Grinding Choices: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Ethnographic Gamebook of the Cuban Crypto Economy

This article presents an experimental ethnography of Cuba’s encounter with Axie Infinity, a cryptocurrency-based play-to-earn (P2E) game, through the form of a choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) gamebook. By embedding branching choices, stats, and risk meters, the format mirrors the contingent decisions Cuban players faced as they sought to turn digital labor into survival strategies amidst pandemic disruptions, sanctions, and infrastructural scarcity. Axie Infinity promised a global, player-owned economy, but in Cuba its adoption was shaped by local vernacular infrastructures—VPN hacks, P2P crypto swaps, and informal “scholarship” sponsorships—that enabled access despite sanctions and unreliable connectivity. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the gamebook invites readers to experience Axie not just as leisure but as speculative labor bound up with exhaustion, trust, and infrastructural ingenuity. Each pathway reflects real-life outcomes—from burnout to cooperative solidarity—highlighting how digital economies intersect with care, obligation, and risk in precarious settings. Beyond analysis, the project advances multimodal ethnography by enacting rather than merely describing the volatility of gamified crypto economies. In transforming argument into procedure, the CYOA format turns ethnography into a playable encounter, enabling readers to grapple with the stakes of grinding for survival in a digitized, financialized world.