Samerson Orias was working as a line cook last year in the rural Philippines when his friend told him he could make way more money playing a new video game. Orias was earning about 4,000 pesos a month (about $80) making takoyaki—Japanese octopus balls. His friend told him he and others were pocketing up to $600 a month playing Axie Infinity, a game fueled by cryptocurrency and NFTs. Orias desperately needed an escape hatch from his financial woes: his mother had had a stroke and required medication, and electricity and grocery bills were stacking up. So he plunged into Axie, doing battle with cartoon monsters for hours deep into the night. He soon began earning cryptocurrency, which he converted into pesos, allowing him to take better care of his mother and his home. At the time, thousands of other young people in the Philippines were jumping headlong into the game. For a brief moment at the peak of crypto’s astonishing 2021 boom, these young Filipino players were fulfilling a longtime dream of crypto’s most ardent evangelists: that “play-to-earn” blockchain games like Axie could lead the way to a more equitable, opportunity-rich global economy. Fourteen months later, most Filipino players, including Orias, have exited the game nursing anger and anxiety—and, in some cases, thousands of dollars down. It serves as a cautionary tale for crypto and its bombastic rhetoric about changing the world. Read the full story at the link in our bio. Photographs by @ezra_acayan for TIME