Bitcoin SV is coming to slot machines. A startup called BitBoss has developed software that will sit inside the machines and allow gamblers to collect their winnings on their phones. It’s more secure for the user, makes it easier for the casino to keep accounts and offers the prospect of gamblers being able to carry on playing online when they have left the arcade.
Next week’s SiGMA’19 gaming conference in Malta will include an afternoon of sessions about the integration of Bitcoin SV with gaming products and businesses. Along with keynotes from Dr. Craig Wright of nChain and Jimmy Nguyen of the Bitcoin Association will be an appearance by Matt Dickson, co-founder and CEO of BitBoss.
BitBoss describes itself simply as “technology for gaming” and its slot machine product is just one line it is developing. Matt’s background is as an attorney and in the financial markets in New York. He then founded a company that leased slot machines throughout the United States. He took the company public in Canada and eventually sold it to a Las Vegas business.
Matt was in charge of technology and innovation for the company and in that capacity, he says, he “became more and more engrossed in this whole idea of blockchain technology and what it could mean for real money gaming.”
It wasn’t in the cryptocurrency that Matt saw potential, but the blockchain: “I never focused on the monetary aspect of blockchain technology. It was all about the underlying use of the blockchain to enable more efficient transactions, more secure transactions, basically unifying the gaming space in general.”
While Matt is hugely confident about the potential of blockchain solutions, he admits that persuading potential customers to change to a new and very different system is an uphill battle: “The greatest challenge so far has been that people have invested massive amounts of money into client-server architecture… And now you’re coming along and you’re saying, ‘Hey guys, you don’t need to do that any more. We have a new way to do it.’ And people generally don’t want to get up to speed on new things when something they have is working and making them money.”
But Matt believes that BitBoss’s proposed slot machine software has such obvious advantages that it will win through: “There’s 10 million slot machines in the world. They all run on a common protocol. And we can easily route cryptocurrency or tokens on and off slot machines. We hope to replace the ticketing system so that when you’re at a slot machine and you hit Cash Out, you don’t get cash any more, you don’t get coins, you get a paper ticket. And we think that BSV is the ideal replacement for that.”
The economic logic is also compelling. While a slot machine costs $25,000, BitBoss’s device will only cost $100. It makes use of the slot machine’s existing screen and the customer’s phone. “Any casino can use it, it can go into basically any slot machine in the world. And now, all of a sudden, your customer has a crypto wallet, unbeknownst to them …and now it’s very easy for the casino to offer other services using those credits.”
It’s a message that will create plenty of interest a SiGMA next week.
Hear more from Matt Dickson in this week’s CoinGeek Conversation podcast:
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