Greentube is exploring cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to enhance their social gaming enterprise and venture into the esports wagering market. Their chief executive, Thomas Graf, discusses their ambitions.
Greentube’s social casino business encompasses applications for players in Europe and the United States, as well as business solutions in the United States and Australia. According to H2 Gambling Capital, North America is projected to constitute 71% of social casino income in 2021. Free-to-play gaming is experiencing a resurgence in popularity, particularly in North America.
Prominent players from the 2012 social casino boom, Playtika and DoubleDown Interactive, have gone public or are preparing to list on US exchanges. Thanks to companies like SportCaller and SuperDraft, free-to-play sports gaming is finally gaining traction.
“As the social casino industry continues to expand globally, we are dedicating more resources to it, particularly in the US, to expand our application portfolio,” states CEO Thomas Graf.
Greentube will introduce a new application called Diamond Cash to their GameTwist and Slotpark apps. They will also provide free-to-play versions of their slot games to some of the largest US casino groups through GAN’s simulated gaming solutions.
This social drive will be fueled by digital currency.
“We only began incorporating digital currency into our most renowned social casino application last year to observe how players would embrace this novel payment method,” Graf clarified. “For us, it was a prime opportunity to evaluate the digital currency realm, and we gleaned some crucial lessons from it.”
However, whether this will ultimately result in it providing digital currency payment methods for genuine-money games remains to be determined. Graf stated the trial is “in its very nascent stages” and will concentrate on the social domain initially before any genuine-money implementation is contemplated, and will be subject to the most stringent compliance standards.
Digital currency is also a pivotal component of Greentube’s esports drive, for which the company acquired Austrian firm Hero in February of this year. It operates Herosphere.gg, a blockchain-based platform that enables players to establish their own tournaments and wager on the outcomes.
The platform boasts a user base of over 300,000 players, with its primary form of currency being the proprietary token Herocoin. While this second blockchain-based acquisition this year signifies a particular interest in digital currency, Graf stated the Hero deal was “first and foremost” about interest in esports and esports betting.
“Hero provides us with a head start as they have already developed and prototyped a tournament system for esports, which we will utilize and adapt to our Greentube core business,” he explained.
The most captivating aspect of the Herosphere platform, we discovered, is its more game-like method, he stated. We are presently enhancing and upgrading the platform to enable a relaunch in a more competitive form.
This will be utilized to provide deeper understandings into esports, for a proprietary solution that will consider the company’s expertise in pure skill-based gaming, where Herosphere will play a “crucial role,” he mentioned.
“Similar to the gambling industry, we are not only seeking to create our own platform but also to develop our own content, which will provide us with an edge in the rivalry.”
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