“We offer a social network very much like Facebook. It’s a peer-to-peer game which lends itself perfectly. People come to play, to practice, to
make friends or find love all on the back of a shared love for poker. Poker really is the
evergreen for us. The launch of the KamaGames Token will
reward these people and help us to attract a new, additional audience as well as rewarding our existing players. We think that delivering 11 times its original purchase value in virtual chips will make this
token sale appealing to our existing player base.”
cryptocurrency. “We have whales who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on our chips but we aren’t asking people to spend hundreds of dollars on our tokens,” Mr. Kuznetsov explained. “Tey can buy our tokens for ten dollars. We already do up to four chip sales a week. Te difference here with the token is that we are giving players the opportunity to hold tokens over time and get more chips later as well as bonus chips along the way. We have been looking at what we could do in the crypto space for a while now and feel that the technology behind it has reached a level, especially the speed of the blockchain, to sustain our huge database. We have also been approached by our players asking if they could pay in crypto.”
Despite the expected return of $25m for the token sale as well as the company handing out an extra $6m in bonus tokens and $250,000 in bounty, this is not about generating extra revenue.
Mr. Kuznetsov explained: “We have been consistently profitable with an unprecedented rate of growth for the past nine consecutive quarters. Last year our revenue increased by 63.4 per cent year on year to $57.5m.”
It’s staggering to digest that all this revenue has come from in-game virtual chip purchases for a game that makes the player no money, but it is clearly working. Te first quarter of 2018 saw another spike with revenues increasing by 47.9 per cent compared to Q1 2017.
“People play social poker for all sorts of reasons,” Mr. Kuznetsov said. “We offer a social network very much like Facebook. It’s a peer- to-peer game which lends itself perfectly. People come to play, to practice, to make friends or find love all on the back of a shared love for
poker. Poker really is the evergreen for us. Te launch of the KamaGames Token will reward these people and help us to attract a new, additional audience as well as rewarding our existing players. We think that delivering 11 times its original purchase value in virtual chips will make this token sale appealing to our existing player base, new players from the world of poker and people from the blockchain side of things.”
KamaGames is currently the third biggest social poker network in the world behind some very established brands; Zynga who enjoyed first mover advantage with its partnerships with Facebook and World Poker Tour, which obviously has a globally recognised brand, and Playtika, who in conjunction with Caesars powers the World Series of Poker social app. Research from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming pitches the current market value of social poker to be just shy of $5bn.
“Tis is obviously not an opportunity for investors or players looking for a financial gain as the investment stays within the KamaGames economy,” Mr. Kuznetsov added. “We’re confident though that this launch will continue to raise our profile and help maintain the tremendous momentum that we’ve had this year. 2018 is shaping up to be our strongest year to date for growth, revenue and new game releases. We are very good at acquiring players from the conventional channels so we wanted to look at how we could attract a new, additional audience and to help drive the further expansion of the company’s network of clients whilst continuing to deliver first-class gaming experiences and services worldwide.”
Te KamaGames Token has the functionality of a standard utility token and can be exchanged for in-game virtual currency at any time using
an official KamaGames player account. Players will then use their account to redeem the free chips awarded daily along with any other discounts, bonuses or services that KamaGames will make available exclusively to token holders in the future.
Te numbers involved are staggering. Te exchange rate for the $25m of KamaGames Tokens is guaranteed to be increased by KamaGames at a rate of 25 per cent each month during the first 36 months and at a linear interest rate. Tat means that at purchase, each token will equal 7m chips. Tis will more than double in the first six months to 17.5m. After a year, one token will equal five times the original worth at 35m chips. By 36 months their value will peak at 77m chips, 11 times the original value.
All this begs the question of what risks this presents to the stability of the KamaGames economy.
Mr. Kuznetsov admits there is some risk that the extra currency could cause inflation but that it has put tools in place to control the currency and keep everything stable.
“Our research into how players play suggests they will exchange tokens for chips regularly rather than in one go,” he explained. “We have offers in place to convince players to retain their tokens rather than exchange them all for chips at once. We have a road map of five new games including slots which will help us take chips from the economy. We feel this is a win win situation for us and our players. We are really looking forward to analysing the demographics of the players attracted to our token launch as we feel this will be interesting for people involved in social poker, gambling and blockchain as whole.”
NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA P105
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116
