Reload Saturdays with Stefan – A Weekly Crypto Gambling Recap (Week 34)

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· 25 Aug 2018

Hi and welcome to yet another Weekly Crypto Gambling Recap, with Stefan, your host!

Today, we’ll be recapping on some alarming news that occurred this week – a lot of scams, a lot of lawsuits and a lot of dubious games have been rearing their heads in the past week. But, that’s just the part of life, and, by reading such news, you’ll learn to be more careful the next time you reach for your Bitcoin wallet. Let’s go!

Esports Gambling Platform Unikrn Sued by Investor Over Cryptocurrency Offering

Unikrin, a well-known eSports gambling platform that utilizes cryptocurrencies, is getting hit by a lawsuit. Namely, the plaintiff, one John Hastings, reportedly traded 10 Ethereum coins to buy a significant amount of Unikoins, Unikrn’s very own cryptocurrency. The currency, however, was sold more as a securities offering, whereas players like Hastings thought that they would be able to use the coins to place the bets on the platform itself. Needless to say, this directly violates SEC regulations and is grounds for Hasting’s lawsuit.

Reload Saturdays with Stefan - A Weekly Crypto Gambling Roundup (Week 34)

Someone Wins $3 Million Jackpot in Ethereum Ponzi Fomo3D

The highly popular, and equally dubious, Ethereum gambling game Fomo3D finally comes to a close, with a single punter winning $3 million. The game was infamous as it looked suspiciously like a Ponzi scheme, and had punters buying keys before a timer runs out to win a big prize. The person who buys the last key wins the prize. The game was condemned by some of the most prominent figures in the crypto industry, but the players enjoyed it a great deal, despite nobody being sure the timer will run out, and that the creators of the game won’t pull an exit scam.

Police Bust China’s Largest Bitcoin Hacking Scheme

Lack of regulation of online currencies yields massive opportunities for scammers to do their work. I just two months of 2018, consumers lost half a billion dollars to scammers of all kinds. Worse yet, it is predicted that they’ll lose another $3 billion before the year is over.

And which country has the most scammers? That’s an easy answer – it’s China. Earlier this August, the Chinese police arrested three individuals that have stolen around $1 million in cryptos in a World Cup gambling ring. The police say the individuals were highly skilled and used extremely sophisticated methods to get their hands on cryptos, often targeting individuals, rather than exchanges.

Can Casinos & Sportsbooks Resurrect Bitcoin?

It is a well-known fact that Bitcoin’s taken a big hit to its overall value, especially this summer. However, prominent figures like Jack Dorsey are very optimistic that Bitcoin will rise again, and might even become a monumentally dominant currency in the future. Be that as it may, the fact remains that Bitcoin needs a boost, and the best candidates to boost it are casinos and sportsbooks. Since online gambling is also on the rise, the union of the two will be beneficial to both industries – it will draw more punters to the casinos, and it will create a new market for Bitcoin.

Bancor Exchange Signs Agreement to List Crypto Casino Coins

Tacking onto the previous piece of news, Bancor Exchange is doing the best possible thing for cryptos everywhere. Bancor signed a deal stating that they will, from now on, list casino crypto coins on their exchange, which will allow more people to get their hands on them, increasing the value of the coins themselves in turn. Besides, having their crypto listed will get casinos much-wanted exposure, allowing them to be seen by an ever-increasing number of players. All in all, it’s an incredibly beneficial deal that will benefit both the exchange and the casinos.

Reload Saturdays with Stefan - A Weekly Crypto Gambling Roundup (Week 34)

 

The Curious Case of Mystery Crypto Boxes

If you think putting money on a horse is gambling, wait till you see mystery crypto boxes. One of the most notorious ideas, mystery crypto boxes started as a very benevolent way of drawing in more people to invest in cryptos but ended up a prime opportunity for scammers to get their hands on your hard-earned money. To those who are not in the know, mystery boxes would yield random cryptos of the same value you paid for it. However, it is needless to say that, owing to the nature of mystery boxes, anything could be inside, and you can get easily ripped off by a potential scammer, making them a huge liability.

Market Makers, Takers and Fakers: Which Exchanges Are Built to Last

And, with this last piece of news, we’re going back to China. Considering this Far East country is a kind of a Wild West for crypto trading, it is not surprising that many exchanges would exploit this and work in the grey area to increase their profits or even control the whole market. This is why we have things like zero fee and trade mining exchanges that give incredulous offerings to their customers, nearly erasing the distinction between gambling and coin exchanges. This, in turn, promotes wash trading between users using bots, before dumping the currency and devaluing it completely.

And that’s all we have for you for this week. Like I said in the beginning, things look grim, but, through these instances, we’re learning how to avoid scammers and protect ourselves. And, let’s hope that our next batch of news will be much brighter than this! See you next Saturday!