E-Sports and cryptocurrency. The future of both could be tied together. They work the same way peanut butter and jelly do between two pieces of bread. Think about it. Kids love peanut butter and jelly. So to do grown-ups. It’s the classic sandwich that never gets old, especially when you have nothing else to eat. Video games are a classic form of entertainment enabling youth to pass the time. Kids love it, and again, so do grown-ups.
While kids may not have the same affinity for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency’s as they do for video games in peanut butter and jelly, digital money may just be the next man up. E-sports enthusiasts should certainly hope that’s the case. While Bitcoin and the like may not exactly target young kids, cryptocurrencies definitely do tap into the inner geek in all of us. The same geek that thinks video gaming is cool.
How Cool is E-Sports and Crypto?
Over 100 million people tuned in to watch the League of Legends World Championship in South Korea last year. The winning team took him a whopping $2.4 million in prize money. The e-sports gaming industry itself is growing at an estimated 33% annually in the industry is worth over $1 billion right now. That might seem like chump change but 15 years ago nobody was talking about this, or at least not very many people.
Just like live gaming and the leagues and tournaments that pay out all these money to these video game geeks, cryptocurrency is also making people rich over the last 10 or 12 years. At the end of 2017, Bitcoin’s value ballooned to over $25,000 USD per coin. To think that when the project first launched in 2008 thanks to a whitepaper written by pseudo-anonymous author Satoshi Nakamoto a Bitcoin could be had for mere pennies and now the project is worth nearly $170 billion USD is absolutely mind blowing.
Fast-forward to the present day, and all the cryptocurrencies in the world are now collectively worth over $255 billion USD. A quarter of $1 trillion valuation for an industry that is just 12 years old. If e- sports and cryptocurrency don’t prove that computer geeks are running the world, nothing else will.
So how does the future of e-sports rest on cryptocurrency’s shoulder?
E-Sports plus Crypto Equals Innovation
Since both e-sports and cryptocurrency projects target largely the same audience, it only makes sense that combining the two would be a match made in heaven. An e-sports team building platform called DreamTeam just closed a $5 million seed round of funding to launch its blockchain project. There is a saying in the technology world that if somebody wants to know what the next great technology is, they should look at criminals. Criminals are always one step ahead. Most people wouldn’t call e-sports athletes criminals, but they are definitely one of the first groups of people to adopt new technologies. They keep an eye on the future and appreciate what’s coming next.
The fact is that just 10 or 15 years ago, not too many companies reporting big money into e-sports. Even now using the blockchain or Smart contract platforms to take care of things like player sponsorship, salaries and tournament winnings is not only more cost effective from an administrative standpoint, it’s also a way of doing business that e-sports gamers can readily adopt, all because they’re not afraid of the technology and the understand how to use it already. Just by the nature of the groups they associate with and the culture that e-sports gaming embeds them in.
Content Creators Can Also Cash In
People reading this may or may not have heard of PewDiePie. He’s one of the biggest stars on the Internet and his YouTube channel makes them millions of dollars a year. He streams and comments on his own video game play in a funny and entertaining way. The influencer recently made headlines when he joined a platform called Dlive, which allows for people to cash in on their content by accepting Bitcoin and Ether. As more of these projects at the market e-sports gamers who may or may not be playing competitively can cash in on their content as long as they can get eyeballs.
It’s safe to say with both the rise of cryptocurrencies and e-sports gaming, small communities of forward thinking people are actually controlling the future of the world as we know it one industry at a time. In the long run, that means less time spent worrying about central authorities having control and more time spent eating delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, even if it’s just a metaphor for controlling one’s own wealth and creativity and has nothing to do with actual sandwiches.