FEATURE
THE FUTURE IS CRYPTO
Cryptocurrency-based gambling is going to be as big as traditional igaming – but not quite in the way you might imagine. Nick Garner explains why every affiliate needs to check out crypto-gambling operators
SOME BACKSTORY ON ME and crypto. In 2015, I noticed something very interesting going on with bitcoin. As a moderate libertarian, I liked the way cryptocurrency was becoming‘ internet money’ without the blessing of governments and big corporations.
A parallel would be open source software: people collaborate, build something amazing and everybody benefits. If you’ re reading this article online, open-source software is probably why you can see it at all.
With cryptocurrency there’ s privacy and frictionless movement of money anywhere on the planet, as long as there’ s internet connection and no government is involved. It’ s like transacting with gold, except online. As the internet spawned online gambling, crypto will spawn new ways of gaming that we’ ve never thought of.
In 2015 I decided to launch oshi. io, a crypto casino on the Softswiss platform. Writing about cryptocurrency in articles such as this has forced me to think about the future of crypto gambling – after all, my future now depends on it.
Figure 1: The progress of the Nasdaq index( in blue) and bitcoin over their lifetimes, showing strikingly similar patterns
Figure 2: A useful way to benchmark against traditional operators is to look at traffic numbers
That was then … Sometimes it helps to look at the past to understand the future. I’ m old enough to remember the emergence of the internet as we know it. I remember the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, when friends schemed up ideas for online businesses. And I remember the bust of 2000, when markets crashed and everyone thought the internet had died. In fact, it was the start of the internet age. In my opinion, 2018 will be the start of the crypto age.
The utility of blockchain is as a way of enabling safe, frictionless transactions while getting rid of middlemen. I believe crypto will follow the same trajectory as the internet in the longer term( see Figure 1). According to Oristep Consulting, online gambling revenues will be around $ 81.71bn by 2022. Global gambling revenue in general will probably hit $ 500bn by the same year.
For perspective, online gambling will equate to about 16 % of total gambling activity.
Just how big is crypto gambling? A lot depends on how you define it. I see gambling as‘ participating in games of chance’. For cryptocurrency casinos running traditional games, such as slots and table games, my guess is that global annual revenues are about $ 4bn and by 2022 will probably be around the $ 10bn-a-year mark. I base my
“ In the bust of 2000 everyone thought the internet had died. In fact, it was the start of the internet age”
prediction on crypto igaming gambling following a similar trajectory to the growth of cryptocurrency globally.
Figure 2 shows four successful online casino brands and three of the biggest crypto operators by traffic volumes as of June 2018. Never heard of Betchan? Strange, because according to this traffic volume data, it gets more visitors than 888. com.
Why do people like crypto casino? In short, because it’ s less hassle. A player can register an account within 15 seconds, deposit money within one minute and get gambling. Since most crypto casinos are
26 iGB Affiliate Issue 70 AUG / SEP 2018