June 2026 was brutal for the crypto market. Bitcoin (BTC) fell more than 20%, hitting a 21-month low, while spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a record $4.5 billion in outflows.
That did not stop users from spending a record $324 million on onchain gacha during the month, according to Blockworks Research. A year earlier, the monthly figure was closer to $50 million.
Spending hit a new all time high in the depths of a bear market. While crypto prices were tanking, people were opening more and more packs of tokenized Pokémon cards — driven by the thrill, the hope of a profit or the urge to expand a collection.
It’s an entire randomized Real World Asset (RWA) sector that’s flown under the radar… until now.
Onchain gacha spending hit an all-time high in June 2026. Source: Blockworks.
Booster packs, grades and slabs
Gacha is a mechanism borrowed from Japanese vending machines, where a fixed payment yields a random item. In the trading card game (TCG) market, it usually works through booster packs: sealed packs holding a random assortment of cards. The buyer does not know in advance what they will get.
The cards inside a booster are not created equal. Print run, rarity, condition and year of release drive prices orders of magnitude apart: from cents for an ordinary card, to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a rare copy in pristine condition. A market has grown up around those collectibles, which Global Market Insights values at $9.2 billion and Mordor Intelligence at $15.11 billion.
Some cards can fetch several hundred thousand dollars. Source: PriceCharting.
When a card can cost as much as a car, its authenticity and condition have to be assessed.
Related: Logan Paul sells Pokémon card for $16.5M, years after fractional NFT row
That is what grading is for — a process in which an independent company such as PSA, Beckett or CGC checks a card against several criteria. The card is inspected for image centering, the condition of its corners, edges and surface, and for scratches and stains, after which it is assigned a grade…
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