Meike Krautscheid is a fabulous, fresh, female face that gaming and gambling industry professionals likely bumped into at Betting on Sports Europe (BOSE) earlier this month, the location where this interview was filmed. Krautscheid has been making the rounds at gaming industry events, attending eSports Insider London and BOSE, speaking at both iGaming NEXT and AIBC (part of the SiGMA group), all on behalf of SmartLedger, Bitcoin Association and CoinGeek.
Krautscheid originally comes from the events industry, but several years ago she heard about blockchain technology at a startup event and instantly understood the incredible opportunities the tech is capable of. She was one of the first people in Germany to get involved with blockchain and her actual “ah ha!” moment was when a trusted friend told her to forget about all the other blockchains and focus solely on Bitcoin SV (BSV).
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, [BSV] is not only sending value, but you can also use it as a massive data network, immutable data on the blockchain. It’s an upcoming data economy, so it offers so much more opportunities,’” Krautscheid shared.
“And since then, I’m part of the BSV community and got into the space, formed my team, built up SmartLedger, working for the Bitcoin Association, doing some work for CoinGeek- here I am!” she said with enthusiasm.
Similar to what Kal Suurkask of TAAL shared with us in the previous episode of Hashing It Out, Krautscheid is involved in a number of industries, yet the gaming space stands out as an area that is especially ripe for blockchain tech.
“The iGaming field, or esports/sports industry, they are highly innovative. They are really open to innovate, to go into this space, to discover new technologies. They know if they don’t adapt very fast, they will miss out,” Krautscheid said.
“The blockchain technology offers so many opportunities to deal with the regulatory side to be more compliant in some ways, to give proof for the compliance and to create more incentives for customers to interact with a platform, for example, to enjoy whatever service they are offering,” she said.
“NFTs” are one of today’s most popular buzz words and the gaming industry is keen to learn how to take advantage of them. Krautscheid is ready to educate gaming professionals on how to integrate NFTs into their business, especially considering SmartLedger will be launching an NFT ticketing system called “Ticket Mint” in the near future.
“When it comes to the gaming space, for example, you can have in-game NFTs like unique characters, you can have unique items that you can also, for example, trade or it can be NFT awards, certificates that are unique, that are provable, that you can use it for the community to create a marketplace,” she pointed out.
The challenge for us is that not all NFTs are created equal…far from it, in fact.
The vast majority of the NFT talk we hear about in mainstream and social media is hype, misunderstandings, or at worst a complete scam, with everything in between. Most NFTs are not even stored on-chain, rather on a server somewhere that could disappear overnight leaving the NFT owners with nothing. With BSV, however, NFTs are stored on-chain and the owners have actual rights including broadcasting, executable by smart contracts.
“When it comes to blockchain technology, there are many, many blockchain technologies, so more than 900 different ones. But actually most of them are only working on paper, but not in real life,” warned Krautscheid.
“[BSV] has predictable low fees—a fraction of a cent—and it has a stable protocol, so we can be very confident that our work won’t go to waste because the underlying protocol is being changed. It can do tokenization, smart contracts, Ricardian contracts. It’s highly flexible,” she confirmed.
Krautscheid then went on to explain why BSV’s big blocks allow for users to put NFTs on-chain unlike with BTC where the block size is severely limited.
“I want to suggest choosing the right technology very carefully, otherwise you waste your resources, wasted energy, time, everything—missed out opportunities,” she said.
Krautscheid also emphasized there are many use cases for blockchain tech in addition to NFTs that gaming industry professionals should consider. Provably fair gaming, notarization services such as nChain’s Kensei, payment systems and money management were all on her list, including a practical example for those who noticed our interview backdrop.
“Imagine it like we have the stadium here, Chelsea Stadium in the background. Imagine there’s a game created on chain, on the BSV blockchain…so the fans in the stadium are playing a game and betting with micro or nano payments,” Krautscheid suggested.
“You can bet with 0.001 of a cent that the players act in certain ways or whatever game could be created on this highly scalable blockchain, also geo-located NFTs that are connected with VR/XR and so, so many opportunities,” she added.
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
