Gambling and cryptocurrency go together like peanut butter and jelly. Think about it. The target audience for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investing is young and male. The ideal target for betting (especially online and especially for betting on sports) is young and male. It makes sense that and that gambling is one of the most predominant use cases for cryptocurrency.
It’s also why many well-known and established online casinos like Bovada and 5Dimes among others are now accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for wagers.
Readers who are following both the blockchain and gambling world and call themselves avid fans of BTCGG.com probably already know all of this. What most people don’t know is that there are many cryptocurrency projects specifically created for gamblers (and let’s be honest probably by gamblers with computer programming knowledge). These projects aren’t associated with centralized businesses that profit from the wagers of gamblers. As many gamblers know, casinos and sportsbooks make their money off of transaction fees and embed their profits within the odds. When this barrier is removed, the player can win more often, and wager larger bets.
Gambling specific cryptocurrency projects aimed to do not only that, they also settle everything on the blockchain, which lowers transaction fees. They offer provably fair play, which earns the trust of the participants, and some of these projects reward players for their participation. It’s a rare win-win-win scenario for gamblers.
The Two Types of Gambling Cryptocurrencies
There are two different niches that dominate the world of gambling specific cryptocurrencies. There are blockchain-based cryptos that enable users to make their own markets and choose between two binary outcomes while wagering against each other. Then there are crypto gambling projects that simply incentivize gamblers for using their platform’s currency and offer a provably fair gambling environment to play in.
Predictive market platforms include projects like Augur and Gnosis. Players put together their own betting markets, whether it means they’re betting on the next presidential election or the next winner of the Super Bowl. Learn more about predictive markets by reading this article.
The focus here though are the gambling-specific projects that reward participants using their own token and provide the fair gaming environments. Some of the most notable projects include:
- Etheroll
- FunFair
- WINk
- Unikoin Gold
- Wagerr
Most of the above projects live on the Ethereum blockchain. This means they can be traded on ethereum-based cryptocurrency exchanges and also stored on any hardware or online cryptocurrency wallet that supports Ether tokens, usually in ERC-20 or ERC-721 formats. No need to know the specifics of those formats, just know that any wallet that says they support them will successfully store most gambling coins.
Here’s a brief summary of the projects mentioned above.
Etheroll
Etheroll’s website is a very simple interface where gamblers role provably fair virtual dice governed by a smart contract. There’s no need to deposit funds into a centralized wallet that can be hacked and no need to provide sign up information or identification.
FunFair
FunFair also serves gamblers in a provably fair environment, but the platform offers many casino games, not just dice. It also serves four different shareholders: players, affiliates, casino operators and game developers.
WINk
WINk is a fully functioning online casino offering live table games, poker and quite a robust sportsbook. The difference between WINk and other projects listed in this post is that it lives on the TRON blockchain and is not associated with Ethereum or Bitcoin.
Unikoin Gold
Unikoin Gold is a project that allows gamblers to bet on the outcomes of live e-sports events in a decentralized environment. Investors in the project include Mark Cuban, star of Shark Tank and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. It’s a promising project that cuts out sportsbooks.
Wagerr
Wagerr offers a mobile app for betting and an interesting spin on actual wagering through ‘value coupling’. The platform charges a fee for wagering, but half of that fee is burned, meaning those Wagerr tokens no longer exist. This means the more gamblers place wagers and the higher the value of those wagers, the more the Wagerr tokens themselves go up in value. This makes winning bets on the platform worth more in the long run.
By no means is the above list of gambling specific cryptos an exhaustive one and there will certainly be more of them in the future. CryptoSite.com currently lists no fewer than 44 different gambling related projects.
Take a look at what the world of predictive markets and crypto betting have to offer. There are a ton of opportunities to find value out there, and that’s what beating the odds in the long run is all about.