Gambling is Driving the new Generation of Altcoins
April 6, 2019There is little doubt that gambling all-around is an enticing activity in almost any part of the world and in any culture. Through history, the principle of gambling and betting has stayed very popular and only expanded its appeal with the technological boom of the 20th and then the 21st century. Today, it is the IT domain that is diving betting to new heights and this push comes across almost all fields of information technologies.
This is why it is no coincidence that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are among the front-runners of this expansion. The oldest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, saw many advantages in terms of user acquisition directly from gambling. These benefits continue to this day, but it seems that they are not limited to BTC. As of recently, it seems that the new generations of altcoins are also successful in finding plenty of traction through crypto gambling.
The Dapp Phenomena
For the cryptocurrency tron and its blockchain, gambling is quickly becoming the primary use, recent data have shown. Dapp Review, an analyst firm recently found out that the tron blockchain network facilitator over $1.6 billion in activity just for the first three months of 2019. It has over 430,000 estimated users and almost 65 percent of its restrictions were gambling-related.
These days, apps used for gambling on the tron network cover many different things, from digital dog racing to so-called farm investment games that promise a huge return on their users’ initial token investment. Because of these games, dapp volume on tron jumped to a new high in March 2019. March 15 alone had over $102 million worth of individual transactions. For comparison, EOS dapps, also popular in the crypto gambling world, had about $16 million on the same day.
Ethereum dapps, which belong to the second biggest cryptocurrency in the world, had only $4 million on the same day. Celery, there is some inherent strength to tron network when it comes to the idea of gambling dapps. However, as most experts would point out, rarely do blockchains become popular with actual applications for no reason. In other words, there is likely more to tron than simply being the star of the moment for crypto gambling.
Birth of Tron Casino Environment
Tron got its independence from the ethereum network on which it was built in June 2018. Further back in 2017, theTron Foundation had an ICO that raised $70 million. In many ways, it saw its opportunity when the gambling community moved away from ethereum and its high fees and moved to the EOS in late 2018. The tron developers also took notice and began working towards similar platforms.
The popularity of its gambling platform, even though they were brand new, began to take away EOS players and pour them into the tron ecosystem. Now, for Q1 2019, Dapp Review estimates that around 27 percent of all tron dapps are casinos and casino games. A further 36 percent presents high-risk games in the gambling domain. For comparison, only 37 percent of all ethereum dapps belong in both of these categories. This shows that the traction behind tron gambling is impressive, even though the EOS case shows that their presence might easily shift into another cryptocurrency ecosystem when the opportunity arises.
Bringing in Developers
As gambling dapps grow in numbers and in popularity, so does the need for developers grow. These in turn flock to networks along with the users and players, strengthening not just the core acquisition but also the functionality and workings of individual altcoin cryptocurrency networks. Of course, the process is not all smooth sailing. In March, the Tron Foundation stated that the Japanese users should not engage with unlawful gambling dapps. So the ecosystem is not that clear of its share of problems in the individual networks.
However, there are still many opportunities, just like in any other digital domain. Similar to esports and social media, for example, the companies are recruiting among their enthusiastic users. Tron Foundation, for example, paid out $10,000 in tether stablecoin for the users who built their games on the Tron Accelerator hackathon that took place in late 2018. These funds came from an individual inside of the company and not the official organization. But, the end result is the same as the developers move into the individual domains.
Account Validity
At the same time with the rise of altcoin gambling dapps, there is the rising problem of the validity of the same accounts. Like with the actual activity on the bitcoin network, analysts are wondering which of these numerous accounts are valid and belong to real people. Instead, many of the accounts are simply fake or they are used for the purpose of buying tokens.
The latter instance is especially prevalent in the territories where the purchase of these altcoins is not legal. This would mean that the actual activity and its surge could have been vastly boosted by these activities. Because of this many are certain that the actual powerhouse of the dapp domain remains ethereum and not altcoins. The reason for this is the simple fact that the same blockchain has a huge number of working on its token standards and other elements of the infrastructure.
Gambling Tailwind
There is no doubt that the process of gambling is a great tailwind for economic development. The same applies to the crypto domain and even the less-prominent altcoins. Naturally, like with the account validity, there are many potential issues that can arise. Furthermore, there is an additional problem of the disjointed nature of the local laws and the crypto internal regulation. In other words, the possibility of scams and additional difficulties for both the users and the developers.
But, this was completely true for the brick and mortar casinos and their offer of gambling services. Through the years, through the combination of internal and external regulation, the industry became widely respected on a global level. Can bitcoins do the same for the cryptocurrency field? Hardly, but their development is a step in the right direction when it comes to the expansion of the entire domain.