Ethereum Blockchain Potential for Gambling Industry

Home » Poker News » Ethereum Blockchain Potential for Gambling Industry

Saturday, June 24th, 2017 | Written by Shane Larson

The investment world is currently in the midst of a cryptocurrency frenzy which has seen the price of Ethereum shoot up from just a few dollars at the beginning of this year to its present value of around $330. Helping to drive Ethereum’s market capitalization ever higher during this period is recognition of its ability to transform the mechanism of business and trade, with one example being the gambling industry.

FirstBlood

One of the company’s taking advantage of the unique technology provided by Ethereum is called FirstBlood, which is offering a decentralized reward system that is intended for eSports players who are on the Ethereum Blockchain. This company has figured out how to take advantage of and utilize Blockchain in ways that extend far beyond moving payments through Bitcoin. In fact, FirstBlood has the foresight to anticipate just how much such technology is going to cause waves throughout the world, and as its Co-Founder Marco Cuesta explains:

“For our team at least, we decided to use Ethereum because of its breath and because of how big the network was, there was a very strong development community behind it and there were many other projects which we saw potential of integrating with down the line and just things that would add future value to this network.”

Usability

There are many advantages to platforms being built on Blockchain, which among other benefits include transparency, security, accessibility, and accountability. Up until now, Bitcoin has been the undisputed king of digital money, and the one that most people are familiar with from the world of cryptocurrencies. Its primary use has mainly been as a payment method, and it was considered revolutionary when it was first released in 2009 due to the fact that instead of a single person having the receipt of transactions, millions of different people on the network could also access the information.

Making this data a publically viewable system meant that people were subsequently more accountable for themselves, and over the years the success of Bitcoin and its inherent influence has helped develop new technology. Etherium is one such example, which is also used for payments, but there is an even greater level of functionality available than there is currently with Bitcoin.

Functionality

When trying to get a grasp on how the Ethereum Blockchain functions, you can compare it to building programs and the foundation of an old-fashioned telephone. This leaves you with a smartphone that is able to make calls, much like how Ethereum can still make payments, but it is also able to bring forth many other unique functions outside of that standard feature.

Through Ethereum, for instance, transactions can constantly take place, while other people can build different programs atop the network like escrows, insurance items, voting systems and eSports betting platforms. On this platform, each person is able to see the different transactions that are happening on these systems, meaning that if someone is making wagers, bets or getting together for a poker tournament, everyone will be able to see the transactions taking place. In other words, everyone will know that the payout is really going to be honored, and that they are going to be able to see who won the contest as the winner will get published.

No Third Parties

One of the most significant benefits of building the Ethereum Blockchain program is the ability to interact instantaneously with other people without any sort of need of a middleman, like a bank, payment platform or a verification system. Everything rests on the same database, and everyone is connected. Needless to say, this platform could help connect gamblers of all kinds all across the world.

Assisting in this process is the fact that the markets currently developing are mostly taking place on mobile phones. If you consider the example of New York City, for instance, there are disadvantaged people who still possess smartphones that they can use via the subway’s free wifi, while people in rural China may be without landline phones, but still have access to their own personal smartphones.

Prospects

The technology underpinning Etherium is attracting the attention of some of the world’s biggest companies, signalling a positive outlook for the future. Some of them have now formed a collaboration called the ‘Ethereum Enterprise Alliance’, and as Cuesta explains:

“You have all these enterprise companies like Microsoft, Intel, banks like Santander and accounting companies, PWC, coming together to say we need to use this Ethereum technology to either create private systems for ourselves, or integrate directly with this public, permissionless Blockchain ledger.”