The Bitcoin was first… Wait, everybody knows this story anyway.
Blockchain is slowly growing out of the financial tech sector, and with every time its pace rises. Blockchain and its successors – smart contracts – are a solution to various technical, economical and psychological problems: the operations are instantaneous, anonymous, open, trackable and distributed.
Companies as Ethereum offer a vaccine against the global plague of total mistrust. Smart contracts grant understanding and transparence. They exclude the possibility of human fraud. Everything clear so far, but there is the question of use. People implement technologies in spheres where they need them most. Obviously, distrust is an urgent question for the financial sphere. The BTC is nothing new. Having created – and partly conquered – one initial market, it went on to another. To the lottery.
The pains and hurts of the lottery business are quite the same as those of the fintech: it isn’t transparent, requires high level of trust, is exposed to high risks and human intervention, and it requires a developed infrastructure to function properly. Add the difference of lottery rules in different countries, the delay in pay-outs, high tax rates… All in all, plenty of space and demand for blockchain. So came up the idea of KIBO, an international lottery technology. The product is still in beta, but we already got some news and pieces. The technology bases on smart contracts by Ethereum. This means that the platform will most probably include the following features:
Firstly, it will be an open-source project. Any user and partner will have access to the full documentation on the website. You can check anything, any algorithm of the lottery. The winner is defined automatically. The system prevents any human interference. Sound like the good old blockchain!
Secondly, pay-outs reach the winner’s account instantaneously. This will not be a “You-have-won-a-million-dollars-now-wait-three-years-to-get-them-paid-out-and-pay-50%-taxes”-story. You can win a hundred million dollars, they still will be transferred to your account right now.
Thirdly, everybody will have access to the game. Even somebody from a remote village in Africa where there is no bank terminal in sight. You just need Internet access to participate. This is quite easy for almost any mobile operator on Earth.
Finally – and this is most inspiring for end-users – all operations will be anonymous. Your boss will never now you gamble. Quite the most important thing for this market.
Meanwhile I wonder what market share this technology will finally get. Almost every second man on Earth is involved in lottery gambling. In some countries up to 80% of people gamble regularly. The capacity of world lottery market is about $284bn. This is ten as much as the global film industry. Not bad, hm? As email almost replaced traditional post once, skype budged the mobile operators, bitcoin took a share in the financial market, so projects like KIBO are most likely to make international lottery companies move aside. Well, let’s watch what comes. What other industries you think will blockchain overtake soon?
Give me a call in the comments!