Trifecta Of Disruption

and we talk about disruptive people to learn from them. Now, today we have a guest that I'm super excited to talk about. His name is Roll Whoso. He's with the company called Unicoin, and he has a history of doing big disruptive things going way back working with Hewlett Packard, working with Microsoft, and now with his own company, Unicoin. And they are right in the middle of three massive trends all converging together, something that I've been paying attention

to and watching them. Super excited. I can't wait to get into this, so let's go. All right, Today we are with Rahul sud He is with a company called Unicorn that does e sports gaming and it's a really disruptive area and he has not just been disrupting uh those those industries with what he's doing today, but he has a history of doing this through multiple projects that he's been on the past. It's a really interesting guy. I can't wait to find out more about him. So

welcome Rule. Hey, thanks for having me appreciate it. So you are with a company called Unicorn now, which is like an e sports gaming which I want to dig into a little bit. Um. I know in your past we were just talking about you had launched kind of like the first e sports computer that went to Hewlett Packard. I know you're with Microsoft, like in their venture with their VC kind of firm part as well. Give me a little bit about the background so we kind of

know who we're talking with. Sure. Um. Yeah, So I started a company many years ago called Hoodoo. You see, it was like the world's first high end gaming company. Um. Those systems that you see in the back there are sort of some of the models that we built out and these are like all hand built computer systems, and it sort of became a like a global brand. It created a huge movement and we ended up selling it to HP UM and and UM, you know, I I at the time I was involved in competitive gaming. UM,

but it wasn't anywhere near what it is today. But it was pretty pretty cool. Um. And in any case, after selling to HP, I UM, I was kind of bored working inside the company there. I mean it was pretty boring, to be honest, like after the first year. HP was a tough company to work for, um uh for a lot of reasons. And so um a friend of mine, Daniel Rudolph, and I we we we built this platform for fun on on on evenings and weekends.

UM that allowed us to play, uh, to play Call of Duty and games like that against each other for money. UM and uh we you know, we we were both gamers, you know, we like to bet on games. And basically um uh you know, we built a platform that that allowed people to play you know, games for money, and we built everything from you know, the front end interface, the anti cheat system, the matchmaking system. UM. We even built like a full tournament platform around the end payment system.

I mean it was ridiculous and it was really just for friends and people in the community, but this thing took off. It actually when was when was this just for some about two so so it took out about eight thousand users using it, and then and then we just you know, quickly realized that this is getting out of control. Um. You know, we weren't prepared for two things. Number one, we weren't prepared for the the regulatory side of things. We didn't want to deal with, you know,

the legal side. And the other thing we weren't prepared for is just the the turnover of users. So basically there was a there was something called the poker effect where uh, where users were really good at the games would would win, and then the users who weren't that good would never come back to the platform. And um, and so you know that health Perfect was just like a weird thing, but it it was a good learning anyways at the time. So long story short is I

then joined Microsoft. I started Microsoft Ventures UM and at Microsoft Ventures we used to invest in small companies and help them build and grow. And one of the companies we invested in was a gaming community company and that's where I met my business partner, Carl Um. Carl is a guy from Australia. We got along really well. Like most Australians, they like to bet on everything, or they've been on horse races, they've been on sports they've been

on politics. He also liked to play video games. And I was telling him, you know, well, first of all, we're talking about the sports and the growth of the sports, and how at Microsoft we were you know, a few of us were discovering that there was more people using Xbox and and Windows to watch people play games on

than ever before. And then he was growing at a massive clip, like hundreds of millions of people were doing this, and um, and then I was telling him about this product like I started years ago a playoff with my friend Daniel Rudolph and said, you know, back then, we're probably way ahead of its time, you know. And and he liked to bet on sports, so he said, why don't we why don't we all get together and build, you know, build a company that sort of you know,

we'll start again. You know, maybe this is the right time to do it. And so we did. UM, three of us got together. Uh, my friend Daniel who lives in Germany. UM, Carl who had the time was in Belleview here but he moved back to Australia, and UM we started Unicorn. And Unicorn is a platform that sits at the intersection of regulated gambling. UM. E sports and video games and blockchain technology, and and blockchain didn't come

until like about we'll talk about that as well. Yeah, the the intersection of those three areas is very very interesting and I want to dive into that, but before we do. UM, so you started this, you know, these custom PCs for gaming, which at the time there wasn't really anything going on there. Um, then you kind of had this stint with Microsoft Adventure. UM I wanted just understand a little bit it, Like, UM, it seems like

being an investors is very difficult. It goes against our our psychology, It goes against what we call like a normalcy bias. So we people tend to think whatever is happening today will continue on. But yet here you've been able to go, no, I see this other future that's different,

and I'm gonna build that. So with the with the gaming computers, and then UM, I would imagine in Microsoft looking at venture deals, you're looking at new technologies that when the future is going exactly so you've been able to kind of like have this like future vision where most people have this very difficult even today where bitcoin has really kind of proven its use case and still people can't imagine that, right, So what is it that you think is different with you or how do you

look at things differently to kind of help you view that future that future vision. Um, well, you know, to be honestly, I just watched my kids and what they're into and and um, you know, when I was at Microsoft, my son was about fifteen at the time. He's he's twenty now, but you know, he's about fifteen at the time. And he remembered me growing up. Are remember me as

he was growing up? Uh, you know, being a dad that was an entrepreneur, you know, who loved to play games and was building this gaming company, right, and and he used to say to me, you know, what are you still doing at Microsoft? You know you should? You should you should quit and start another gaming company. And then he said, um, he started to talk to me about the sports and you know how big it was getting, and um, and he was playing a lot of League

of Legends. My daughter, my both my sons were playing the League of Legends. But this guy in particular is a pretty smart kid. And he he basically got me to play with him and uh and get into get involved in the industry. Um. And as I did, I realized how massive the space actually was, and you know, and you just start to think about what does the

future look like in in this space? Um and and typically what you do is is you look at industries that required disruption, like you know, Uber went into the taxi industry. They you know, they wanted to disrupt taxis and you know, and and Tesla is disrupting energy you know, um and they're doing it in the in the guys of a car company. Um. You know. For for me, it's it's really about the future of entertainment and and thinking about what does the future of sports look like?

Right and um and and you know, there's there's no better way to get to get engaged in the support that to place a bet on it. Like if you ever watched a football game or something, he plays a bet you're gonna watch the game from beginning. And so it's sort of like that, you know, uh, starting with watching my kids and I'm going from there. Yeah. So the demographics definitely pay a big play, a big piece

in that. And I think that's one of the big things with like cryptocurrency adoption where you kind of still have this old guard, right the baby boomers, if you will, who maybe still write checks at the grocery store. Um, and they'll probably never get into it. But then you have like the grandkids who will never know anything about that.

So that those demographics and it's sort of it's sort of interesting because when you talk about Peter Schiff and his his position on gold, right, um, you know, like my kids don't care about gold. They just don't, you know, And they don't want to carry around goal. They don't want to wear gold, right. They don't even want to buy a car for for crying out lot because you know,

that's just what it is. And so um, so you know, the market dynamics are changing, like bitcoin is a goal two point oh, like it's it's you know, it's something that you can use to transact with and you can carry it with you. And when you look at the things that young people care about, they care about things like instant gratification. They care about things like uh, you know, bragging rights or you know, or are being you know,

getting getting recognized for for certain things that they do. Um. They also don't like things like um, you know, uh, like obvious ways to lose money, like for example, in this in the casino industry. Um, the slots is a really good example. You know, the slot machine areas in the casino. If you ever walked through, there's more wheelchairs and walkers per square foot in the slot machinery than

anywhere else in the casino. And that's just a you can walk through and see it a lot of old people and and so what what they're trying to do is they trying to make it, you know, more fun for young people. So so the first thing they attempt to do was was redeem these slot machines with Britney spears and pitbull and put big speakers on them. But there's still really only hundred and fifty year olds that

are using these machines. So so then they then they started to realize that young people don't want to play slots because they know they're going to lose their money. They'd rather play skill, they'd rather bet on their own skill. So you've got these companies now that are that are taking uh, you know, games that people don't like or you know, have never heard of, and they're turning it into a skill and you can go and play these skill based slot machines. But they're missing the point. The

point is that you know, if you don't. If you don't do it around something people love, they're not going to play it. So the slot machine area is one of the highest revenue generating areas of the casino and then it's dying and they can't figure out how to fix it, and we believe we know how to fix it. Yeah, that's really interesting, So we'll dig into that. So, um,

just the steps the step off point into that. So you know, as a builder, as a you know, as an entrepreneur, as a builder, as an investor, right, you always want to kind of go with the trend and

hopefully a little bit early. And so we have this really unique intersection like with with gaming switching to like online gaming I'm sorry, gambling, and then and then the gaming the growth of the e sports, and then you have like this cryptocurrency movement, and they're like all three kind of converging and you're kind of right there in the forefront. So whenever you can pick one of these massive trends, I mean, it's a great place to be

where you can get three converging, it's even better. And so you're working with like gaming, which is like, uh, games that people are playing on their home consoles, but now you're even taking it too, like you're trying to disrupt vegas, I guess, or gambling. Right, yeah, we are, because we we think that you know, the future of supports is changing. So you know, if you look at the the median age of a Major League Baseball fan,

it's about fifty nine years old. Now the medium age of a of a PGA tour fan is about eight. It might have come down a little bit with Tiger woods last win, but but the reality is it's still much older. Um. And you know, um, and it's only getting older for traditional supports. Yet every day, you know, four new E sports fans are born, Like kids start out at a very young age playing game games and they and as they get older, they continue to play games. Like I'm I'm in my mid fourties and I still

play a ton of games. Um, I'm an anomaly. But people that are ten years younger than me are not so much an anomaly. They like to play games all the time. So so competitive e sports is getting super interesting. And I can show you the platform and show you

exactly how we think about it. But before I do that, um, I think, uh, you know, I think you have to look at the crypto industry in general, and see what what is like We're in the early stages of crypto right now, right, so what are the most successful companies in crypto at the moment? Yeah, exchanges, right, it's it's basically all exchanges at the moment, exchanges and and and

next thing would be like protocols. But but at the end of the day, exchanges are the most successful, you know, use case at the moment and um, and you know, the reality is that's not sustainable like long term. It just means that you know, right now, people all they care about is the price of a coin and when it's gonna go to the moon, you know, and that sort of thing, and just trading and and and these these people are are used to crypto. They get it.

They understand how it works, they understand how to trade it. They know that you know what bitcoin dominance means, you know, all of that stuff and there, and you know, and they know that if bitcoin goes up, generally speaking, the tide will rise with all ships. Right. But in seventeen, over two thousand coins were created and uh, and and

you know, percent of those coins are gonna fail. They're gonna end up to be nothing and um and right now, exchanges back then we're making money by by charging token teams big amounts to list on their exchanges, and you know, and uh, and they weren't really innovating. In other ways, there are exchanges that are innovating though, like Finances innovating, Bittrix is innovating. There's a couple of really good exchanges out there. They're actually innovating and continue to develop their

platforms and they know that. It's that the next generation of companies of platforms is where where is going to help them be more successful and it's going to help you know, the industry be more successful. So my point is this, right now, uh, crypto is still very nascent. It's it's it's it's only working for those who really understand crypto. But in order from the mainstream to get involved, excuse me, orders, for the mainstream to get involved, it

has to be way easier. It has to be easier for customers to access, has to be easier for customers to discover, and there has to be platforms like our platform, you know, which is sort of the next level of crypto usage and that sort of thing. Right, I definitely agree with that and we can study any technology and look at the natural evolution, and of course it always gets easier. We can talk about how hard it was to use the Internet in early nineties. UM. I have

a question in regards to that. So you talk about the exchanges being important. UM. I've heard you discussing with other people regulations and how regulations were really loose and that obviously leads to lots of problems manipulation. UM. You had also kind of talked about how we need more clear regulations in the US, UM, and a lack of

clarity is causing problems. I'm curious though, because you had also said, you know, the regulations are old, right, I mean they're from the thirties and forties, and how can they really apply to this new technology? And this new

technology doesn't fit into these buckets. So I was thinking specifically about your platform, and um who had mentioned how I think maybe now users outside the US can buy your tokens directly off of Batrix, right, Yeah, So I'm thinking about like a gaming platform, like if I were to go to David Busters, where I go to uh, you know, Chuck E Cheese, I buy the tokens from them, and then I used them there to play their games. I guess the regulations make it so you can't sell

tokens directly, and that seems like a problem. Well, look, there's a lot of problems with the regulations the you know, the the biggest problem that I see, just generally speaking as a theme, it's being in the US and crypto is is it like sucks. It's hard, and it's hard because of the lack of regulatory clarity. Look, I'm in the gambling industry, I mean, one of the most regulated industries on Earth, and I deal with regulators on a

regular basis, and they're awesome. In the gambling industry, there's clarity, there's rules, We follow them. Once we follow them, you you you get access to markets like you wouldn't believe, it's amazing. But in the crypto industry, because of the lack of regulation and because there's people trying to take old laws and then and then adding you know, their their opinions to it underneath those old laws. Um, it's

just like what the heck? You know, how how how on earth are we gonna build the next generation Internet from the US? Like back you know, back in in two thousands, when when you know, Amazon and and you know, and then later on Facebook and Twitter and all these other companies have come up, and Uber and whatever. These companies came up in a market where you know, they were allowed to innovate. But some of these companies dealt

with you know, hell when it came to regulation. Like think about think about what Uber has to go through, you know, dealing with taxi lobbies and and and you know governments, you know trying to take them down and municipalities and corruption. They have to deal with that on

an everyday basis. Lift same thing, Tesla, same thing Tessa, you know, coming in and building the first electric car, having to deal with dealers, auto dealers and the auto dealer lobby, and then energy companies trying to shut them down while they're building up this this huge energy network. I mean, they have to go through hell in order to to build their business. And now in crypto and it's sort of the same thing. But but there's other countries out there that are practically begging us to go

and build there and and we've had to shift. Um, you know, most of our team outside of the US, like of our people is outside the US. Most of my most of my uh my management team, my CFO CEO, head of product, like, they're all in Australia in Sydney. Um, most of our developers, you know under under our ct O Daniel, they're in Croatia, Berlin and uh and polland um.

You know, I've got a I've got a head of marketing in New York with a couple of content people, have a few content people in Lass Day guess, and then there's me in Seattle. But you know, it's just it's hard to be being here. Yeah. Yeah. I've often said that if the right brothers had to go to the city to get a permit to fly the airplane, it probably never would have happened, right, and it and

it just creates this drag. And one thing that I've observed kind of like what you're saying is really, if you look at the last twenty years, you know, in the in the markets, the stock markets, the US is still like the leader in the world. And but if you really look at the stocks, it's really the tech stocks that have carried everything and most of other stocks have stayed flat. And if we had missed out on

that boom, how different today would be. And now what you're saying, and I'm seeing as well, is that we're potentially going to miss out. We could miss out on this next boom. And that's uh, that's a scary thought. Yeah, and I and I and I think there's there's you know, a good chance of that happening. I already see you know, some really innovative platforms like leaving you know, UM, I don't you know, I don't want to call it anyone specifically,

but I think this is important. You know, if you look at um interested as an example, right, this is a company that that is doing everything they can to abide by the laws in the US. Their U S based company. They're proud US based company. They've got they've got licenses in almost every state, money transmission licenses, their money UM, their money uh, you know UM an MSB

SO money services business UM and uh. And they're trying to build like a trading platform and then in the future, very near future, they want to launch an a t S, like an alternative trading system where you can trade you know, token ized securities in the US. So they're proud of

everything they've built. But in the meantime, you've got these regulators like the New York dfs that really came down hard on them, you know, uh and um, and you know kind of like if you if you broadly look at it, I think everyone would agree it was kind of unfair given the fact that you know, they have been you know, Crypto basically came out of nowhere, right and the success of the platforms came out of nowhere. And they've been applying you know, things like k y

C and m L over the last couple of years. Um, and you know, this is like a very new space. And and so the New York THEFENS comes after them, you know, takes away their their bit license in New York. So fine, they pull out in New York. But in the meantime, you've got exchanges that operate outside of the law, outside of the US and do whatever the heck they want, you know, and no one does anything about it, you know.

And and so they're they're going after really get American company, and you know what they're doing, they're just pushing them out, like they're they're basically saying, you know, you're you're out of New York. Like you know, what are these guys gonna do? Are they gonna stay here or do they even care, Like, you know, at the end of the day, why would you write? And so I just think of that as an example, and I think, you know, yes, they should continue to to to fight and you know,

work here and try and make it work. Look, regulators job. I like the idea of a regulators there to protect consumers, but they shouldn't be there to stifle innovation. And I think there's a fine line. Yeah, And it's just trying to figure out how to apply to this new technology, Like you're going to the gaming space. If I buy chips at a casino and I decided to sell them, that doesn't create a taxable event. If I earn points at Target or American Airlines, that doesn't create a taxable event.

And that's essentially what a lot of these utility tokens are. Um. But there's you know, really seems like clamping down and holding back all that innovation, which is a lot of it's applical to the current things that we already have today, which is which is h which is definitely stifling. I can see that. Um. So as far as Unicorn, let's get into that a little bit, because I'm really interested,

Like I said, you're really at this intersection of gaming. Um. Interesting, right, even in the US as as stifling as the regulations maybe, I think they've repealed a lot of that game gambling, right, so they've opened that up a lot for you as well. Um, So you have the gambling that's kind of coming back. Um, you have the e sports which is growing massive, and

then you have this ability to incorporate blockchain. So let's talk about Unicorn a little bit and how you're positioning there and uh, really, what where are you trying to go? Is it the gaming or is it the gambling or is there an intersection there of both? Let me show you so can you see my screen? I do? Yeah? Okay, great,

So the his Unicorn. Um. When when we started unicorneen, we raised ten million dollars with people like Mark Cuban, Ashton Chricher, Sherry Redstone, Liz Murdock, and we set out to build a platform for for betting on the sports similar to betting on sports. And the way we did it was we we said, let's go create the most comprehensive sports book we can on e sports and will connect to to betting operators back ends. In other words, we wanted to create a beautiful interface for betting on

the sports. But we didn't want to deal with the regulatory issues, the legal issues, UH the k y C and m L. We'll let the gambling operators do that and we'll create the front end for them. So TAB for the largest betting operator in Australia. They're like a fifteen billion dollar company. They invested in US and UH and they they they worked with us to develop to to to let us develop our platform and and test

the efficacy of our sports book on their license. The problem was that users would come to the platform, they'd sign in and then the minute they go to place a bet, they'd have to like they have to go through this our kick process of k y C and sometimes they have to mail in passport. Sometimes they have the facts information like what the heck the facts like.

It was horrible and it was a totally broken experience and so um so so what we did was we I'll go over the sports book in the product in a minute, but what we did was we created something called the Unicorn, and the unicorin was our way of of of creating a product that allowed customers to come to the platform and earn a token that they could use on the platform anywhere in the world. Um and it allowed us to develop our you know, um uh, test the efficacy of our sports book, and develop a

platform that had a token economy in it. And this was in two thousand and fifty. So what happens is customers can connect their League of Legends account ce us go, they can We just low key launch Halo. By the way, no one knew this, but we launched on Monday, so you're the first seeing it. Fortnite, whatever. You can connect these game accounts to the platform, and then you earn

tokens that you play and win games. And in the meantime, Unicorn was collecting data and handing and putting handicaps on users and we've been doing this for for years. So so we did that, and and then we allow so I can connect my Fortnite or Halo game to the console, and then I can bet on events that are happening inside the game right exactly, And I'll tell you about that in a second. So, so the bottom line is

we wanted to create a token economy. We wanted to do it with a token that couldn't be transferred or sold, so that we could operate in markets all around the world, right and and and what that led to was us going back to our our partner, Tap Corps and saying, look, you know, we've got we've got problems. You know this, this is not a sustainable business for us to have to go through five different lawyers every time we want to add a new game or a new title. We

should you know, we need to separate. And they agree. They said, we're slowing you down. Uh, go and get your own license and uh and you'll have to get a new back end that will support your platform. So I'm trying to make this as easy to understand as possible. There are three different types of betting. There's there's sports betting, which is where you, um, you bet on your you bet on watching other people play so um uh so. So basically, if I'll just show you what sports betting

looks like, so E sports betting is. This is an E sports event. It's happening somewhere in the world. It's E E S E A UM and this event is a is a professional event. These two teams x X comment Pro one are playing against each other right now. And here's the odds. You can bet live you know, you can bet on on exotic bets, so you can bet on things like special markets over under his handicap

markets while watching the match. Okay, this is your typical, uh, you know, sports betting type system where you would be no different than really betting on a football game. But it's just it's more kind of virtual. It's e sports instead of actual sports. Right, and what's cool is that you know you can bet on this. We're using coins, so you can bet on this with different currencies, but you can also bet on it you in your UKG and and and U KG is something that we give

bonus bets for. We've built an ecosystem where people can earn tokens on the platform, they can participate in jack potts and they can bet with it. Now, this is just one type of betting, and I just want to show you how how expansive this really is. So not only can you bet on live games, but as of Monday, you can now bet on streamers. So on Unicorn, we have this thing where okay, Dr Lupo's offline right now, so let me go to this. So here's this. This

guy is streaming right now. Um, he's a you know, professional player, um and uh, and he's streaming at the moment and we're picking up his stream and then we're putting odds on him. Lawya is a streamer from Germany, so she's pretty popular. She's playing Fortnite and these odds are being created live as she streams. So, um, so are you creating those odds? I mean you're your platforms. Yeah.

So what's cool is normally you'd have a person watching Lawya play and creating the odds manually, but that's completely not scalable. So what we've done is we've we've created these AI trading bots. Over the last year, we created AI trading bots that uses computer vision technology and predictive analytics to come up with these odds live and so as as this game progresses, these odds will refresh themselves

based on what's happening in the game. So you can watch your favorite streamer when they come on live and you can bet on them. So right now, we have about ten streamers on the platform. You know, we put Ninja on. We put basically the top streamers that we like and um, and we're you know, as they come on live, it'll pick it up and it'll automatically bring them up. So right now you see LAYA one that one, So the next odds just refreshed for the next round, and now you can place the bet on her next

round if you want for her to lose or to win. Okay, yeah now, um, now this is all e sports betting. So this is basically you know, you watching a match and placing a bet, which is highly regulated and requires a license. By the way, we also created a betting game called virtual Betting. This is a game where we've taken historical match data and we've given people the opportunity to bet every minute, almost every minute or every two

minutes of every day on a historical round. So in other words, what you see is you're presented with a historical match that happened where this team Whoredell and Friends lost fourteen to sixteen to Russia and um. And what it does is it's going to bring up a random round within that match. So you get to bet on that random round, and you get to choose if it's gonna be an odd or even around, you get to bet on the correct kills, whether the bomb will be

exploded or diffused and um. And then once the match starts, it tells you which round it was, and you just kind of watch it. It's like seven betting game, and there's gonna be a bunch of different titles that we add to this, and then all of you's done in the unicoin. This is all done in unicoins and and

and so un coins or or or dollars. But you know, people like to bet with both um, but they typically like to bet with unicorns because we you know, there's so many ways to earn the coins and use the coins on the platform that they like bet with it. But right now you see that the betting stopped. It tells you round twelve was selected. So even if you're an E sports historian, you wouldn't have known that round

twelve would be selected until the bets have stopped. And now you watch it and you can place your bets or you can sorry, you can watch the match and see if you want to or not. So so hold on, let me just explain that. So so basically that's the sports betting. So that's one type of betting. The second type of betting in E sports that makes it super interesting is skill betting. So remember when I said people

can connect their favorite game to the platform. The reason we did that was because we wanted people to be able to bet on their own skill. So if you play Fortnite, for example, you can come to the Unicorn platform and you can connect your PC, your PS four, your Xbox account to the platform. You can lock it in and then when you do that, it actually produces

odds on certain outcomes. So in a typical um, in a typical betting environment on video games, you would bet against me and you'd have to wait for me to get online. You know, we'd have to plan a time and bet against each other. It's just on a good business model because you get that poker effect that I talked about earlier where people disappear and they don't want to come back. So what we did was we created odds on users where you can bet any time of

the day, anytime you want, instantly. So I play League of Legends and if I want to bet on myself where I think I can win my next rank game under one one point five deaths and and a win, I get five point nine my odds. So if i'd max bet here at seventy uk G, I can win twelve thousand UKG and I just had to place my bet and then go and play the game. This is skill betting, and this is legal in forty one states in the US, and it's all do you how do

you prevent people like sandbagging? And uh, it's it's really simple. So we've got really sophisticated uh K y C systems in place and um and we do a lot of tracking on the blockchain to see how coins are moved. Like, there's things that we do to basically know who a user is and where they're playing from. If they try to open up another account or they try and have like you know, Ninja sit in their seats, will know right away and we can to lock down their odds

or just ban the account completely. So people don't want it to do that. People have certainly tried. I mean, we only launched this thing at the end of December and we haven't done a dime of advertising. People are using it and we're finding ways to plug holes. But now that we're ready, uh, now that we just added Halo five for the platform, we're ready to start putting some money into advertising and getting people to play this

on a on a daily basis. So this is skill betting and then the last type of betting is casino betting. You can't see casino here because I'm in the US, but there's other markets where you can see it on the platform, other markets outside the US. Correct, correct, and that would be more traditional casino gambling, whether they be

card games or things like that. Correct. And I know, I know one of the big things that's plagged online gaming in the past is not uh knowing if the if the online casino has been truthful, right, so like basically the games or poker games could be stacked against you or whatever. So are you guys doing something to

address that? Yeah? Well, well number one is there's just two places in the world, or that's actually three places in the world that have like really good gambling licenses Gibraltar, Malta, and Island Man. Those are the three most respected jurisdictions in the world. Um uh Unicorn has a license in Maltown. We have a license in the Island Man. The thing is um when we got our license, we when in

the Island Man. We're very specific that you know in In two thousand and sixteen, we started to uh explore and build on blockchain. We started to test on blockchain and the reason we did that was because we already had the unicoroin economy going UM and and we wanted to expand across Europe and we had to deal with traditional banks. The problem with traditional banks is in this business, it's really expensive and it's really hard to deal with

multiple currencies. Uh. You know, it's a very old, stodgy kind of business. It's slow. Um, it's just hard. So so we asked our investors to UH to make recommendations to banks that they could connect us to. And Mark Cuban emailed instantly and said, you guys should start building on blockchain because you know, the future, you may not even need banks, right and and uh and so we

did that. We basically studied why blockchain would make sense being in a highly regulated basis like ours with m L and k y C. There really is no better way to do wallet tracking than through the blockchain and UH and so we started to build on blockchain at that time. And when we did that, um In came along.

We already had enough usage on the unit cooin platform that you know, we decided to create unicoin Bowl, the crypto version of our of our token, and UM we approached the Alaman and said, look, you know, we want to get a license, but but we need a license for crypto, not just be it like we're we're you know, we're a crypto company. We want a license for crypto.

And so it took a year. We're now the only company on Earth with a license from the Island Man for online casino, live sports betting, live e sports betting, and our skill betting platform, you Mode. They even gave us a license for streamer betting and virtual betting that we created it and we launched this week. So we have the most comprehensive license on Earth for for crypto betting. And is that record? Is that? I mean, they gave that to you, but is that recognized by most of

the other countries. Yeah, it is, it's recognized. I mean the element is a is a pretty generic license in the sense that you know, it shows that you're regulated and then you know, each country that you go to, um, you know, you just have to deal with the local laws. So so we're we're rolling out at about thirty five or thirty six countries over you know, the past few

months and then the following months. Um, we're we're doing sort of a slow rollout because you know, there's complexities like in the US, for example, we can only launch you Mode in forty one states, but we can't launch sports book yet because in the U S it's regulated state by state. You have to have a local casino partner.

Blah blah blah. But but I'll tell you this, every you know, every major casino operator, especially after our launch of streamer betting and and virtual betting, they all want to partner with us. The largest casinos in the world are calling us now and saying, how do we get you in the US. What do we need to do? So, so we'll launch in the US this year. Um, it's just but the US isn't even the biggest markets. The

biggest markets are across Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia. Like, there's tons of places that we can go to that we're rolling out in and um, and we just have a lot of work to do to get there. I mean the work we have to do is things like localization. You know, first of all, making it easier to bet on the platform, uh, you know, localization in terms of languages. And then and then the most important thing is making crypto easier and and that's sort of where I went

to before. Where crypto right now is easy for traders like you to get on finance or patricks and trade coins, but it's really hard for users who don't understand crypto how to you know, how to move it around. So yeah, exactly back to the Dave and Busters analogy. If I can just go there and buy the tokens, I can start playing. But if I have to go somewhere else and exchange it before I can even show up, it makes it very difficult. I'm curious at what about prediction markets?

Do you think there's some intersection between like the prediction markets and then the game, the gaming or gambling on that. So, you know, prediction of markets just another fancy word for gambling. Uh. You know when I think of you know, like augur is basically as a decentralized gambling platform, but it's like more based on like events as opposed to kind of your stuck with like E sports or something. Sure, it's it's it's based on events that you create and uh,

you know you can take bets on. Uh. You know that brings up an interesting point. Um. You know, I was talking to uh coin based recently, you know about you know, how do we how do we we want we want Unicorn to be able to have access to your customers. We want your customers to be able to discover the platform. The whole reason we want to listen on exchanges has nothing to do with the price of

our token. It actually has to do with the accessibility and the discover ability of our platform, because we know over time those two thousand coins is gonna whittle down to like a hundred, right, and and of those hundred coins, you know, we people are going to start to say, what is this coin used for? How does this platform work? Oh, I'm gonna go use it? Right? So we want to you know, we we'd love to be listening on on

coin based for example. And you know, we were told that they don't they don't work with gambling companies even though where license were regulated. And I'm thinking, that's weird. You just launched ougur like today, you know, but it's but it's a prediction market, So I don't know, I mean, the space is just brought with weirdness, you know, from that that point. But yeah, so where do you see

the space going? I mean, I think E sports on its own is probably projected to grow pretty rapidly online gambling. I would imagine it is projected to gamble or grow quite significantly. Like do you have any numbers on like where I guess E sports gambling is today and like where it's headed in the near future. Yeah, so E sports gambling is a probably around like a five million dollar business today turnover globally, it's gonna be well over a billion next year, and then it's gonna grow at

an exponential rate the year after. Um um. In terms of brands, I think if you ask anybody in the gambling industry you know who the best brand is for the sports gambling, they're gonna say Unicorn. Like I think

our brand is the strongest in the space. Um, I think it's it's you know, it's pretty amazing that, you know, we've built out all the tech that we built, we have spent a single time on marketing yet because we just wanted to tech right um And now we're we're actually gonna start putting some some significant amount of money into paid acquisition and bringing customers on the platform. So

it'll be interesting to see where it goes. But beyond that, you know, you're gonna see a lot more product coming out of Unicorn this year that we're going to launch that's just gonna change everything. So yeah, yeah, all right, great, and now what are what are like some of the big challenges that you have Just uh, I guess maybe regulations you think is probably the biggest piece. Yeah, lack of regulatory clarity in the US is the biggest piece.

You know. Um, like the the the amount of money that we spent on legal and stuff is just uh, it's a horrent you know, and it's uh and it's it's it's really not fair. Like we we're we're we're as legit as it gets. We've really built an amazing platform. We started our token economy in two thousand and fifteen. Um, you know, we we need regulators to work with us and uh and not against us. You know, we we we want them to help us, uh you know, innovate

at protection ss um, not stifle innovation. Um, you know, while while a larding consumers. So yeah, one other question, Um, you're you're more in the gaming area, said kind of gambling, betting, betting space, not so much. There's other people that are doing more of the games where like their skins and more like n F t tradeables and whatnot. Are you guys aren't in that space? Actually we we kind of

are so in the in the tradeables area. Um, you know, Unicorn is really the only place that you can go and convert your skins directly into uk G and then and then those skins get actually put into our jackpots, so you know, we recycle those skins into jackpots and people can participate in jackpots for skins. So we do that. But but in terms of like the tradeable stuff, no,

we don't do that. And the reason we don't is, um, there's no game company or publisher that really lets you trade skins from their games via crypto, no good game like you know, the only ones that do are like blockchain based games like the Crypto Kiddies and stuff like that.

When you look back and look at the different technologies and how they progressed, we always kind of see that where the companies try to kind of really protect and and silo off everything, and then eventually they realized, well, it's my I P and I can let it kind of flow. And I think we're in that inflection point with video games right now. Hopefully eventually they'll say okay, great, yell, let's open that up and let you trade. Um, do you think that's a reality, and if so, how far

out do you think that is? Um? I don't know if that particular vision is a reality for some time to come yet. I think that Valve is the closest to actually doing something like that, where they created an open marketplace for skins, but it kind of bit them in the butt because you know, once people realize that skins had a real world value, there was these gambling sites coming up that we're all built around skin bedding and um and and skin betting became the largest, uh

underage gambling ring in the history of gambling. I mean, it was like a two billion dollar industry before it was shut down a couple years ago. Yeah, it was. It was projected to be a seven billion dollar industry, so you know, they have to be careful about that. The other thing is, you know, the idea that I can take a weapon from League of Legends and bring it into Dota just doesn't really make sense, you know,

from a game developer standpoint. Um Um, I think there's other ways that you can you can use blockchain for gaming, like what we're doing, you know, with with using it in certain areas that makes sense, like a m L you know, doing it for customer betting history, doing it so that you know, we can we can uh, we can do forensic wallet tracking, you know, regulators can look openly at our ledgers things like that. That makes sense. Um. And then also you know, we we created a betting

platform that allows nine thousand bests per second. You know, stuff like that, It makes sense. I think, I think. Um, when you have a hot industry, like you can always tell, you know, if you go to LinkedIn and you see things like you know, like the next big buzzwords AI and then you've got blockchain and you've got cryptocurrency and I c O S and whatever, you can always tell you know, business is kind of weird when they start

to shoehorn two things together. And so you know, when when you've got like these game developers who are who are specifically building blockchain s based games. That's different than a game developer who's trying to create a like um, you know, uh, like an MMO type game or a or a Battle Royal type game on blockchain, Like why why are you doing that? Why don't you just create a fun game? Right? Like there's no reason for you to create a Battle Royal on blockchain because the gamer

doesn't give a ship what is on. They just want to play a fun game. So you really got to understand your audience and what you're building. Yeah, and I think it's just gonna take a total disruption where you have new games, new new developers, and new games come up that allow you to do that. Probably the incumbents there won't won't ever allow that, And eventually there's a blockchain publisher that does that, you know, that lets you

trade things around like that. I'm telling you there's there's stuff that's coming in our in our industry in particular where U where tradeables makes a ton of sense and it and it's gonna be fun. Uh, there's gonna be sort of betting around it. We're gonna be very much involved in it, um and and it makes sense. Um. So you'll see yeah, great, that's uh, that's good and we'll we'll wrap it up with that. So where can people go to find out more about, you know, what

unicorn is doing and maybe to follow you? Yeah, so on Twitter you can follow me at rehole suite are a h U L S O O D um, and you know Iowa's tweet about what Unicorn is doing. You can also follow a Unicorn at unicorn you and I care and CEO on Twitter. Um. And then of course you can just check out our website www dot unicorn dot com. Uh, you and I k r N dot com. Great, and we'll link link to all that in the show notes as well. All right, well, it's been great, very interesting.

I'm excited about the intersection of these spaces and and we'll wrap it up. All right. Appre Hey, if you like this episode of The Market Disruptors Podcast, please help us take this to the top of the podcast charts. Just please do me a favor and rate, review and subscribe. Taking fifteen seconds to just leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us reach more people and disrupt more markets. I really appreciate you listening, and I'll see you next time on The Market Disruptors Podcast.