We have recently contacted Tim Heath, who has over ten years management experience in online gaming and is the CEO of Coingaming.io a platform provider that implements Bitcoin cryptocurrency solutions for the eGaming sector to ask him about eSports Skin Trading and Bitcoin. Below you will find the Q&A session we had with Tim in regards to the topic.
EEG: Tim, please tell us about why the industry should take notice of eSports Skins Trading and Bitcoin?
Tim Heath: eSports and Bitcoin are the most talked about growth industry sectors with many online gambling companies starting to offer traditional fixed odds both pre-match and live betting on eSports related events.
However what many in the mainstream sports book landscape don’t know is that a form ‘betting’ on eSports games is already well catered for within the existing supply chain and is referred to as Skin Trading.
EEG: What is Skin Trading?
Tim Heath: Skin Trading is an economy built around the buying and selling of skins related to game titles by American video game developer and digital distribution company located in Washington called Valve and their popular video game franchises such as CS: GO (Counter-Strike Global Offensive); Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2.
Skin gambling or skin trading has given rise to huge eBay type community marketplaces. These platforms like CS: GO Lounge and OPSkins provide the ability to buy and sell digital items more commonly referred to as ‘skins’, such as knives, guns related to the game Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2. The players then bet these in-game skins in tote pools, either on the outcome of eSports matches or in casino style jackpots. They generate millions of dollars in betting trades per day.
Regarding the money flow and economics, it’s supply and demand. The rarer the skin, the more players compete for it via bids. You can get skins from opening what is referred to as ‘crates’. They are similar to a potluck or lucky dip whereby you receive a skin of varying value.
You can get a crate at the end of playing a game or randomly, or you can buy one (usually cost around $2 each). Here’s the catch, the crate, however, needs to be opened and to do that you’ll need a key!
You got it the ‘key’ costs money, usually around a few dollars for the keys to crates. You’ve got no idea what the skin’s value is you’re going to get. Once the skin is revealed, you can check at a glance what the going rate for your skin is. You can do this by checking out the skin, in the game marketplace such as OPSkins.
By doing this it will help you to gauge what the value is at this current time as it fluctuates as more skins come into circulation and in the marketplace.
EEG: You mentioned OPSkins as a major provider of skin trading. Just how big are they?
Tim Heath: The stats are big, huge. By the numbers, 1,363,140 players total to date on its central platform www.opskins.com and 9,026 players active in the less 48 hours. You can visit the site to see the real-time stats, the skins listed, over 350k skins sold each week, they go for a couple of dollars to thousands of dollars, with thousands of transactions a day.
Everybody talks about how big eSports betting could become for mainstream sportsbooks. But it’s like an Iceberg; many are just looking at what’s the visible 10% above the waterline, when in fact the majority of the iceberg, 90% is below the surface. Skin trading and the likes of OPSkins are just one of many such platforms, ‘below the iceberg waterline’ in this vertical and filling a need for today’s savvy digital currency bettors that perhaps preferring engaging in this form of ‘betting’ as against mainstream fixed odds offered by sportsbooks looking to target this demographic.
EEG: So what’s the connection with Skin Trading and Bitcoin?
Tim Heath: Firstly if you do a Google search ‘skin gambling’ you get 19,700,000 results returned; bitcoin gambling 5,350,000 results compared to eSports gambling at only 300,000! So that’s a bit of a giveaway on the demand curve.
Pretty much on all these Skin platforms, you shall notice that they widely promote and accept and cash-out daily for Bitcoin as the digital currency of choice to facilitate the trading activities taking place on the platform. You can check out www.bitskins.com
EEG: What about affiliates, is this an opportunity?
Tim Heath: For sure when you consider the search volumes in Google, the number of Reddit groups and the sheer numbers of gamers within the eSports supply chain that are interacting with these platforms every single day.
It’s already happening as you can see the demand for ‘gambling’ via skin trading within and related to the actual video game via the stats we mentioned earlier.
At its heart gaming and skin trading is truly a borderless activity and fulfilment. Therefore given Bitcoin is also a ‘borderless’ payment protocol, it is the natural product fit to service this growing market of digitally connected gamers looking to ‘skin trade’!
