Questions about the legitimacy of Bitcoin, and its appropriate use in the gaming industry have been asked numerous times in the past. With more gambling sites accepting Bitcoin, such as Betcoin and betcoinsports, the cryptocurrency has grown in popularity within the gaming community.
We here at Payment Magnates discussed the legality and possible future restrictions for accepting Bitcoins as a viable currency in the online gaming industry in our piece “”. There we discussed , in depth, about the possibilities and restrictions that may be imposed on the currency and its current and possible future placement in the online gaming world. After the FBI , many thought, that it could mean that the end of Bitcoin was near. Suggested regulations arose and having government officials actually seizing funds in the form of Bitcoins showed that it is not as untouchable as we were believed to think since Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the peer-to-peer based currency back in 2009. It was shown to not be true and thew currency is strong as always, and recovered within 24 hours of the FBI shut down.
Lately we are seeing a new trend rising in the online gaming community, not with gambling, but with more Gamer oriented online game titles. LeetCoin, a company who is interested in using Bitcoins in online first person shooters has devised a new platform that allows skilled online gamers the opportunity to win Bitcoins by proving their skills from within existing games. LeetCoin currently only supports Counter Strike, but more titles are soon to follow.
The idea proposed is rather simple, a player can login with their Steam account, an online gaming distribution platform, and afterwards the player is transferred to one of LeetCoin’s servers where they are able to load Bitcoins to their wagering system.
Kingsley Edwards, the developer and brains behind LeetCoin, describes the experience to be very similar to a poker table. The Steam server that the gamer logs into acts as the table, and every server has a different wager. Currently the set price per kill is 0.001 BTC, that translates, at the moment that this article is being written to 0.13 cents per kill. The future proposes more higher wage servers to be made available to LeetCoin gamers. According to Edwards, gamer satisfaction is guaranteed as any winnings will be transferred immediately to the player’s wallet, and funds will be deducted just as fast if the player is killed off.
Artbiter is another example of a company that is trying to insure a spot for Bitcoins in online games. Artbiter is looking to implement similar concepts with Bitcoins to the more casual gaming community, focusing mostly on the mobile game market. The company is currently linked to a yet to be named mobile game developer to provide in-app Bitcoin gambling services.
This is an interesting step for Bitcoin and if not regulated or banned from gaming, we can expect to see more companies utilizing the currency for such purposes, and maybe we can even see game developers integrate similar betting options on next-gen console titles.
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