Author: Biteye
What? Coinbase has started selling Pokémon cards too?
Today Coinbase teased a new TCG (Trading Card Game) product: users can open card packs directly on their phones, and every card drawn corresponds to a real physical collectible. Users can continue to have it custodied and traded, or choose to redeem the physical item.
Over the past period, TCG has gradually grown from a relatively niche on-chain collectibles direction into an independent track.
Now, as top-tier platforms like Coinbase begin to step in, TCG is becoming a new main narrative in the Crypto market.
This article will sort out:
Why is it TCG that broke out first? And why exactly is this Gacha business so profitable.
1. Why has TCG suddenly become Crypto's new PMF?
If you look at TCG only from the Crypto perspective, it is easy to understand it as a new round of RWA: put a Pokémon card in a warehouse, then mint it into a Token.
But after chatting with Gen Z about the "goods economy," I re-understood TCG: Crypto did not create card demand, it merely plugged into an already very mature market.
The goods economy essentially sells IP, scarcity, and community identity, while limited editions, hidden variants, and blind draws further spur secondary trading. TCG is one of the categories most easily "assetized," because it already has clear versions, rarity, grading systems, and historical transaction prices.
Before Crypto entered, TCG actually already had a very mature infrastructure: PSA, BGS, and CGC handled grading, eBay and Cardmarket handled trading, and Vault handled custody. What on-chain platforms do is not recreate this market, but further digitize already graded and custodied physical cards.
Take Courtyard as an example: users can deposit graded cards into a Vault, and the corresponding ownership circulates on-chain. After that, the card can pass through many owners in succession, but the physical item itself stays in the warehouse the whole time, and only the person who ultimately wants to take the card out needs to Redeem.
This is very much like an upgraded version of "Zhuanzhuan": traditional second-hand platforms focus on solving inspection and transaction trust, while on-chain TCG further separates "physical movement" from "ownership movement."
So TCG is suitable for going on-chain because grading, pricing, and the secondary market have long been mature, and Crypto only plays a boosting role—making its ownership flow faster.
2. What kind of business is Gacha (capsule toy machine) exactly?
If TCG is merely Tokenized, it is still a low-frequency trading business. A card is sold from one person to another, the platform earns a fee once, and there is no essential difference from the business logic of a traditional Marketplace.
What truly changed TCG is Gacha, which changed users' consumption frequency.
Users spend 50U or 100U to draw once. If they draw a card they like, they keep it; if not, they sell it directly back to the platform, then use the money they get back to keep drawing. Cards the platform buys back can also be put back into the prize pool and sold to the next user.
This model essentially combines "blind boxes" and "second-hand recycling": randomness stimulates users to consume repeatedly, while Instant Buyback keeps the exit cost very low.
For example, if a user only has 100U, after the first draw they sell it back for 90U, then use the 90U to keep drawing. The funds do not increase, but they can repeatedly generate trading volume; similarly, a physical card can go through "drawn—bought back—re-entered into the pool" and be sold repeatedly.
This is also why on-chain Gacha trading volume looks so exaggerated. Blockworks statistics show that in July 2026, the five major platforms had about $284 million in Gacha Activity, of which about $249 million returned to users through Buyback.
Rather than understanding Gacha as an on-chain capsule toy machine, it is better to see it as a business of: random consumption + instant recycling + repeated inventory turnover.
3. What on-chain TCG projects are there now?
At present, the on-chain TCG model has become fairly convergent: physical card custody, digitized ownership, Gacha, Instant Buyback, plus a secondary Marketplace. The real differences mainly lie in where users come from, the types and quantity of cards, and whether the platform ultimately wants to be a "Crypto product" or a "collectibles platform."
1️⃣ Collector Crypt@Collector_Crypt｜XHunt ranking: 2335
Collector Crypt is currently the project with the largest trading scale in the physical card on-chain track, mainly running on Solana, with products covering categories such as Pokémon, One Piece, and sports cards.
The platform's core product is Gacha, and prize pools at different price points offer about 85%–93% Instant Buyback
Collector Crypt's core competitiveness is that inventory, liquidity, and distribution channels have already formed a closed loop. It connects supply, vaults, random sales, secondary trading, buyback, and physical delivery all together.
As of September 29, 2026, DefiLlama statistics show its 30-day trading volume was about $128.26 million, and its 30-day protocol revenue was about $11.03 million, ranking first among similar projects.
💡How to participate: $CARDS has already been issued, and there are still quarterly airdrops. The official team has clearly stated that the remaining Community allocation is used to reward platform users, but has not published a specific formula. Simply participating normally in Gacha, trading, and platform usage is enough to accumulate eligibility for subsequent airdrops.
2️⃣ Courtyard@Courtyard_io｜XHunt ranking: 3464
Courtyard is a comprehensive physical collectibles platform. It initially focused mainly on graded cards, and has now expanded to sports cards, Pokémon, comics, coins, watches, sneakers, and more.
Users can buy fixed-price Vending Machine packs and randomly receive a physical asset, or they can directly buy and sell specific assets on the secondary market.
Courtyard has raised a total of $37 million and has built its own dedicated warehouse for collectibles, so it no longer relies only on third-party custody and can more easily expand from cards to high-value categories such as watches, coins, and sneakers.
As of now, its trading volume over the past 30 days is about $98.29 million, second only to Collector Crypt.
💡How to participate: No token has been issued yet. At present, you can earn Points through daily check-ins, opening Vending Machine Packs, Weekly Quests, and invitations. Points can be redeemed for Pack Credit and leaderboard rewards, making it more of a membership points system.
3️⃣ Phygitals@phygitals｜XHunt ranking: 2823
Phygitals is a physical collectibles trading platform on Solana, mainly dealing in graded cards such as Pokémon, One Piece, sports cards, and Yu-Gi-Oh!.
It is more like an asset-light TCG platform. It does not rebuild an entire warehousing system itself, but instead directly connects to existing warehouses such as PSA, Fanatics, and Alt.
Every card a user draws corresponds to a real graded card. The physical card continues to be stored in a professional warehouse, and what users trade is the digital ownership of the card; if they want to cash out, they can list it on the Marketplace, or sell it back directly at about 85%–90% FMV. If they want the physical card, they can request shipping.
In addition to random pack openings and digital claw machines, Phygitals' core products also include gameplay such as Duels and Drafts. Each draw result is generated by a public VRF, and the probabilities are verifiable. After users draw cards, they can continue to custody them, list them on the secondary market, redeem the physical item, or sell them directly back to the platform at about 85%–90% based on Alt's real-time market valuation.
💡How to participate: No token has been issued yet, and the official team has not confirmed a Token airdrop. Currently, every purchase earns Points and participation in weekly leaderboards and rewards, making it suitable for first accumulating a record of real platform usage.
4️⃣Renaiss@renaissxyz｜XHunt ranking: 7257
Renaiss is a physical collectibles platform on BNB Chain, currently mainly centered around graded cards such as Pokémon and One Piece. Compared with the previous projects, it does not just want to do Gacha, but wants to make "putting physical cards on-chain" itself into a set of infrastructure.
The core is Vault OS: partner card shops or custodial institutions are responsible for verifying and storing physical cards, and Renaiss then maps the corresponding card information and ownership on-chain. Once a card enters the system, it can be used for Gacha, P2P trading, or ultimately redeemed as a physical item. The platform is also expanding into Collectibles-Fi products such as price indices, APIs, and lending.
According to data previously disclosed by Renaiss, after the Beta launch it has locked 6,140+ cards, corresponding to more than $1.1 million in on-chain assets, with over 231,000 registered users; the cumulative scale is about $14.31 million, of which Gacha-related is about $12.16 million and P2P is about $2.15 million.
5️⃣ Deadstock@deadstock_app｜XHunt ranking: 145790
Deadstock is a high-end TCG platform launched by ATH Labs, running on Arbitrum. It just completed a $2.5 million Seed round in September 2026, led by Bullish Capital.
Compared with other Gacha platforms, Deadstock's biggest feature is that it only deals in PSA 10 and builds its supply side directly from Japan. The project has reached an exclusive Tokenization partnership with major Japanese card dealer JTCC, with JTCC providing a continuous inventory of Pokémon cards. After each physical card enters a professional Vault, a 1:1 on-chain Digital Twin is generated.
Users can purchase random Packs, and after drawing cards, continue to custody them, list them on the P2P market, accept the platform Buyback, or directly Redeem the physical card
🌟Final Thoughts
I prefer to view TCG within a larger trend: Crypto is gradually moving from creating on-chain native assets to bringing existing off-chain assets onto the chain.
Under the main theme of everything going on-chain, TCG is very likely to become the next asset class to break out first, following the tokenization of US stocks. It already has mature pricing, trading, and collecting demand, and once on-chain, it can further improve liquidity and trading efficiency.
Moreover, TCG is no longer just the narrative of Pokémon's 30th anniversary. On DefiLlama, leading Physical TCG projects have already generated considerable real revenue: Collector Crypt's protocol revenue over the past 30 days is about $10.33 million, Courtyard about $2.17 million, and Beezie has also approached the million-dollar level.
Perhaps by the end of this year, or early next year, we will truly see a market rally belonging to TCG.
