Betrium is poised to take the online gaming/gambling industry by storm with its betting platform that is part bookmaker and part betting exchange. The first gambling platform to offer volatility stabilization and franchising, Betrium is attracting serious interest from investors and would-be partners. Bitcoinist recently sat down with the Betrium team to learn more about the platform and its future holds.
Bitcoinist: For our first-time readers who might not be familiar with your platform, give us your 15-second ‘elevator pitch’ on what Betrium is.
BT: Betrium is the global sports betting platform, bookmaker and betting exchange, which allows people to bet on sports using cryptocurrencies and tokens, offering lowest commissions, platforms for developers and event organizers, volatility stabilization system and franchising, operating on industry of $1 trillion annually. We are aiming to build the global network of sports and markets from all around the world in one place. The future profit will be distributed to the token holders.
Bitcoinist: Betrium is described as being a “partly decentralized” betting platform. What does that mean and why did you opt for partial decentralization?
BT: Some things happen off-chain, to provide instant processing of bets. Speed is one of the major things in betting. Also, the license requires such business to have a lot of things centralized, to store many pieces of information inside of the country on the physical servers. Anyway, in our case decentralization is not the advantage, we rather provide liquidity for already existing cryptocurrency market and at the same time, we try to act within the law.
Bitcoinist: There are other sports betting platforms out there – even ones that accept crypto. What makes Betrium better than other platforms?
BT: Betrium is the first one to offer something like hedging, we call it “volatility stabilization”. Professional sports betting is impossible with current volatility of cryptocurrencies, even 5% price change may lead to losses. Particularly for the pre-match betting (before the event starts). We give an option to convert BTC and ETH to virtual USD/EUR upon depositing.
Bitcoinist: One of Betrium’s big draws is that it accepts crypto. What cryptocurrencies do you accept?
BT: As we said we have two different services, bookmaker and betting exchange. The bookmaker will accept the cryptocurrencies and tokens with the highest liquidity, such as BTC, ETH, Dash etc, the ones which are interesting for us. The bookmaker will actually make up the major part of Betrium’s profits. The betting exchange, which just matches bets from one user to bets of other users on the other side, will allow users to bet with almost anything, including any ERC20 token.
Bitcoinist: We hear every day how volatile the crypto market is. How does Betrium account for the often significant volatility inherent in the cryptocurrencies you accept?
BT: To be honest, volatility is a huge problem for all areas of the crypto space – for token prices during ICOs, for our business development, and of course for trading. As said, the volatility is the key problem of betting in crypto. When Betrium started and was in its concept stage, we received a lot of questions and proposals regarding unstable BTC rates. That inspired us to think about hedging.
Users on the platform have the option have their deposits and winnings fixed in virtual USD or EUR, which protects their balances from unexpected drops in the cryptocurrency market.
Bitcoinist: What kinds of betting and gaming will users be able to do on Betrium?
BT: Betrium is mainly focused on sports betting, and as we have mentioned, our goal is to cover all the sports all around the world. On the exchange, you will be able to back and lay on any outcome. Moreover, as with any successful betting website, in the future we will integrate additional gambling services such as casino, poker, and bingo.
Bitcoinist: What about developers and event organizers? Does Betrium offer something for them too?
BT: Initially, the idea of Betrium about due to a lack of a normal and open API. We have already released the documented alpha of our API for developers and third parties. As mentioned on our website, Betrium aims to become the world’s betting processing center. There are a lot of local gambling businesses who want to run their own betting websites or applications on their local markets, they just need a modern and easy to use platform on which to do it. Betrium is that platform.
For event organizers, I think we are one of the first to offer the concept of a platform for organizers to create and manage custom events and earn from betting, along with special internal promotion tools, which will work much like boosted posts on Facebook.
However, personally, I bet more on our franchise solution. Betrium is located in Europe and our team of analysts and traders are mostly focused on soccer, tennis, and basketball. We canʼt know what happens on different local Asian markets and we donʼt know exactly how to promote Betrium there. So we offer franchising so that people from all around the world will be able to develop Betriumʼs business on their local markets, moderate all the content, manage all the local events, and get the major part of the profit.
We provide the technical infrastructure, support, and other services but we require that all of our franchise partners have an experienced local team of analysts, managers, and marketing personnel. We already have many entrepreneurs from India interested in partnerships with us – they are so crazy with cricket!
Bitcoinist: Betrium just finished up a successful pre-ICO. When does the main ICO start and what should our readers know about it?
BT: The ICO starts on 5th of April with 20% one-day bonus.
Bitcoinist: Is the main ICO open to everyone?
BT: The ICO is open to all investors living in countries where they are legally able to invest in ICOs.
Bitcoinist: I read that Betrium was an exhibitor at Money 20/20 Asia. What was that like?
BT: It is different than any blockchain conference your readers might have been to. It was held in a huge area at Marina Bay Sands filled with booths from companies like MasterCard, CNBC, Toshiba, etc… And of course, there were many ICO projects represented as well. At the same time, people were scattered and if felt like a typical agro expo. To really get the most out of a conference like Money 20/20, people really need to spend time at the exhibition hall and not simply listen to speeches and to have lunches.
For more information about Betrium, please visit betrium.co and download the project whitepaper.
Do you have any questions for the Betrium team? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Betrium, Shutterstock
