Christian Solomine on ‘Hashing It Out’ Episode 14: Disrupting cashless gaming with the BitBoss stablecoin
Cashless gaming was the absolute hottest topic at G2E 2021 and BitBoss is uniquely positioned to service the needs of the market with their cashless gaming stablecoin solution. To increase awareness of what BitBoss has to offer, Christian Solomine, a seven-year payments and gaming industry vet, has recently joined the team.
“I came on formally as a Board Advisor in March of this year and we’ve had really good success over the last six months or so, getting the solution out in front of regulators, in front of operators, in various states,” he shared.
“We’ll be adding our first solution going live here in Colorado with a land-based operator for cashless and are looking at some really interesting things as it relates to an omnichannel experience for both land based to online,” Solomine revealed.
Since PASPA’s repeal in 2018, we’ve seen regulated sports betting and online gambling spread across the U.S. like wildfire, yet operators continue to struggle with seamless omnichannel and multistate offerings for customers. According to Solomine, BitBoss’s cashless gaming solution can alleviate a number of the pain points in this area.
“These gaming platforms are paying to get money in, paying to get money out, and the player experience is totally bifurcated. It’s really broken and it’s costly and you’re using money transmitters to move all the stuff around,” Solomine explained.
“But when you’re using a non-custodial solution like a crypto wallet, the player or the user is fully in charge of their own funds. So if I want to route funds onto an online site and receive funds back, I’m controlling that. I am controlling my own funds. I’m not relying on a custodian, an operator, some third party wallet, some payment processor to control my funds,” he said.
“Once you change that dynamic and you can have that interaction in between land based and online or even multistate, it fundamentally changes the experience. It’s frictionless, it’s fast, it’s cost effective for the operator, and it gives a great player experience,” he added.
Solomine explained how millennials and “Gen Z” are looking for a “Venmo-like” experience and operators who wish to target this age bracket can benefit greatly from BitBoss’s non-custodial solution. He used the example of a player on the casino floor without funds and the ability for a friend to instantly route $100 to them through a smartphone, assuming both individuals have been KYC’d, of course.
“You try to do that today with a custodial based solution, you run into so many different hurdles and so many different pieces that are going to hold that back. But non-custodial changes the game for omnichannel and for online gaming,” Solomine explained.
So how does it all work behind the scenes? The answer is one to one, U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins issued by BitBoss via the BSV blockchain.
“A stabletoken is going to be pegged to a fiat currency, whether it’s the U.S. dollar or euro or whatever it may be. This is really important for online gaming because gaming operators, although they think crypto is interesting, they don’t want to hold funds that could be within two hours instantly worth 20 percent less or 20 percent more, per se,” Solomine explained.
“[Gaming operators] just can’t handle that sort of volatility with the margins that are impacting their business and player acquisition costs,” he said.
There are a number of stablecoins available today, such as Tether, but there is a major difference between BitBoss’s stablecoin and the vast majority of the rest.
“It’s an FDIC insured version of a stabletoken that’s backed by real U.S. dollars. So that’s an important differentiation; it’s not held by a trust. It’s actually held at a bank with real U.S. dollars,” Solomine confirmed.
For these reasons, regulators view the BitBoss stablecoin differently than other stablecoins and digital currencies in general, meaning the BitBoss cashless gaming solution has massive potential within the regulated U.S. gambling market.
“We’re not taking outside cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever it may be and bringing it into the ecosystem. We’re allowing players to fund their accounts with Fiat, whether it’s ACH or via debit card. They fund a pooled account and then we issue back that stabletoken. So that’s a really important differentiation,” Solomine pointed out.
“We’re taking the player through a KYC process and they’re basically getting a share of a pooled bank account. So those sorts of things make regulators feel better about it,” he added.
In addition to alleviating payment related pain points, due to the blockchain technology that powers it, the BitBoss solution also offers superior controls for responsible gambling and compliance. For example, funds can be frozen in the case of a subpoena or frozen if a player is wagering outside of their limits.
“If you’re just playing with cash at a casino, you don’t know the source of funds. You haven’t KYC’d the player. You’ve no controls over what’s happening in that experience. But utilizing blockchain technology, you can,” Solomine pointed out.
Using stablecoins for gambling is just the beginning of the BitBoss cashless solution. Imagine the ability for gamblers to use their BitBoss wallet to buy a buffet in the casino, to book show tickets, to go shopping or even book a taxi. Imagine the rich set of analytics operators would have on how their customers are interacting with the various products and services that are offered at the property.
As Solomine says, blockchain makes data analytics so much easier than the traditional way of tracking player experiences. The opportunities here for gambling operators are endless and thanks to BSV blockchain technology, BitBoss’s solution will open many doors for forward thinking operators who want to improve player experience.
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