Europe Will Have a Big Boost With The Regulated Cryptocurrency Betting

Regulated cryptocurrency gambling is about open up across a large swathe of Europe.

Announced today, major eSports platform Unikrn has been awarded a gambling license in Malta, a move that will open up its platform to real-money wagering via its UnikoinGold crypto token.

UnikoinGold – which is based on the ERC-20 ethereum standard and is currently being distributed via a token sale or ICO – is being deployed as a medium for real-money wagering in licensed jurisdictions. And, with the Malta licensure, that will mean 80 percent of the European continent.

According to Rahul Sood, chief executive of Unikrn:

"The European expansion means there’s going to be a large and soon-growing marketplace of users, including the real-money transition of already established users, who want to buy, exchange and use our token to bet on our platform."

And Sood isn't wrong.

The company formed Unikrn EU through a joint venture with RBP, a leading online gambling platform in France boasting over 300,000 registered users and 1 million unique monthly visitors.

Further, eSports – video games played competitively for both online and in-person audiences – are surging in popularity with young people, and are widely considered to be the fastest growing "sport" in the world. Market research firm Newzoo estimates that global eSports revenues for 2017 will top $696 million – a 41 percent year-over-year jump – with that figure predicted to reach $1.5 billion by 2020.

Unikrn has won the backing of high-profile investors like Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher and Elisabeth Murdoch.

Token benefits

Until now, Unikrn had only offered real-money betting in Australia and the United Kingdom – the only two nations where it held gambling licenses. It offered free betting in other jurisdictions on popular first-person shooter and multiplayer battle arena video games such as Counterstrike: Global Offensive, League of Legends and Dota 2.

This was all done through its older free Unikoin tokens, but these are now being retired thanks to the introduction of UnikoinGold and its ICO (now reaching its close).

The Malta licensure and rollout of the UnikoinGold token are critical steps toward migrating the company's free-play bettor base to real money, as well as broadening the number of non-betting related uses that a token owner can derive from holding them.

Another free token, UnikoinSilver, will be launched to keep players in non-licensed areas engaged, though these tokens can't be traded on secondary markets.

For Sood, the decision to transition away from the strictly free-play token was straightforward, particularly as his team had proved the concept of a tokenized scheme for building its global community when it released the original Unikoin two years ago.

Sood told :

“We couldn't have fathomed how popular they'd be. We turned over more than a quarter billion of them in under two years."

Youth appeal

Part of the new token's appeal is that participants, whether gamers or spectators, don't necessarily need to wager to earn tokens.

For example, tokens can be earned by playing in a tournament or by just watching a match online or in person.

Sood explained: "Earning, using and utilizing UnikoinGold is not going to be restricted by region, and we think the more fans that are able to get it, the more uses we can give it. The more uses we give it, the more people will want it, and that drives a ton of potential into our platform."

Both the betting and non-betting appeal of eSports has sparked great interest among the global gambling industry, as well as Las Vegas casinos, all of which are desperately seeking ways to appeal to younger audiences (seven separate panel sessions were held on the topic at last week's Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas last week, for example).

"Walk through any slot floor and you will see more walkers and wheelchairs than at a Jimmy Buffet concert in a retirement home," Sood said of the industry's demographic struggles.

But the only way to bring about this revolution in gambling, according to Sood, is to play by the rules.

The Malta licensure, he argued, highlights the company's commitment to providing its customers a safe, legal and regulated ecosystem that is underpinned by the token. And, notably, Malta is seeking to become a global leader in legal and regulated cryptocurrency gambling.

The key difference between UnikoinGold and other "gambling tokens" is that most others simply serve as little more than a "shortsighted" means of placing a bet, Sood said, adding:

"Many companies are doing ICOs for all the wrong reasons. They believe that by using crypto they can skirt gambling regulation, which is wrong. We think it will eventually catch up to them, and anybody holding their tokens."

Source: Coindesk

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The CFTC Is Still Working to Define When to "Delivry" a Cryptocurrency

The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is reportedly still working to define when exactly a cryptocurrency can be deemed "delivered" due to the complexities of cryptographic key management.

Referencing past enforcement actions by the agency, CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz said at an event last week that officials at the agency are "working very hard to provide a suitable response to that question." At the same time, he also raised recent media criticism of bitcoin, including the argument that it is a "fraud" as advanced by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

Yet his comments on the rules for the delivery of digital commodities are perhaps the most significant, coming more than two years after the agency first said it would begin overseeing the trade of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. as commodities.

He said at the event:

 "Would someone here like to tell me how to define the 'actual delivery' of a virtual commodity? The CFTC is working very hard to provide a suitable response to that question."

That lack of clear-cut rules in this area – a result of existing regulations clashing with new technologies and the products they facilitate – is what led to a $75,000 settlement in June 2016 for cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex amid allegations by the CFTC that it did not properly deliver funds to customers.

And it was that enforcement action that subsequently sparked a petition by U.S. law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP to address the matter. In July of last year, the law firm asked the CFTC to provide regulatory clarity regarding the definition of "delivery" in the context of transactions conducted using blockchain-based assets.

While Quintenz didn't offer a clear timeline for release of its proposed rules, he did say that they would be subject to open debate by both the agency itself and its private-sector advisory committee.

"Once a proposal comes forward, I expect to request the [Technology Advisory Committee's] input and feedback as we work to provide regulatory consistency with other commodities ... as well as regulatory certainty within which a more constructive trading environment may develop," he said.

Commentary pushback

Elsewhere, Quintenz called recent media coverage around bitcoin "terribly misguided."

In recent days, a number of notable Wall Street figures and financial analysts have taken aim at the cryptocurrency market, with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman joining Dimon by offering negative perspectives on the technology.

According to Quintenz, those views – particularly about market speculation – miss the point.

"Certainly, we can all debate the value of bitcoin – whether it is overvalued, undervalued, or a 'fraud' – but that price-based conversation misses bitcoin's broader technological and innovation achievements entirely," he said at the event, adding:

"One of the most fascinating aspects of bitcoin is not that it's a virtual currency. It's that it's an ecosystem."

Those characteristics – and the benefits and risks they bring – present both challenges and opportunities for regulators like the CFTC, he argued.

"But it is important for us as regulators to be aware of the diversity of these potential ledger ecosystems, from the narrow and mostly private to the very broad and incentivized, so we can appropriately estimate risk and regulation," he said.


Source: Coindesk

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Chinese Government Doesn't Understand What is Bitcoin

Throughout the past month, traders and investors in China have criticized the Chinese government's sudden crackdown on local cryptocurrency exchanges and trading activities.

• What happened?

In September, the Chinese government, People’s Bank of China (PBoC), and local financial authorities imposed a nationwide ban on cryptocurrency trading platforms, shutting down some of the global cryptocurrency exchange market’s largest trading platforms including OKCoin, Huobi, and BTCC.

The motive behind the Chinese government’s closure of local cryptocurrency exchanges has not been clarified, but several researchers for the PBoC have stated that the country’s central bank considers Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as threats to the Chinese monetary system.

• Supervision strategy?

Last month, in an interview with the PBoC’s state-owned finance news publication Sina, Huang Zhen, a researcher at Central University of Finance and Economics and PBoC, stated:

“Cryptocurrencies and other virtual currencies attempt to challenge the sovereign state's right to issue currency, requiring the nationalization of currency issuance. China has a clear understanding of digital forms of money, and is actively engaging in relevant work. The central bank has set up a research group and a digital money research institute to explore the digitization of sovereign money. After this round of virtual money markets supervision, we expect under the auspices of the Chinese central bank to launch our own sovereign digital currency as soon as possible to help maintain China's leadership in the development of global digital finance.”

Logically, if the Chinese government intends to go ahead with the strategy of issuing a state-controlled digital currency and considers Bitcoin as a threat to its financial system, the motive behind the government in restricting trading activities around Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is quite clear.

• Or no strategy at all?

But, lately, the Chinese government has expressed its optimism towards releasing a licensing program for cryptocurrency exchanges to prevent cryptocurrency transactions flowing into underground economies and black markets.

Such a sudden shift in stance towards Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market has provoked consternation amongst traders and investors within the Chinese cryptocurrency community.

Zhang Yanhua, a major Bitcoin investor and a founder of an investment fund focused in cryptocurrencies, stated:

"The authorities don't understand anything about Bitcoin!”

Sun Minjie, another investor who has recently purchased a large amount of Bitcoin as a vital part of its portfolio, told AFP that the Chinese cryptocurrency community and himself do not expect much from the Chinese government any longer:

"I expect nothing from the government... but the fate of Bitcoin does not depend on the Chinese authorities.”

David Yermack, finance professor at New York University, shared a similar sentiment to most investors and traders in China, emphasizing that the Chinese government does consider Bitcoin as a threat to its financial system to a certain extent. But, such fear towards Bitcoin and its potential in the global finance sector should be considered as a positive indicator for long-term growth. Yermack said:

"They didn't ban Bitcoin, but banned exchanges from trading for speculative purposes. It has a lot to do with problems in the Chinese financial system, that they're worried about this as a competitive threat in some way."

Source: Cointelegraph

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The Giant Database "Oracle" Unveils Its Strategy For Blockchain

Database software giant Oracle is officially a player in the world of blockchain.

The firm unveiled its enterprise-grade blockchain cloud platform Monday at its OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco. With the initial debut – a public launch is expected sometime next year – Oracle becomes the latest entrant in the "blockchain-as-a-service" ecosystem, joining the likes of IBM and Microsoft, two other tech majors that are courting enterprise customers with their respective cloud-based distributed ledger resources.

Oracle, according to its announcement and statements from execs, is looking at the technology as a way to extend (and streamline) its existing cloud-based offerings, which are largely aimed at the digitization of a range of business functions.

The company wants to attract both large and small firms, but Frank Xiong, Oracle's group vice president of Blockchain Cloud Service, argued that startups looking to test a smart contract or an application will be able to do so more cheaply using the cloud platform because pricing is based on transaction volume.

"This will give them a very good reasonably priced way to start up their application," he Said : "I personally think this will be a big attraction to these startups."

For existing ERP customers, the platform will provide a way to connect with outside partners and customers, plugging them into internal channels and processes in a confidential and secure manner.

As Xiong explained:

"This blockchain platform will give them a platform to extend their services beyond their enterprise bundle, which means they can extend them outside to their business partners, advantage customers and so on."

Though the exact date isn't clear, Xiong said that the service will be made publicly available some time in 2018.

Dismissing concerns

As one of the largest and most reputable database providers in the world, there is a perception that Oracle might be potentially cannibalizing its core business segment by embracing blockchain, a technology that, by its nature, enables the distribution of information without having to trust a central administrator.

However, Xiong was quick to dismiss those concerns, along with the notion that blockchains and databases should be viewed as competing entities.

"We actually think that this is an advantage to us," he said, arguing that the idea that blockchains are "distributed databases" is not entirely accurate.

Because copies of data in a blockchain network need to be kept by all of the various peers and nodes, he explained, increased adoption of blockchain among Oracle's core client base will actually create new demand for the company's traditional data storage solutions.

He continued:

"In traditional computer science, there is just one copy of the database. In blockchain, all of the ledgers are distributed, so actually everybody gets a copy [of the data]. So this is only going to expand that data storage [requirement]."

Source: Cointelegraph

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