The Bitcoin sports betting market has been around for ages. Bitcoin sports betting platforms have been the odd brother of Bitcoin prediction platforms. Nevertheless, Coin News had the chance to speak with Martin, co-founder of Fairlay to give us the structure of how a platform like this works.
Coin News: Hello, Martin. Every Bitcoin operator has gone through somewhat a journey? How did Fairlay come into fruition?
Martin: We started working on it in June 2013. We launched the site in early 2014. The development went pretty straightforward. One of the biggest challenges is to design a good user interface that helps user to understand a betting exchange.
What brought me first to Bitcoins were my thoughts on our monetary system. For a long time, I thought that money is something natural where you cannot change anything. With Bitcoin, it became clear to me that there were lots of way to design money, and that it was time to question ourselves if the current (fiat) money systems were designed in the best way? On the same hand, I love the decentralized structure of bitcoin.
CNA: What can you say is the best thing about your Bitcoin site in comparison with other crypto-related gaming sites?
M: We developed it with Django and a bootstrap frontend. For our cold wallet, we are using Armory and BitcoinQt for the hot wallet. As a user, you are fine as long as you can load a website and send bitcoins to a specific address.
We claim to be the best operator for sport betting because we have the exchange model with 0% fees for the user on sport bets. We take 2% fee on all other bets because there we have to resolve the events manually. As long as you are only interested in sport bets, you wouldn’t find any other site in the internet with 0% fees. In addition we have a very solid liquidity and by far the best odds compared to non-Bitcoin and especially to Bitcoin bookmakers. In addition, it is possible to use Fairlay without the need of an account. Just send bitcoin to one bet and receive the winnings to your sender address. But if you prefer you can use an account. This is also a unique feature of Fairlay.
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We want to be the home for professional sport bettors. So we offer an API and most importantly and radical: 0% fees! We have been excited having our first single bets of more than 100 BTC a few months ago.
CNA: What are the key differences of the experience with a Bitcoin casino and a land-based casino?
M: You will get way better odds. Actually, it is just a free market, so you can choose them. Also, you don’t need to share your identity.
CNA: Are you going to focus on the Bitcoin gaming space only or offer merchant solutions as well?
M: We will expand beyond sport bets, and other casinos might be interested in using our odds. However, our main focus is become the clear leading betting exchange.
CNA: What do you think bitcoin needs to become more prominent?
M: Currently, there are not too many things you can do better with bitcoin than with fiat currency. So there is no need for people to change to bitcoin. At least, for our niche of sport betting, we want to give people a reason to change to bitcoin. Fiat betting exchanges will never offer a 0% exchange because they have to cover huge credit card fees and also potential credit card fraud. Bitcoin gives us a clear cost advantage that we can forward to the user and by this bring more people to the Bitcoin space.
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CNA: Have you set sights on the Asian market in particular?
M: To be honest, we have been mainly focused on the American market so far. However, the beauty of bitcoin is it’s international. So we are eager to learn the needs of the Asian markets, and we are happy to adapt to them very quickly.
CNA: What can you say about online gambling laws and cryptocurrency legality and regulation?
M: We would be happy if there would be more clarity. The big advantage with bitcoin is that you can choose a jurisdiction that fits to your needs.
CNA: Finally, do you have a Bitcoin price prediction?
M: Better ask the market: we have predictions of the price by the end of the year running. Have a look here.
CNA: Thank you very much, Martin.
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