rewards Archives

Online Casinos empowered by Bitcoin wagers, Reward payments hit as high as 260 BTC

Posted on March 9, 2017 | by [email protected]

A digital innovation always revolutionizes all the fields related to it and for an innovation like Bitcoin, online casinos and gaming industry is no different. Simple, peer to peer, free of cost transactions – these features were sure to find their place in the online gaming/casino industry in the form of wagers, entry fee and flushing reward payments. This has been the scenario last couple of years with many Bitcoin online casinos popping up and diversifying the kind of experience they offer through varying wagers, games, joining bonuses and rewards. Let’s look into how the online casinos evolved through Bitcoin:

Initial Deposits and Play:

Casinos are investing to trap a sustained customer base by offering a joining bonus to give the participants a firsthand experience of the game. While this has been the trend, most casinos provide instant deposit and play facilities through Bitcoin or other sources of depositing. For instance Bitcoin Video Casino provides instant cashouts once all previous deposits have at least two confirmations. This is due to the nature of their zero confirmation play model. With instant payouts for bonuses or special attractive jackpots, Bitcoin Video Casino has gained popularity in the recent time.

Top payouts in Bitcoin Video Casino’s history:

Bitcoin Video Casino recently paid out $259.74 BTC jackpot on a 0.1 BTC on a slot machine to an anonymous player. According to the company’s website, this the largest payout of 2017 but marks the only the 19^th biggest in the Casino’s history. The top payout ever registered was 765.65 BTC for a bet of 0.2 BTC in May 2014.Coincidentally all the top 20 payouts registered were all wagered for bets less than 0.2 BTC or below.

How Bitcoin changed bonus payments:

Bitcoin has indeed changed the way online casinos have catered to customers over the years. For most part, people had to go through well set up KYC process in the past. With the kind of anonymity Bitcoin offers, simple registration and transfer of the cryptocurrency to the respective wallets on payouts is all that is required to get the fun rolling. With Bitcoin prices picking up slowly, it has been easier to facilitate mass payouts and arrange for healthy gaming at low entry fee over the past couple of years. How this trajectory would be impacted with regulations is the only thing concerning the casino owners as of now.

Incent: Blockchain Tech Meets Retail Rewards

Posted on September 29, 2016 | by [email protected]

Overview of Incent

Incent is a blockchain powered loyalty rewards system, designed to align stakeholder, consumer, and investor interests. The system incorporates digital currency into the reward system for retail operations. To simplify, when a consumer makes a purchase, they are rewarded with a digital currency which he or she may spend at any retailer using Incent. Effectively, it is a low-cost, high-intelligence coupon system.

The creators of Incent designed the platform to provide a loyalty rewards program that improves retailer and customer experience. For retailers, the platform builds upon existing customer intelligence and customer incentives at minimal cost. Intelligence about customers improves as retailers gain access to all transactions that the customer makes in the network. In accordance with traditional loyalty reward programs, customers are more likely to shop at stores where there is a deal. As a disruption to existing loyalty reward models, blockchain technology does not require chip or card technology for point-of-sale transactions. For customers, Incent expands the scope of reward spending to include other retailers on the platform.

On October 1st, the developers plan to crowdsale tokens with the goal of raising between $1 million and $5 million. The sale is intended to finance the platform and stabilize the token currency.

Adoption Projections and Bitcoin Technology

If Incent succeeds early, with a high adoption rate among retailers, growth could occur at a nonlinear rate. In the hypothetical situation of success, non-blockchain business would face pressure from customers and lower reward margins to accept the currency. The rate of acceptance, with particular respect to consumer demand, would snowball as more retailers joined the program. Conversely, if it struggled to gain a following among retailers or customers, the value of the tokens would drop and the platform would lose operational capabilities.

In either event, the growth and investment in blockchain technologies is a testament to the underlying structure of Bitcoin. Whether Incent succeeds or fails, the investment in blockchain technology contributes to my faith in Bitcoin’s underlying technological security.

Image from Incent white paper.

How Bitcoin block rewards halving would impact prices

Posted on August 6, 2016 | by [email protected]

The supply cap on Bitcoin is what makes its journey a fascinating one to follow. The speculation surrounding its adoption always contributes to the volatility. But to make sure that we are mindful of the fact that the supply is limited, comes once in every four years the concept of halving the reward for every mined block. This reward, initially set to 50 BTC, fell to 25 BTC in late 2012 and to 12.5 BTC in the last month. While this is expected to affect the prices positively, let’s look into other factors that would be affected:

Effect on the miners:

What keeps the Bitcoin network running is the group of miners who are incentivized for processing the transaction. Currently the incentive is bitcoins released per completion of each block. Since this would reduce, the price has to double else the miners’ earnings would be reduced. This would result in miners leaving the network and leave the control of the network in hands of few. This would centralize the control and put it under the risk of an attack. One major concern is that the miner income has changed drastically. It went from 70 bitcoins a week a year ago to less than 20 a week now.

Probable usability issues:

Whenever there was a reward halving, there was a sharp increase in price and increase in transactional volume. If most miners decide to leave the network and the transactional volume goes up, then the network might become slow. But more transactions means better adoption and this is positive for the currency. Hence this would be an incentive for tech firms to come up with alternative solutions to boost the hash rate of the network.

How would halving effect the price:

When this last happened in 2012, there was a significance boost in the prices and proved out to be a good investment. While the price is expected to go up this time too, to what level is still out for speculation. Most of the analysts are predicting the prize to trade upwards of $600. While their assessments are based on factors such as increased developer activity and transaction volume, influences on Bitcoin’s price will be as unpredictable as Grexit, Chinese capital controls, developer infighting and whatever else fate has in store for this virtual money.