You’d likely have to have been living under a heap of rocks if you have anything to do with the gaming industry and still aren’t aware of quite what a big deal cryptocurrencies are by now. They are far and away the biggest buzzword of the year, and probably of last year, and I’d give decent odds it’ll still be out in front come 2019 as well. Almost twenty stalls dedicated to crypto projects at this year’s event, and you could hardly take a step without hearing “blockchain,” “verification” or “coin” from one passerby or another.
We can’t hope to cover all the crypto products featured in this year’s ICE, unfortunately – the scope was just too broad – but let’s give a brief shout-out to a few contenders. You can bet there’ll be even more of them at ICE 2019.
Many of the products on offer this year were in fact lotteries, with Fire Lotto garnering significant attention for a game which can be played from ‘any device,’ with no download or app required, in a single click, and which offers 10% commission payments to token holders. They claim to be the first “internet community owned” crypto lottery in existence.
Another lottery product – which actually saw its launch on the second day of ICE – was Quanta, which claims to be the first fully compliant blockchain lottery in the world. This one runs on the back of the Ethereum cryptocurrency, which has gone from $10 per coin in early 2017 up to $800 as of today. (Anyone who bought it back then may not feel they need to play a lottery, to be fair.) Through their use of the Ethereum smart contracts feature, Quanta claims to ensure tamper-proof play and transparent, autonomous gaming.
Finally, let’s give a mention to Techradar’s iGaming blockchain, a consultancy service for businesses looking to develop their own cryptocurrencies, which offers application development and who are working across multiple jurisdictions and across industries stretching well beyond gaming, into healthcare, fintech and logistics. They boast a team of over 200 developers, analysts and managers, multilingual developments and mobile applications, and claim to have a client roster which includes “the top 50 blockchain companies in the world”.
Bitcoin itself may be crashy and unstable right now, and there will very likely be more turbulence to come, but it seems the underlying tech behind it and all the other cryptocurrencies – the blockchain itself – is here to stay.
