CryptoBets is happy to announce the release of live tradeable Sunday Night Football tokens!
The system is pretty simple: Tokens are made available for the most popular football wagers on the premier game of every week. Point spread, straight up winner, and point total bets on the Sunday Night Football game. At the end of SNF every week, winning tokens will be bought back for 1 XCP each. Losing tokens will be worth nothing.
These tokens can be purchased pregame just like you would normally place a bet on a football game, except that you buy them through the Counterparty Decentralized Exchange (DEx), or via any other method of obtaining CP tokens. The added feature that should have football fans drooling is the ability to buy, sell and trade these tokens at any time before and during the game!
How do I get these exciting new tokens?
There are two ways.
If you are a casual sports fan and would like to have an “interest” in the game, go to the DEx and search for CBAXXX, where XXX is the 3 letter team abbreviation for your team. There will be a marketplace offering the tokens at rates that will put your usual bookie to shame. The price of the tokens you buy is your risk, and your potential win is 1 XCP for each token you own.
The full asset name will be CBAxxxDEFyyy, CBAxxxCOVyyy, or CBAzzzxxxyyy. CBA stands for CryptoBets Season A. xxx and yyy are three letter team names. DEF means “defeats straight up.” COV means “covers the spread against.” And zzz is either OVR or UNR, which means the token is a bet on the total score. The asset description will contain the spread or total; it will not change after issuance.
Example 1: The token CBADALDEFNYG is selling for .73 XCP each. You decide to buy 100 of them. You are risking 73 XCP to win 100 XCP if Dallas wins the game (a 27 XCP profit).
Example 2: You check the description of CBANYGCOVDAL and see that the spread is DAL -6.5. You buy 200 at .52 XCP each. You are risking 104 XCP to win 200 XCP if the Giants win or lose by 6 or less (96 XCP profit).
If you are a bit more aggressive, or would like to become a digital bookie, you can buy matched pairs of tokens from CryptoBets for virtually no fee! CryptoBets will have these matched pairs available around the clock, under the asset name CBZtttxxxyyy where xxx and yyy are again team names in alphabetical order, and ttt is the type: SPD - Spread. MNL - Money Line aka straight up. TOT - Total. After you purchase the tokens, CryptoBets will send you a matched pair of tokens for the chosen bet. The fee will be 1 XCP - the exact cost to create the two tokens in the first place.
Example: CryptoBets offers CBZSPDDALNYG tokens at 1 XCP each, the guaranteed value of the tokens. You buy 10,001 tokens. As soon as the transaction goes through, CryptoBets will send you 10,000 CBADALCOVNYG and 10,000 CBANYGCOVDAL (1 token is considered to be the issuance fee). You may then trade them on the DEx for whatever price you choose, before the game, or even during! All unsold winning tokens will be redeemed at the end of the game for 1 XCP each.
How do I know you won’t abscond with the funds?
Great question! CryptoBets wants to create these tokens as part of a smart contract system that would guarantee their value. However, this is either not possible at this time or CryptoBets has not figured it out yet! So, unfortunately, you are taking a bit of a risk trusting us.
But before you throw up your hands in disgust, there are two ways that this system requires much less trust than traditional online sports wagering.
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The CryptoBets account will NEVER have less in it than what is required to redeem all outstanding tokens. So there can never be an insufficient funds problem. Anyone can verify this at any time by checking balances.
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With a traditional online book, you must deposit the whole amount you anticipate wagering, and keep it on account with the book. With CryptoBets, you only “deposit” enough to make each individual wager, and the funds are returned to you at the conclusion of that wager. For most users, this will mean a fraction of the funds deposited for a fraction of the time, compared to other online wagering sites.
If anyone out there can point us in the right direction for setting up smart contracts so that all the payouts are escrowed, PLEASE post that or PM this account ASAP. CryptoBets would prefer to operate in a completely trustless manner, and will continue to work toward such a system.
Trading tokens on the DEx is completely trustless. When you buy or sell from anyone in the exchange, the XCP and assets are escrowed by the protocol. The other party cannot back out of the trade when Tony or Eli throw a soul-crushing pick 6. The escrow is released when the next Bitcoin block is confirmed, and you are free to trade that same asset or XCP again!
If you’re only charging a nominal fee, what do you hope to accomplish?
This is first and foremost a labor of love. We want to be able to live trade NFL games because it’s super fun and combines two of our favorite things: football and gambling. Also, Fuck Them for telling us when, where and how we can and can’t gamble our own money.
One or more founders of CryptoBets will also be filling the role of a bookie. We are very much looking forward to a system where bookies cannot stiff their customers, and vice versa. However, these activities will always be done in separate accounts from CryptoBets, which solely issues and redeems tokens. That account should turn a VERY small profit at essentially zero risk.
How many people will be trading these tokens?
As we are all aware, the “network effect” is critical for many games and other Internet applications. Here is how we plan to overcome that:
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Zero fee issuance. The cost to create your own assets is exactly the cost to acquire them from CryptoBets, so there’s no incentive to create competing tokens. This will discourage splintering of the market.
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Vertically integrated bookmaking. The creators of CryptoBets will establish one or more separate accounts to offer these tokens at rates that are better than industry standard. This means that if you want to make a small bet (say, under $100), we will afford you plenty of opportunity. You won’t have to wait for the network effect to kick in.
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Low barrier for new bookies. While the founders will be offering low commission bets, we will initially do this on a small scale to encourage competition. Anyone who seriously wants to make book based on these tokens will be able to accept large wagers at whatever margin the market will bear. Also, this system provides a great way for bookies to lay off some of their unbalanced action AFTER the game starts! Bookies will provide liquidity for whales, drive some of their contacts to this system, and let’s face it, they’re some of the most degenerate gamblers around, too.
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Focused on big events only, starting with SNF, to keep the market as deep as possible. Also, initially we are only issuing money line tokens. We are starting with money line betting despite the fact that spread betting is far more prevalent because we believe money line betting is a better fit for this system.
With no competing assets, guaranteed lines available for bettors, and bookies supplying liquidity, We’re pretty sure some of the $400 billion / year football betting market will find its way here.
What issues to you foresee?
For people accepting offers (the vast majority of users), there should be little to no issues. Transaction fees are low, juice (house edge) should be lower than is typical in the industry, and the funds and tokens are escrowed instantly.
Making an offer is a bit more tricky. We believe a key factor will be setting the expiration at a reasonable number of blocks. If you make an offer for the current week’s game with an expiration of 7 days (the default), you are almost certain to regret it. But along with the challenges of making offers there are many opportunities, and we are confident savvy users will explore this virgin territory.
Who is CryptoBets?
It is our fervent hope that no one ever finds out! We are a small group of sports betting professionals, technologists and angel investors. Maintaining anonymity is an unfortunate legal necessity. In fact, we plan to offer bounties if any of you geniuses out there can find any identifying information about us, and explain to us how you obtained it.
All assets created by CryptoBets for the foreseeable future will be from the Bitcoin addresses 12xSATW8pZXidgJzMS5DEWbedyM45Vb2rn and 1CrypBet2QCZgFBre5TsBHiTK5PpvxPoEa. The activities of these addresses will build our credibility over time.
Thanks for your time and interest, and good luck!
I think we see this the same way.
