A Short History of Cryptocurrency and Gaming

Table of Contents

• Early Days of Cryptocurrency in Gaming
• Development of Blockchain Games
• Mainstream Adoption
• Benefits and Challenges
• Current Trends and Future Outlook

As we know all too well, the use of cryptocurrency is still rising steadily. As this form of currency becomes better understood and accepted, many industries are dipping their toes into the world of crypto and blockchain. However, one industry that’s been there almost from the beginning is the gaming industry. Always one to jump on a bright new technology, the gaming sector embraced the new qualities that crypto could bring to them. So, let’s take a look at how the integration of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology has shaped the gaming industry thus far.

Early Days of Cryptocurrency in Gaming

After Bitcoin launched in 2009 and the famous Papa John’s order was made, it took a long time for the currency to gain traction. There were some early adopters who understood the idea of blockchain and appreciated that it could be a genuinely revolutionary technology to get behind. Interestingly, some of these early adopters were online casinos. They realised that accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment would both allow customers in some countries to avoid currency conversion fees and enable transactions to be made more swiftly. Quickly, the online poker sphere took note of this and there seemed to be early interest in what crypto poker could look like. It would take a long time before lots of casinos started accepting crypto as a payment method, and longer still before it was possible to play games using crypto, but it was a solid start. One that the gaming industry at large took notice of.

Development of Blockchain Games

This is where things start to get really interesting. Thanks to the success that crypto casinos were having, several companies decided it was time to take the integration of cryptocurrency and gaming a step further. They began working on games that harnessed the power of blockchain technology more directly. Not only could they benefit from increased security, but they could also utilise blockchain to create tradeable digital assets. In 2017, CryptoKitties was launched, allowing people to collect kitties that were stored and created through blockchain technology. We now know these kitties as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) but at the time, this was truly revolutionary. For the first time it allowed people to truly own in-game items, giving non-physical assets actual value.

Mainstream Adoption

It wouldn’t be long before major game developers hopped on the NFT bandwagon, creating NFT trading games that the public had a voracious appetite for. Many more indie NFT games popped up that have now become fully fledged platforms, such as Axie Infinity and Decentraland. However, huge developers like Atari also entered the space. Atari launched ATRI the ‘Atari Token’, a cryptocurrency designed to be used within their own gaming sphere. They gave players the option to earn these tokens through playing games and even allowed them to play casino games with them. Their venture continues in plenty of innovative ways, showing the potential this technology has to truly be ‘game changing’, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Benefits and Challenges

While there are now plenty of crypto and blockchain based games, there’s still a long way to go. Nowadays it’s still the most common option to find poker online using fiat currency, but increasingly more brands are offering the option to play with crypto too. Some sites have integrated avatars into their crypto-poker games; others are now allowing betting with Bitcoin instead of undergoing currency conversion. There are benefits and drawbacks to both fiat and crypto approaches, including the wider availability of fiat currency online poker versus the marginally faster transaction times of cryptocurrency. The enhanced security is another asset of cryptocurrency that cannot be ignored, as well as the ability to own digital assets. Market volatility continues to be one of the main drawbacks of fully integrating cryptocurrency into more games. However, the future looks bright.

Current Trends and Future Outlook

The crypto gaming space is ever-evolving; play-to-earn models, as well as the metaverse, are going to cause seismic shifts in the gaming space over the years to come. Being able to truly own digital assets has already been a possibility that’s hit the news multiple times. Whether it was FC Barcelona releasing their collectable NFTs to the tune of $132 million in investment, or the smaller wins like Gimcrack (a Wild-West themed NFT game) smashing its Kickstarter funding target. The public has an appetite for games like this and those in the tech space are sure to make it happen.