Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are a revolutionary method of funding start-ups. They are like initial public offerings, only they’re largely unregulated for now. This means that there are very few barriers to entry. Basically, all you need is the cryptocurrency that the ICO is accepting. It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you come from. If you have the funds, you can contribute to the initial investment of a company running an ICO. There isn’t even a minimum contribution for most sales. This means that those getting involved with initial coin offerings can spread their resources across several different projects. Since most of the companies running ICOs are at very early phases of their development, it makes sense to do this. Most initial coin offerings will fail. Therefore, the more projects a contributor backs, the more likely they are to pick a winner.
One of the sectors that have particularly taken to the notion of initial coin offerings is the casino industry. This is most fitting since backing an ICO is essentially gambling anyway. In fact, I’d much prefer taking my chances at the Craps Table any day. That said, if you can pick a project that takes off, the returns can be enormous. Just look at Ethereum. If you had held ETH tokens since the platform ran its ICO until today, you would be more than happy with the results.
We’ve looked at various casino ICOs to come up with this short list. It’s by no means investment advice and it wouldn’t surprise us to learn that all these companies failed in the next 12 months. That said, they look better than the slew of other casino coin offerings out there. What’s more, there are constantly new ICOs being launched. Once this list gets old, there are plenty of other sites with loads more reviews of more recent projects. As always, do you own research and don’t take investment advice from a random article on the internet. Use this list as a starting point and check out each project’s whitepaper, team, and roadmap for yourself.
UniLot
The UniLot team are hoping to create a decentralised gambling platform. Players will be able to host and play games such as poker tournaments, lotteries, and many other casino favourites. The platform will be made available for mobile phone users with both iOS and Android devices being catered for. UniLot state that their mission is “to build he world’s most transparent, secure, and diverse betting platform.
UniLot will be built on the Ethereum network and will use the token ticker “UNIT”. Their ICO is being held between February 22 and March 22. There will be a total of 265,000,000 UNITs for sale. These will be priced at a rate of 12,658 UNIT for every ETH contributed to the sale.
PlayBets
PlayBets is an ICO that is being run out of Ukraine. The team hope to create a fully decentralised platform and aim to provide users with an unprecedented selection of games. The games they’re hoping to offer customers are designed with simplicity as a foremost concern. They’ve been tailored to appeal to everyone, not just those who are well-used to games of chance. The platform purports to be open, provably fair and honest. Unlike most ICOs, they currently have a working product that is in its Alpha testing phase.
PlayBets is built on the Ethereum network and uses the token ticker “PLT”. These will be priced at a rate of 1ETH for every 6,000 PLT. There are 207,000 PLT tokens available at the sale. The organisers have stated that they will enforce a soft cap on contributions of US$1,000,000 and a hard cap of US$10,000,000.
LuckBox
LuckBox targets the ever-growing eSports community. They are creating a fully licensed betting platform for punters to wage on various eSports tournaments. LuckBox want to provide a one-stop shop for the community, offering betting, viewing, and chat options all on a single platform. According to their website:
“Luckbox’s ambition is to be a global leader in esports betting, with player safety, product innovation, pioneering payment solutions and a thriving community as key features of the business.”
The LuckBox ICO will run between February 23 and March 1. It is being hosted from the gambling mecca that is the Isle of Man. This latter fact is one of the reasons we’re so keen on this ICO.
During the ICO, 204,000 LCK tokens are for sale. These ERC20 tokens are of course built on top of the Ethereum network. This means that only ETH is accepted for the ICO. The organisers have imposed a hard cap of US$20,000,000 on the sale.
Sp8de
Sp8de is the first of our ICO picks that is built on the Cardano platform. The experienced team behind the project hopes to revolutionise the iGaming industry. They cite ridiculous house edges, uncertain payment processing, and unfair randomisers as the major issues facing the current online gambling sector. In contrast, they hope to bring genuine fairness and unbiased outcomes to online casinos using blockchain technology.
The company is based in Russia. They’ll be running their coin offering between January 2018 and March 11. The token ticker they’ve opted for it SPX and the sale is soft capped at 4,000 ETH. If they receive more than this amount, there is a hard cap in place at 8,903 ETH. For every ETH contributed, the investor will receive 98,888 SPX.
In terms of the token distribution, of the 8,888,888,888 Sp8de tokens available, 20% have been earmarked for the Sp8de Foundation. Meanwhile, half of the remaining 80% will be on sale as part of the ICO. The final 40% have been set aside to compensate backers through a jackpot scheme.
LetBet
Like many other gambling ICOs, LetBet too are hoping to revolutionise the online gambling market. Along with their token, LBT, they’ll create a decentralised, trustless gambling hub that is entirely backed by blockchain technology.
According to the LetBet website, the project aims to provide:
“… a trustless, borderless, secure, anonymous and fast online gambling platform with zero fees, seamlessly for all participants in a typical online gambling system powered by the LBT blockchain.”
In terms of the specifics relating to the ICO itself, there will be a total of 199,000,000 LBT created. Of these, 99,000,000 are for sale. Funders can contribute either ETH or BTC to the ICO. The LetBet team have also incorporated both a soft cap of 3,000,000 LBT and a hard cap of 84,000,000. They list the staggered prices of their token too. The first 20% will be sold at $0.80 per LBT. The next will be $0.90, then $1, and $1.20. This accounts for 80% of the sale. The first 10% remaining will be sold at $1.40 and finally, the remaining tokens will be priced at $1.50.
