Crypto and gaming were both born as rebellious outsiders from the computer revolution. Both are controversial and have fierce opponents.
Historically, people in power react with fear and loathing to new technology; this has happened with everything from telephones to steam engines to the telegraph, radio, TV and VHS videotapes.
The way technologies and industries can grow out of nothing into masters of the universe can take even the closest industry observers by surprise. Turn your back on a tiny niche industry and suddenly it’s worth billions. That’s what happened to games and game tournaments and it will happen to crypto, too.
Today it’s crypto that’s in the crosshairs. But, with time, crypto will trace the same trajectory from hated outsider to mainstream staple. It will get more mature, faster, safer, smarter.
Its evolution will mirror the jump from 8-bit sprite level technology to photorealistic gaming engines like Unreal 5. Currencies will get built-in password reset capabilities, and stronger protections on wallets. It will get woven into those next-gen AR contacts and glasses so people can zip money around in the blink of an eye.
Today, most of the money that powers million-dollar prizes comes from crowdsourcing or small subscription fees that raise money to drive the tournaments. Crypto will make it easier to raise that money, with localized tokens generated by the games themselves or by large pools of games. It will also make paying international players directly a lot easier, as gamers from nations outside the modern financial system loop get paid without having to open a banking account and navigate the convoluted and complex system of today.
A much faster and more fluid system is needed, with money that can zip as fast as light moves down a fiber optic cable. Small payments, coming fast and furious, hundreds or thousands of transactions hitting someone’s account over an hour as they rack up wins and losses.
Economically, it makes little sense without crypto in video games and pay-as-you go tournaments. A video game company would have to set aside a pool of dollars or euros or yen to pay people, cutting into their profits. That’s because they’d first have to raise all that cash only to give it away, a bad economic model if there ever was one. But with a powerful chain or token, they create and mint money and reward points and non-fungible tokens (NFT) themselves and that means they can payout continually.
