Joe DePinto and Ian Duckworth on ‘Hashing it Out’ Episode 23: Micropayments are the key to masses

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

An absolute shining star within the BSV blockchain ecosystem is Haste Arcade, an “Instant Leaderboard Payout” (ILP) gaming platform, inspired and underpinned by the ability to do micropayments with BSV.

“That’s why we’re here, in my opinion. It was the one piece of blockchain in Bitcoin that really stood out to me as this is something new,” Joe DePinto, CMO of Haste, said of micropayments. 

“We see a lot of speculation, exchanges and NFT drops, but that’s not really what’s new about [Bitcoin]. Whereas micropayments, you’re building new business models, you’re doing stuff like what we’ve got going on at Haste with instant leaderboard payouts, it’s something new,” he said.

“And to us, that was just really exciting. That’s what we’re going to continue to focus on. That’s what we think is going to in the future shape like this whole new economy,” DePinto added.

Haste Arcade has been around for just over a year, already achieving more than some companies do in a lifetime. Announced just last week, Haste raised $1.5 million in an oversubscribed fundraising round, an indicator that these Haste boys are on to something.

“We have hit over 90,000 registration events—that’s a technical term for a user playing the game and ultimately participating in the arcade. We’ve had just shy of 300 BSV worth of total volume, which we’re really proud of,” revealed Ian Duckworth, Engineering at Haste.

Duckworth pointed out that these 300 BSVs were paid out in micropayments versus lump sums, meaning there were many players playing many times.

“So it’s time to get out more towards the mainstream audience and really, really build out our user base,” Duckworth said.

Partnership with Built By Gamers

Enter a partnership with Built By Gamers (BBG), a key to Haste’s mainstream engagement mission.

BBG is a popular gaming lifestyle and esports community for gamers of all levels, uniting the best of entertainment, fashion, and gaming. After learning about Haste Arcade and the vision of its founders, BBG identified an opportunity for their community in partnering with Haste.

“BBG saw the value of micropayments to drive fan engagement…and they started running these little tournaments, they took a couple of our games,” explained DePinto.

“They’re going to open it up to the rest of their streamers and from our perspective, we’re getting thousands and thousands of eyeballs…let’s get some mainstream people now into the arcade and see how the real world likes this instant leaderboard payout technology,” he said.

Haste Collectibles

During our ‘Micropayments and Gaming’ panel at the Global Blockchain Convention Dubai, Duckworth announced the launch of “Haste Collectibles,” various in-game assets minted as NFTs.

Unlike most NFTs out there which are essentially tokenized speculative assets, Haste wants to create utility with their collectables by using them to enhance the gameplay experience and with the ability to be resold.

“[The collectibles] do add value. You can buy a skin for the game that you like, it makes it very aesthetically pleasing. If you’re a streamer that can help you drive engagement, get new fans, things like that,” said Duckworth. 

“We think the collectibles are a huge deal for multiple reasons,” added DePinto.

“The game that we’re building is called ‘Monster Bombs.’ It’s a baseball themed game and in essence, you’ll be able to purchase one of these [Haste] jerseys, wear it in real life, but then get an NFT with that and assign it or equip it on your player in that actual game,” he explained.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time you’ll be able to actually buy something, use it in real life, use it in the digital world and you can also apply this across multiple games, which is the next step I think of the utility,” DePinto added.

Haste loyalty token

Think of the Haste loyalty token as akin to the tickets players receive at old school arcades, “tickets” that can be redeemed for BSV or other items. Loyalty tokens are picking up steam across gaming and serve as a “hands-on” and easy to understand use case of blockchain technology. 

“I think [loyalty tokens are] just a great starting point for any real business to get into blockchain. And a lot of people talk about the gaming industry, that’s where they think blockchain is going to make its first appearance in the mainstream,” DePinto pointed out.

“I think loyalty tokens, you’re going to start to hear a lot about that in the next year or so as more and more companies get aware of this type of technology and not as much the speculative nature, but more like, ‘Hey, there’s things you can actually do with this,’” said DePinto.

“With Haste, we’re trying to create things that make it really simple to understand the utility of blockchain. And that’s where I see loyalty tokens at least kind of kicking off in the next little bit here,” he added.

Haste SDK

Launched last year, the Haste SDK was a big step towards growing the ILP ecosystem and educating gaming developers about the revenue opportunities that lie in micropayments via the HandCash wallet.

“We do have an SDK that makes connecting HandCash very easy, getting users signed up and then ultimately interacting with our ILP platform. We want to make it as seamless as possible for developers,” Duckworth confirmed.

“We would support any game engine, but the idea would be if a game developer wanted to use an engine we don’t support, we would just work with them to create an SDK and then open source it just with the rest of them,” he said.

While the Haste SDK has been designed for simplicity, the team recognizes building with blockchain technology is new to most and they are ready to support developers along the way.

“For third party developers out there, we’ll work with you if this is challenging. If it’s difficult, we get it. We’ve struggled through that ourselves. So reach out to us, let us know,” Duckworth encouraged.

Watch: BSV Global Blockchain Convention panel, Small Payments, Big Fun: Micropayments for Casual Games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggbZ8YedpBE&t=4005s