June 2026 was brutal for the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC) fell by over 20%, reaching its lowest level in 21 monthswhile spot Bitcoin ETFs saw record outflows of $4.5 billion.

This didn’t stop users expenses A record $324 million for onchain gacha in a month, according to Blockworks Research. A year earlier, the monthly amount was closer to $50 million.

Spending has reached a up-to-date high in the depths of the bear market. As cryptocurrency prices fell, people opened more and more packs of tokenized Pokémon cards – for thrill, hope of profit, or a desire to expand their collection.

This is an entire random sector of real world resources (RWA) that has gone unnoticed… until now.

Onchain gacha spending reached all-time high in June 2026. Source: Blockworks.

Booster packs, genres and boards

Gacha is a mechanism borrowed from Japanese slot machines, in which a fixed fee provides a random item. In the trading card game (TCG) market, this typically works through booster packs: sealed packs containing a random assortment of cards. The buyer does not know in advance what he will receive.

The cards in the booster are not created equal. Circulation, rarity, condition, and year of issue mean prices vary by orders of magnitude: from cents for a regular card to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a infrequent example in pristine condition. A market has grown up around these collectibles that Global Market Insights values at $9.2 billion, and Mordor Intelligence at $15.11 billion.

Some cards can cost several hundred thousand dollars. Source: Price chart.

When a card may cost as much as a car, its authenticity and condition must be assessed.

Related: Logan Paul is selling a Pokémon card for $16.5 million, years after the fractional NFT row

That’s what grading is for – a process in which an independent company such as PSA, Beckett or CGC examines the card against several criteria. The card is checked for image centering, the condition of its corners, edges, and surfaces, and for scratches and stains, then it is assigned a grade and placed in a plastic box called a plate.

Rating has a direct impact on price: two identical cards can be worth completely different amounts, while a raw, ungraded card is sold as a higher risk asset.

Pokémon card sealed in PSA disc. Source: eBay.

Projects like Collector Crypt and Courtyard bring these assets from the real world to the blockchain. They accept physical cards – usually ones that have already been graded – store them in vaults and issue NFTs tied to a specific copy.

When a user purchases and opens a pack, they receive a token backed by a real card in a real vault. The token can be kept, put on the market, resold to the platform or exchanged for a physical card.

Most importantly, the value of these NFTs is based on the assumption that the partner’s vault actually holds the exact card of a specific grade. The user assumes the risks associated with the custody – asset security, authentication integrity, and durability of the platform itself – as well as the risks associated with the assessment companies themselves reporting raise in the number of counterfeits, this assumption is not inconsequential.

Why now?

The growing popularity of onchain gacha and TCG-focused blockchain platforms more broadly is likely due to several factors.

Pokémon cards are the staple product of many of these projects, and the series is currently enjoying great popularity.

According to research firm Circana, Pokemon became the most popular toy brand in the US in 2025, with sales of $2.5 billion, an raise of 87% compared to the previous year.

The interest doesn’t just come from children. Sometimes wealthier members of Generation Y and Z prefer cards for costly paintings. The demand for grading is so great that PSA is temporarily closed in June suspended card submissions at four basic service levels in an attempt to clear a backlog of nearly 10 million cards.

Tokenization simply tapped into this craze by providing a useful service and removing friction.

High-profile buyers like Logan Paul helped bring Pokémon cards into the spotlight. Source: Logan Paul.

The real-world trading card market is struggling common for all collectibles markets: no immediate liquidity. To sell a card off-chain, the owner must find a contractor, verify its authenticity and class, and then ship the item.

Related: The 5 types of real-world assets tokenized the fastest on the web

“Traditional markets are slow and expensive,” Dakota Campbell, head of marketing at Collector Crypt, told Cointelegraph. “With tokenized trading cards, collectors can instantly buy, sell, trade and verify ownership while physical assets remain securely stored until shipping.”

According to Campbell, Collector Crypt has tokenized approximately $40 million worth of cards and comics. About $23 million of this inventory belongs to the platform itself, the rest is in users’ wallets or has already been used. To keep up with demand, the company buys about $2 million worth of cards each week.

Gambling on collectibles

Much like the NFT boom, it’s tough to deny that price speculation and the gambling-style dopamine rush of random rewards are part of the appeal.

The instant buyback mechanism available on most platforms creates an almost perfect “gacha loop”: buy a pack, and if a card is unattractive or not very worthy, sell it for, say, 85% of its value and open another one. Pull out something infrequent and either put it on the market or keep it. Unlike physical cards, there is no need to search for a buyer, ship or wait.

The “instant redemption” option is available on almost all TCG platforms. Source: Figitale.

The gagcha mechanism is similar to loot boxes in video games: the user pays for a random outcome, knowing only the odds. Some jurisdictions have already done this tried bring loot boxes under gambling regulations. Whether this logic reaches tokenized TCGs likely depends on how gigantic the sector gets.

Either way, this is exactly how the classic TCG market works. The only difference is speed: Offchain, it takes weeks to close a gacha loop. Onchain it takes a few seconds.

Sometimes users are only motivated by the desire to “try their luck.” Source: X.

“There is always speculation in an emerging market, especially in the cryptocurrency sector,” Campbell said, arguing that the platform benefits most from dedicated collectors hunting for their next “Grail.”

No country for collectors?

True physical card collectors are still part of the market. According to Dune, users burn 5% to 8% of NFTs spent weekly on Courtyard, with each burn representing actual physical damage.

Users burn between 5% and 8% of NFTs spent by Courtyard on physical cards each week. source: Dune.

Collector Crypt reports that about 30% of users end up redeeming the card, according to Campbell, and many more keep them in their onchain inventory after the 72-hour redemption window rather than turning them over.

“Over the last 30 days, 5,400 assets were sent to 634 unique users at an insured value of $3.29 million,” he said.

New tracks for the senior train

Essentially, blockchain startups play a classic tokenization game: they move a proven business model onto more effective rails and remove some of the friction.

Concerns about the speculative nature of this market or the role of gambling in it are justified to the extent that platforms build their marketing around this aspect.

Besides, that’s just how gacha works. People go through the “junk” looking for a infrequent card. And if there are complaints, they should be directed to the entire TCG industry, not just its onchain segment.

As for the June records, they are the result of a combination of several factors. The classic card market is growing, tokenization has proven to be mature enough to plug into, and gacha mechanics work perfectly on blockchain rails.

How sustainable this is remains an open question. The gacha loop runs quickly in both directions, and recording influences can reverse just as quickly.

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