Blockchain Helped My Business by Solving Our Trust Issues [Interview]

Every year, cryptocurrencies are increasingly entering the life of a modern person. Today they are used to solve financial problems in many areas - this is purchases, this is investment, trading, this is the solution of financial issues at the state level.The transparent decentralized data registry on which cryptocurrencies are built has not bypassed the gambling industry either.

The transparent decentralized data registry on which cryptocurrencies are built has not bypassed the gambling industry either. Today we talked with Bryce Daifuku, CEO of Mintdice — one of the largest bitcoin casinos, and asked him the most relevant and interesting questions.

What brought you to the crypto community and why did you decide to connect your business with cryptocurrencies?

I started out my professional career as a professional poker player. Within that industry, there are almost always issues revolving around deposits, withdrawals and payment processors in general.

In addition to these types of recurring issues that I dealt with on a regular basis, poker players in general have a very high risk tolerance and are very used to taking high risk propositions for high rewards.

Knowing these types of issues and mentalities, Bitcoin started storming it’s way across the poker landscape and I was all too eager to make some sizable investments into the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space in 2013.

After nearly 6 years as a professional player, I started to exit the field and look at new opportunities. Given that most of my professional knowledge revolved around both gambling and cryptocurrency, taking the plunge into starting this type of business, a Bitcoin casino, was only natural.

Have you worked with the gambling industry before? How did the idea of creating MintDice come to you?

While I did play poker for several years as mentioned earlier, I was never on the inside of the industry. But I always paid keen attention to the types of things that the offline and online casino businesses would do across the board to create good brand development and high quality products. By paying attention over the years, I built up a very strong knowledge of the types of things that work within the gambling industry, and those which do not.

While MintDice will be releasing first to market gaming and gambling products in the near future, not all of its present ideas are entirely new. I was always interested in many of the early Bitcoin casino products that existed.

But I always strive for improvement and innovation in anything that I work for. And I felt that most of the crypto casino products that existed were quite poor and underdeveloped and that I could help disrupt the industry by providing a new and higher quality bar to set the new standard. 

To date, we offer the best in class 100% provably fair gaming in all of our casino products including our slot machines, plinko games and Bitcoin crash game.

Is it really impossible to fake data if the project is created on blockchain technology? 

This would depend entirely on the type of data that you are referring to. Some technologies that MintDice uses are completely impossible to forge. For instance, MintDice’s proof of solvency will show that the amount of funds that MintDice claims to have on hand to pay out it’s players and winners it actually has; something that is relatively impossible to prove in the fiat online gambling universe.

Another example is the use of blockchain technology to create future proofs for Provably Fair hashes with our Bit.Rocket crash game.

However, this does not always have to be the case as blockchain can be misrepresented by some. For instance, the amount of betting volume that takes place through a casino could easily be forged by operators to make a casino appear more popular than it really is to generate PR buzz for any particular website.

I should note that MintDice does no such thing but that does not mean other websites are as honest. So with blockchain technology, it really depends in which capacity you are referring to it.

Will blockchain technology allow people to realize any, even very exotic projects? In your opinion, which sector of information technology is the most difficult to transfer to the blockchain?

In theory, anything is possible on the blockchain. However, theory and reality are two very different beasts. Blockchain could end up having scalability issues that may ultimately not have solutions that work in the real world economy decades out from today.

This could stem from economics, speed, practicality or a host of other issues. Given enough time, the market forces will dictate if blockchain technology is ultimately useful relative to other potential tradeoffs such as an increased financial or temporal cost.

In my opinion, I think one of the sectors that could benefit the most from blockchain technology that is also the least likely to adopt such technology would be governments. The increased transparency and spending could do wonders for public scrutiny but the chances that this happens any time soon, if ever, is extremely low.

Do crypto-projects created on Bitcoin blockchain have problems with work or payouts in cases of unstable of the Bitcoin network?

Of course it is possible to have blockchain problems like anything. Transaction times could be very slow and/or very expensive which is not the best for running a business or for consumers trying to participate on the network.

That said, the same thing can be said about the fiat network in general, especially in the case of Bitcoin gambling.

The fees associated with online gambling are very high even if it is not immediately noticed by consumers who will end up paying for it anyway by utilizing more expensive products as they interact with their providers.

There are a whole host of other issues as well with fiat providers such as declined payments, fraud and foreign exchange issues. So while Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies have their own set of problems and setbacks, I’d argue that they are overall better than the fiat alternative or at the worst, simply different issues than their major competitors.

What about the security of deposits and user data, is Bitcoin projects at risk of becoming a target for hackers, like exchanges?

Bitcoin security is an extremely important issue and likely the single most important concern to MIntDice and should also be the most important concern to virtually any crypto related business. While many businesses are somewhat shielded from payment hacks with their fiat based bank accounts, any cryptocurrency that can be stolen from a cryptocurrency based provider is gone forever.

For this reason, consumers should be well aware of the providers they are using and the lengths they go to in order to protect their money.

MintDice uses all of the best practices which include the usage of hot and cold wallets to keep as much money offline as possible, using high quality and secure open-sourced software to run all of its operations whenever possible and in general runs a very high quality operation concerned with providing a top notch customer experience overall.

How does the Bitcoin exchange rate affect the popularity of the project? Are you interested in the growth of the “first cryptocurrency”?

Like it or not, Bitcoin adoption’s single biggest driver is price. By looking at search intent, development within cryptocurrency space or what-have-you, everything is correlated to price. When the price is moving up a lot, interest grows. When the price remains flat or drops, interest diminishes. Certain industries are more sensitive to this action than others. For example, news and media companies take the hardest hit during the crypto recessions but also receive the biggest boom during bull markets. Meanwhile other industries that are more inelastic in demand, such as gambling, are less prone to market shocks in either direction.

Of course, while the Bitcoin casino industry still gains momentum during market upswings, they will be less in magnitude, but naturally when the industry dips, they don’t fall quite as hard either relative to other businesses.

Regardless of that discussion, I personally am always rooting for an increased adoption of both Bitcoin and blockchain technology to help propel humanity into a more transparent and financially fair future. And if Bitcoin price is one of the vehicles required to take it there, then I’m all for increases in the price of Bitcoin.

Is the idea of a bitcoin casino relevant today? How has the ratio of players in classic and cryptocurrency gambling changed in last years?

The idea is more relevant today than ever. Governments are frequently attempting to take control of its citizens use of the internet and their freedom of expression which includes how they spend their money. Bitcoin allows users to express themselves however they wish, without requiring government approval.

Secondly, most consumers are fairly sensitive to value which Bitcoin casinos like MintDice provide in droves. With fast deposits and withdrawals and more importantly, very favorable house edges that can be over 80% cheaper than standard casino games, it provides little wonder as to why they are so popular and increasing in demand.

While Bitcoin casinos only take up a fraction of the online casino market, I expect Bitcoin casinos to continue to claw market share as consumer awareness increases and the benefits of playing with BTC continue to present themselves to the public. An increase in the stability of the currency as well could probably do a lot to increase consumer confidence which will happen naturally as the cryptocurrency market matures.

What are the main advantages of MintDice over its competitors?

Presently MintDice has a few advantages over it’s competitors and will expand into even more advantages given more time to fully develop it’s gaming suite to it’s players. Presently, MintDice offers very low house edge games that use exclusively 100% provably fair technology.

Because everything is built in house and not licensed out from gaming companies, MintDice is able to use the open sourced protocol known has “Provably Fair” to ensure to all of our clients that our games are completely mathematically fair, something the vast majority of online gaming companies cannot claim.

In addition to this, MintDice also offers a unique casino bankroll investment profit sharing opportunity whereby they can partake in both the wins and losses of the casino. And finally, due out before Q3 of 2020, MintDice will be launching 100% exclusive gaming that can only be found on MintDice with never before seen games of both skill and chance.

What would you do if you came to 2018 with current knowledge?

If we’re talking strictly within the scope of the MintDice business, I would have focused more on core product development, quicker releases with easier timelines and less ambitious projects. But given that we did the opposite of that, we have quite the line up of offerings that are coming up with our 2.0 launch due in the middle of 2020.

It is always easy to run things in hindsight and more difficult to run them thinking forwards. But the best we can do is make judgements based off of what we know moving forward. We are constantly learning at MintDice to create the best possible blockchain and Bitcoin products that we can for consumers.

We hope that together with Bryce Daifuku we managed to reveal to the readers all the details of a new type of entertainment. How it works, what are the advantages and what may be the disadvantages.