BT's Coins, My Coins, Our Coins

For anyone who is a Trainer in Pokémon Go, particularly if they're in Southeast Asia, Brandon Tan (popularly known by his callsign BT91) is one person to look up to or at least refer to. A Trainer as successful as he is needs a lot of resources, most likely in the form of PokéCoins to be used to purchase different things to speed up progress of certain things, if not to do more things in a lesser amount of time. A particularly interesting fact about how he does things just emerged, and that's something that at the very least deserves just a little bit of discussion in the framework of regular Trainers like me and others in my raid (sub)groups.

The fact concerns how many PokéCoins he possesses in relation to what he has achieved or plan to achieve in the future. During one of his streams, it became apparent that he possesses a grand total of 101532 PokéCoins, which is more than most Trainers have. Granted, he's played for a very long time, and he may have financial resources that most people don't have, as became apparent through a discussion in one of my groups. But to have hundreds of thousands of coins at one's disposal is an incredibly amazing feat that reflects his status as a VIP Trainer.

I don't have anywhere near that many PokéCoins, but I do seem to have a more sizable number than most of my fellow Trainers. I only have a few thousand PokéCoins, which is enough for certain purposes including emergencies. I'll admit that I'm a spendthrift regarding PokéCoins or anything that is a proxy for or functions like real money, which explains why some of my progresses have been minimal. But then again, I'm always doing something with or without Pokémon (Go), so I have to make sure that I at least have something to fall back on, and that includes the PokéCoins I "hoard".

Meanwhile, I can say for sure that most of my fellow Trainers only have a paltry amount of PokéCoins, if at all. It would be a few hundred, or most commonly zero (give or take a few odd coins). While I can't speak for the conditions of my fellow Trainers, it may be that many of them spend all their coins after gaining enough by daily allotment or otherwise for a purpose they already have in mind, such as Remote Raid Passes. In this way, they never or rarely have any amount of coins saved up. While it's not technically regrettable, it may be undesirable as well.

After seeing the number of PokéCoins that BT91 has and contrasting that against my status and those of my other fellow Trainers, it may be tempting to say that we're not as better off as BT91 or that we lack the initiative somehow. But success in Pokémon Go is much determined by many factors, PokéCoins being only one of them. So it might not be wise to regard the coins as the sole measure of success. The fact remains that BT91 has many more coins than any Trainer will conceivably have at present. At the very least, those coins might just be one of the ways to ensure success in the future.

One year ago: Spinning Like a Spinda

Two years ago: The Cards, Revisited

Three years ago: Changes

Four years ago: A Loss Is... A Loss?