Today gaming is one of the fastest growing industries. Just a bit more than a decade ago there has been almost professional gaming, meaning that there were no people who are actually getting salaries for playing games. Next to this, there were some gaming contests, yet the prize pools weren’t large at all, and mostly those where provided by the players themselves rather than sponsors. Finally, there were no streaming services such as twitch, where the games could view online matches with live commentary.
All of this makes us think that gaming is a huge industry. Yet it will undergo even more changes due to the bitcoins. How will bitcoin shape the future of gaming? Let’s find out below.
Micropayments
Whenever you want to donate a dollar or two to a streamer, someone has to actually execute the transaction. Same thing applies when you want to a little purchase, something that cost a dollar or even less. This could be anything, a mobile game, a skin for your m4a1 in counter-strike or anything like this. The thing is, payment systems require some commission for the buyer, the seller or actually both of the partier. Also, there is often a minimum percentage and also a minimum whole amount that the payment system is charging, and sometimes it might be possible to pay out in commissions 0.4 USD from a 1 USD transaction. With bitcoins it is possible to make micropayments very cheap and lightning fast.
Having low commissions on payments is vital for such activities as donations. It is also very important when you want to try out betting on gaming. Today it is possible to use bitcoins for eSports betting and with this cryptocurrency the deposits arrive safely, quicker and anonymised.
Poker
Even though poker is more considered gambling than gaming, it is still a game of skill rather than luck. The reason for that is rather simple. You have to play against other players, not against the algorithms. The thing is, poker is also heavily influenced by the payment systems, yet user’s privacy becomes even more important here. A person is unlikely to share the amount of his losses or winnings from poker for a number of reasons, even if the poker earnings are not taxed. This is where playing poker with bitcoins comes handy.
Internationality
One of the main issues with the gaming payment systems is that there was no system available in every single country. While you could certainly use PayPal for most of the transactions, you could not pay with it to the parties from Egypt, Ukraine and quite a few more countries. Bitcoin knows absolutely no boards and it is widely accepted in every country. This way it makes payments between the gamers truly global.
