The gambling industry is witnessing the rise of NFT, and the NFT landscape will intersect with gambling as Evolution Gaming announces the purchase of four CryptoPunks to be used as rewards for their slot machines. This is the latest fusion between the two areas and could be the catalyst for a new wave of interest in NFT.
First Interest
The NFT industry has been growing and falling throughout the year : after seeing a huge spike in trading volume in the beginning, they fell sharply around June but in August they picked up strength again. Although trading volume is nowhere near as high as it used to be, the sector has seen less turbulence than in previous times. However, Evolution Gaming’s announcement that it is using CryptoPunk as slot machine rewards could rekindle the interest of people.
According to their press release, these assets will be used in their NFT Megaways which appears to be the first slot machine project to use NFT as a prize — six reels and seven lines — five distinctive, exotic and unique characters created by Larva Labs and now owned by Evolution.
After reviewing the transaction history of all four NFTs, we learned that Evolution bought all four punks for a total of 86 ETH. All of these were purchased on June 22, when Ethereum was worth $1,888, which means they spent a total of $162,368. The most expensive is CryptoPunk 8143, which sells for 21,50 ETH.
While CryptoPunks have been a must-have collectible in the NFT world, they have recently entered mainstream status : Visa bought them in August for $ 20 million and luxury auction house Sotheby’s began listing them on the Internet ; renowned rapper Jay-z owns punk and uses it for his Twitter avatar. Given these factors, it is no surprise that NFT lists them as a top-level project.
It is important to note that by using NFT as a reward, gambling companies can diversify their games and also attract the attention of a whole new audience. This allows companies to sell their games in more specific and even more sophisticated ways, namely in terms of money.
Part of Future
The beginning of a new relationship between these industries could be a very effective and profitable way to continue the growth of the NFT market. Although the industry has been around for a while, we have only recently seen NFT integration focusing on collecting sports cards.
The NFT market could certainly benefit from this and develop gaming projects specifically for sports enthusiasts — they may even provide betting rewards in the form of real tickets — as the Dallas Mavericks plan to create tokenized passes for their games — a fascinating avenue : The metaverse is a virtual reality that is distinct from (but often reflects) this physical world — term was coined in 1992 but has only recently gained relevance.
The NFT metaverse is a growing subcategory of digital collectibles. One company who wants to make a profit is GamblingApes, the virtual casino of the metaverse. Not only can people gamble on the chance to win NFTs, but the project offers NFT owners a fraction of ownership of the casino itself. Projects like these add a whole new dimension to the discussion of gambling.
While the meta universes are still relatively niche, they will certainly become more popular as interactive realities become more engaging. Considering how luxury brands already jump onto the bandwagon of the metaverse, creating virtual casinos could be a way to spread NFT around the world. NFT will dominate this space for the next few years and it could also be largely related to gaming and gaming capabilities.
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