ENJ crypto) is a bit different in that it was designed for a specific purpose: To help the gaming community and to manage digital or virtual assets.
Here’s everything curious investors and crypto fans need to know about Enjin Coin.
What Is Enjin Coin?
Enjin Coin , or ENJ, is a cryptocurrency created and designed by a software company called Enjin . Enjin’s software allows users to create virtual goods — like NFTs, or non-fungible tokens — on the Ethereum blockchain network.
While that may require some background reading about Ethereum’s blockchain network and NFTs, what you should know is that Enjin’s software is designed to create and manage in-game goods and assets. In effect, Enjin makes it easier and more efficient for participants in certain virtual worlds to create in-game assets, and to transact them.
Enjin Coin, or ENJ, then, is the native token to the Enjin network.
Recommended: What is a Crypto Token?
How Does Enjin Work?
The basic idea behind Enjin Coin is that blockchain can smooth out the process of transacting in-game or virtual assets. Much like blockchain can do the same in the real world with other assets (think of Ripple and XRP, which is designed to help facilitate financial transactions), ENJ is used to manage virtual inventories.
If it all sounds a bit meta — a virtual currency designed for virtual assets — that’s because it is. As for how it actually works, Enjin has software development kits (SDKs) that allow game developers to “mint.” Using SDKs, developers can create virtual items inside of games or applications. These created items are given a corresponding value in ENJ, which makes it easy to trade and or sell them via Enjin’s marketplace.
Because each asset has a value in ENJ, which is a traded cryptocurrency, it also has a real-life value, too. These digital assets are, in effect, NFTs, and can be traded for many times their initial values.
Developers who want to create in-game assets can start out by purchasing ENJ from an exchange, “minting” an item, trading or selling it in-game, or even “melting” it — which means turning the item back into ENJ.
While Enjin Coin is designed to function and incorporate blockchain-backed swapping systems in video games or virtual worlds, it can be used in other ways, too. For instance, sports teams or clubs may be able to use it to mint digital assets to hand out as rewards.
Example of ENJ Crypto in Action
Here’s a simplified, hypothetical example of how Enjin coin works in the real (well, virtual) world:
Say you’re a game developer, and you’re actively playing, participating in, and developing an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). You want to create a special weapon for the game, a longsword, and decide to buy some ENJ from a crypto exchange to do so.
You make the purchase, and with your ENJ, you “mint” the longsword using an SDK, a corresponding programming interface created by Enjin to help build and deploy the asset into the game.
Once created, the longsword also has a value equal to, say 10 ENJ. You sell the longsword to another player on Enjin Coin’s marketplace, banking 10 ENJ. You decide you’d like to accumulate more ENJ, so you trade a shield in your inventory for a spear that you plan to “melt” — which is, as you might remember, like liquidating an asset for its ENJ value.
You melt the spear and collect 5 ENJ. Now, you have 15 total ENJ, that you can either use to create more in-game assets or sell on an exchange.
While this is a very simplified version of Enjin Coin in action, it should give you the gist of the cryptocurrency’s use cycle.
Enjin Coin: Benefits and Disadvantages
As with any cryptocurrency, Enjin has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few:
Benefits of Enjin Coin
• Potential for Growth: The gaming industry (and virtual world-building in particular) is big and growing. That means there’s a lot of potential runway for Enjin Coin ahead.
• Relatively affordable price: For crypto investors, ENJ is still affordable for almost anyone — unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum. (See more on price in the next section.)
• A large, built-in community: Enjin already has marketplaces operating and integrated, with many participants. The fact that it’s been so widely adopted may be an indication that won’t just disappear overnight.
Disadvantages of Enjin Coin
• No easy mining: Enjin doesn’t operate on its own blockchain, so it can’t be mined directly — at least not easily.
• No physical backup: As with all other cryptocurrencies, there’s no physical asset or commodity to backup Enjin Coin.
• Technical know-how: Crypto isn’t easy to understand, and Enjin Coin is no different. That’s particularly true if you plan to use it to create NFTs or assets — you’d need to do some studying before you could put it all together.
Enjin Coin Price
While Enjin Coin isn’t dirt-cheap like some coins on the exchanges, it hasn’t reached astronomical levels, either. As of mid-to-late September 2021, it’s trading at around $1.25.
Over the past year, its price has fluctuated in a big way. At the end of 2020, Enjin Coin’s price hovered around $0.15, then it saw a big spike in the spring, topping $3.45 at one point. Since then, it’s come down and has mostly stayed between $1 and $2.25 ever since.
Enjin Coin Staking
Further, some exchanges and platforms do allow users to stake Enjin Coin, if you know where to look. But by and large, it seems that most larger exchanges don’t give users and investors the option to stake ENJ.
Recommended: What is Staking Crypto?
That said, Enjin is rolling out a new ecosystem called Efinity, which will also have its own cryptocurrency, Efinity Token (EFI). As a part of that ecosystem, Enjin Coin can be staked to earn Efinity Tokens.
How to Invest in Enjin
For most investors, investing in Enjin Coin is pretty much the same as any other cryptocurrency. You start by picking a crypto exchange, opening an account, funding it, then placing an order and transferring your holdings to your crypto wallet.
You can also swap your ENJ tokens for others on some decentralized exchanges, but again, for most investors, sticking to a large, trusted exchange is probably the way to go.
Recommended: Centralized vs. Decentralized Exchanges: Six Differences to Consider
The Takeaway
There are many types of cryptocurrencies out there, and the list seems to be growing each and every day. Enjin Coin is a relatively new coin with some fairly unique use cases, and it may be of particular interest to crypto investors who are into gaming and the gaming industry.
Photo credit: iStock/svetikd
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