The Future of Sports Betting is on the Blockchain

There’s a new realm of sports betting on the horizon and it looks like Bitcoin’s stock is about to increase. Jerry Brito is the executive director of Coin Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy center based in Washington, D.C. that focuses on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Jerry seems to believe that a decentralized prediction market based on blockchain technology is the future of bitcoin sports betting.

He was quoted on abcnews.go.com, “It’s cheaper, because the cut that the book takes is incredibly small, because there’s no company there, there’s no overhead, besides the network. And because it’s potentially global, it could be a really big book with a lot of bets. That’s going to be very interesting to watch.”

Ethereum is an applications development platform that works on the blockchain technology the same way the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, does. The difference between them is that Bitcoin is a form of online currency, while Ethereum is a platform to create decentralized applications. This means that there is no one location or network that its located in and it’s not controlled by any one person or entity. The best way to make deposits and place bets on decentralized applications, is by using decentralized, digital currency. With that, all the money in the system will be in cryptocurrency making sure that no credit card companies or banks have any access to it. The system runs outside any legal jurisdiction that has ever been thought of before, because there is no CEO to blame, or hardware to destroy, or even a company to sue.

There are already first generation decentralized internet gambling destinations starting to pop up in the blockchain. Augur.net is a decentralized per-to-peer marketplace that allows internet gamblers to wager cryptocurrency on future events. The software that is in place will set the money lines, collect the wagers, and distribute the winnings. There is no overhead on a website like this and very little upkeep costs. The website will keep just 1% or even less of every pot to keep the site running and rest are your winnings.

Augur isn’t a full all-in-one online casino just yet and it’s lead developer doesn’t even like to use the word “gambling”. The team at Augur refer to it as a “prediction market” or a “forecasting tool. However, it ultimately results back to gambling. The example at augur.net reads “If you think Hillary Clinton will be elected president, the Yankees will win the World Series, or Leonardo DiCaprio will win another Oscar, then you’ll buy shares in those outcomes. If you buy shares in the correct outcomes, you’ll win real money profits.”

Augur isn’t the only decentralized application for gambling that has been released. vDice.io is also a decentralized gambling site that was made on the Ethereum platform. They went live in June, 2016 and have serviced over 20,000 bets since then. With all these sites starting to pop up and no legal precedence set to regulate them, what could this mean for the internet gaming community? What could this mean for the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and will Bitcoin gambling sites continue to change the industry?