Every significant advancement in technology creates a new universe of possibilities. With the rapid development of blockchain, we may be on the verge of a new technological horizon: the Metaverse.
As with blockchain, the Metaverse will impact popular cryptocurrencies and potentially every aspect of life. With the Metaverse, online gambling, in particular, may find itself in a new chapter.
What Exactly Is The Metaverse?
Because the Metaverse has yet to take shape, it isn’t easy to define it concretely. You may hear it referred to as a ‘digital civilization,’ and popular sci-fi works such as Ready Player One depict it as a virtual reality world that occurs in real-time for everyone.
A ‘digital civilization’ is a simple term that perfectly captures the Metaverse’s spirit. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will ideally be used in the Metaverse to create authentic digital identities, making everyone and everything in the Metaverse unique and irreplaceable.
How Will Casinos Appear in the Metaverse?
Because the Metaverse as we know it is still in its infancy, it has become a minefield of business opportunities. According to a J.P. Morgan report, $54 billion is spent annually on purchasing virtual goods, 60 billion messages are sent daily on Roblox, and the market cap for NFTs is $41 billion. Of course, the online gambling industry is as invested in the Metaverse as anyone else.
What Will Gambling Look Like in the Metaverse?
The Sand Vegas Club in The Sandbox Game or Decentral is an example of what gambling in the Metaverse might look like.
Decentraland casino games (DG) (a blockchain open-world game containing parcels of virtual land). Decentral Games, for example, focuses on 3D blockchain games, and one of their creations is the Tominoya casino (an early form of a metaverse casino) in Decentraland, where the experience is very similar to that of the physical world.
The gamblers in the Tominoya casinos appear to be there primarily to have a good time socially gambling. You don’t just click on a blackjack spot and wait for your cards to be dealt, as you would in a traditional online casino: people used to play casino games online to satisfy their gambling thirst. Instead, you ‘physically’ walk around the virtual world, upstairs and downstairs, looking for a table. You can also chat, make friends, and emote to show your support for others.
This virtual casino offers a variety of casino games, such as blackjack, poker, slots, and roulette, on which people can wager using a variety of digital assets (ETH, DAI, MANA, ICE). When metaverse casinos take over the online gambling industry, sports betting, pachinko, baccarat, keno, and dice games may become available. The only limit is your imagination.
Furthermore, because Decentraland hosts far more venues than just metaverse casinos, people can continue playing games with their friends by visiting a digital museum or competing in a dance-off at a virtual concert.
This is the closest thing to metaverse gambling that we have, and it appears to be a highly interactive and social experience that goes far beyond the traditional concept of online gambling, iGaming, or crypto casinos, into virtual real estate and other virtual services.
The Impact of the Metaverse on Gambling
Making Gambling Safer for Everyone Gambling has long been considered taboo, not only because its reputation has been tainted by scams and gambling addicts but also because it is frequently used as a money-laundering method by criminals. This is why online gambling sites use a strict Know-Your-Customer process to verify their customers’ identities.
So when online casinos went decentralized, it was both an innovation and a cause for concern. It’s easy to see why: because wallet addresses contain no information relating to the owners’ identities, gambling becomes even more vulnerable to criminal activity.
When online casinos went decentralized, it was both an innovation and a cause for concern. It’s easy to see why: because wallet addresses contain no information relating to the owners’ identities, gambling becomes even more vulnerable to criminal activity.
Overall, the Metaverse protects decentralized gambling while preserving players’ privacy (you don’t have to enter your address, phone number, or ID). The less information you provide, the less anyone can exploit it.
Decentralized casinos, on the other hand, have a way to combat money laundering thanks to authentic identity expressed through NFTs in the Metaverse.
Because the token verifies identity in verse in your wallet rather than the wallet itself, you can potentially use multiple wallets, and casinos will still recognize you. This is unheard of in traditional online casinos, which require you to use the same bank account and payment method for both deposits and withdrawals.
Overall, the Metaverse protects decentralized gambling while preserving players’ privacy (you don’t have to enter your address, phone number, or ID). The less information you provide, the less anyone can exploit it.
A More Social Gambling Environment
We live in the age of self-expression, with social media allowing anyone to express their thoughts and personalities at any time. On the other hand, regular online casinos do not allow for much of it. Only live dealer games attempt to create a more social experience by allowing players to chat with the dealer and other players while playing poker, blackjack, and other card games.
A perfect metaverse casino will allow players to display their NFT avatar, costumes, and cosmetics, as well as interact with others in meaningful ways.
Virtual reality headsets can enhance the experience even more. And you may be wondering: haven’t video games allowed people to customize their skins for years? The difference is that thousands of gamers can have the same skin, whereas your NFTs are unique to you in appearance and their blockchain properties.
In this sense, the Metaverse allows for maximum individualism; your appearance in it reflects your taste, personality, and beliefs far more than the random DNA combination that constitutes your physical appearance in real life.’
Creating Metaverse NFT Identities
Citizens of the Metaverse manifest their identity through tokenization, transforming that identity into an object known to and interactable with other objects in verse, making it authentic.
An Ethereum address or wallet does not express someone’s identity: they can change their address without being traced. However, because NFTs are one-of-a-kind, if you own Cryptopunk #939, that token will bear your identity on any Ethereum addresses it touches.
These NFTs can represent your avatar or an ENS name; in fact, anything can be serialized. And it is these objects that distinguish humans as unique, distinct, and irreplaceable in the Metaverse.
In the Metaverse You Create The Rules
Recently, the UK Gambling Commission imposed restrictions on a number of slot features, including Bonus-Buy, auto-play, and spinning speeds exceeding 2.5 seconds. The new regulations are intended to make gambling safer, but they have sparked debate because many believe they are an overreaction.
The Metaverse has no ‘gambling commission.’ These virtual casinos will be based on bottom-up participation rather than top-down imposition. Citizens of the metaverse vote on the rules themselves rather than electing representatives to make decisions for them. They will be the ones who decide which features are beneficial to players and which are not.
