The gambling industry is worth billions of dollars a year and new technology is taking it to all-new heights. Bryce Daifuku is a veteran of the gambling industry thanks to his former career as a professional poker player. He learned a lot about the industry from the inside and rather than retire early, Daifuku decided to pursue a new career working in the online casino realm.
Daifuku was an early adopter of Bitcoin and blockchain, which lead to his interest in combining the two items with gambling. Daifuku created MintDice in 2017 and since its launch, it has been winning over gamblers seeking to use cryptocurrency.
There are a wealth of reasons online gamblers choose to use cryptocurrency rather than traditional fiat money at Internet casinos. The use of cryptocurrency is only going to grow. Daifuku sat down to tell us just why the Bitcoin-casino world is booming and how MintDice fits into it.
Bryce, MintDice is an online casino that specializes in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency play. Can you explain the current explosion of cryptocurrency online casinos and MintDice’s place in the industry?
Absolutely. While Bitcoin and blockchain technology in general has shown lots of promise for the future of FinTech, gambling has been one of the larger use cases with immediate consumer benefits. Due to Bitcoin’s fraud-proof nature, it’s nearly non-existent payment processing costs and easier account management structure, there are extremely large savings on the side of the online Bitcoin casino relative to fiat-based online casinos. A majority of these savings are then passed directly onto the consumer which does not go unnoticed. When consumers are able to play on Bitcoin casinos offering them rates in the realm of 50% to 90% savings over standard carriers, it doesn’t take too much to understand why the present and growing demand for Bitcoin casinos exists.
What led you to focus on launching a cryptocurrency casino rather than a more traditional online casino?
I have been an early adopter in the cryptocurrency space since the year 2013 and understand its benefits in the realm of online gambling. I also view this as an emerging market with a healthy amount of positive risk added to the venture. Additionally, I don’t feel that we could have been competitive simply entering the standard fiat-based online casino market when huge companies have dominated the space for so long with what we are attempting to accomplish. While I don’t view the cryptocurrency casino space as easy, it’s definitely more manageable and scalable than a fiat-based one, especially in the short-term.
What are the benefits to online players and to the casino itself to work in the cryptocurrency realm?
As mentioned earlier, there are large savings for both operators and players with cryptocurrency casinos. Furthermore, deposits and withdrawals can be processed nearly instantly and across borders without FX fees. Blockchain technology also allows companies such as ours to prove solvency so that any perspective user could visibly see that we are not running a Ponzi scheme, something that is virtually impossible to show with casinos holding fiat-based bank accounts.
Finally, because we are operating on lower payment frictions, we are able to innovate with new games and features that would be prohibitively expensive to offer under normal circumstances. This includes (but is not limited to) our up and coming new games which will each be market firsts, our casino bankroll investment feature and profitable skill gaming.
Bryce, what is your background in the world of casinos and what led to the launch of MintDice?
I was a professional poker player for roughly six years and was very in tune with the casino industry as I played. Additionally, I have also been involved in cryptocurrency for around six years at this point as well. So, I can comfortably say that my two areas of professional expertise both revolve around cryptocurrency and gambling. Having knowledge in both sectors has been extremely helpful in making informed business decisions since our idea was first conceived March of 2017.
I always wanted at some point to transition away from poker and cryptocurrency speculation into some line of business. I just needed the right team of people to do such a task. A couple of years later, that team was properly formed, and this casino idea seemed the most feasible one that made sense both practically and economically. And then MintDice was formed.
There are some really interesting games on the MintDice website including Pyramid and Plinko. Are the games in the MintDice casino all specific to it or will players find some of their favorites from top games developers such as NetEnt and Microgaming?
Variants of our current four games can be found online elsewhere, sort of. However, not all games are created equal. Microgaming, for example, will offer a variety of games but they do not use Provably Fair technology to my knowledge. I believe the same applies to NetEnt. Meanwhile, all games on MintDice run on exclusively Provably Fair technology, so one does not even have to trust that our games are fair, we can prove that mathematically to anyone.
Our current game variants as well are attempting to use the world’s best in-house built software to run our games such as Plinko and Bit.Rocket that will be unmatched in quality anywhere else when comparing our games to other casinos that also use Provably Fair technology. I would also argue that they are sufficiently different enough from standard analogues to categorize them somewhat in their own niche categories.
Meanwhile, our future gaming roadmap intends to have market firsts with our new games which include Pyramid, the PowerMint Bitcoin Lottery and Castle Royale. These games will all be constructed in-house, use Provably Fair technology whenever possible and will only be found on MintDice. They will be released over the coming months in succession as development progresses.
Bitcoin and blockchain are disrupting the financial sector. How are they changing the way casinos work and will it continue in the future?
Within cryptocurrency spheres specifically, it has allowed consumers of gambling products to demand more from casinos, which can include Provably Fair technology, Proof-of-Solvency and a low casino house edge among other benefits. The ongoing demand and success of these technologies will invariably be linked to the success of Bitcoin price, Bitcoin adoption and easy consumer access which is a separate domain entirely which is nearly impossible to predict at this point in time, adding to the risk of the venture.
MintDice is “loaded with investment opportunities”. Can you explain these investment opportunities and what can investors expected in return?
MintDice’s revenue model is actually agnostic to the outcome of gamblers. Nearly every casino in the world wins money when players lose and loses money when players win, but not MintDice. MintDice simply makes money from each bet that is placed and transfers a percentage of that bet to its own account. The outcome of each bet is placed onto what is known as the “investment bankroll”. This is a crowdfunded bankroll that any person may invest into.
At this present moment in time, 50% of the expected value of any bet placed (the expected profitability of a gambler’s bet) is taken by MintDice. The risk (outcome of bet) and the extra expected value “reward” is then transferred onto the investors in MintDice. Thus MintDice is immune to any financial shock and investors that are looking to earn interest on Bitcoin may take an opportunity to do just that by investing in the house bankroll.
This opportunity is far from risk-free because casinos can lose money, even over extended periods of time, especially if particularly large gamblers were to get lucky over a short time span. We make no guarantees about annual performance, but we do keep all of our data public. With some simple math knowing the current casino bankroll, the estimated gambling turnover and the casino house edge, one can approximate annual rates of return.
We don’t want to make any claims here just yet, since we are too new of a product on the market. Ultimately, the more gamblers there are and the smaller the bankroll is the higher the annual rate of return and vice versa. This is not a get-rich-quick-scheme type of investment by any means, but rather a specific investment into the belief that MintDice will attract a sufficient number of gamblers.
Can you share some of the details of the innovative “Be the Bank” investment method? The casino recently stated it was a “no risk” investment for users.
This particular product has not yet launched. But it would shield investors from investment bankroll shocks as well using an expected value calculation similar to up above. Thus, similar to how MintDice takes on “no risk”, so would individuals using Be The Bank. The drawback to using this service would be far lower returns. More details will be published later on.
MintDice claims to offer transparency and immutability. Can you tell us how these two elements will be achieved?
Transparency we primarily tend to achieve with math by using Provably Fair technology whenever possible and Proof-Of-Solvency. Additionally, we keep a rather open and active engagement with the cryptocurrency community. As far as immutability goes, in a few contexts we will use blockchain technology or similar technologies for our games to prove various features. We intend most notably for this to apply to Bit.Rocket, Pyramid and the PowerMint Bitcoin Lottery. Using blockchain technologies in these cases make things more tamper-proof to further prove fairness.
Bryce, with more users buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and the gambling industry booming like never before, what do you believe the future holds for MintDice?
It is a very uncertain future for MintDice. We have a lot of development plans that will be rolled out over the next year which will include new games, increased user interactivity features and quality of life features. Additionally, we have a fairly strong marketing strategy to increase consumer awareness as our underlying product builds in strength.
However, MintDice will be beholden to consumer demand, external Bitcoin/blockchain drama, an element of luck and other such factors that we can only control so much. We’ll make the best of the implementations we plan to pursue and hope for the best from there.
What is a day in your life like?
It has changed a lot since the company first formed. My day to day tasks tend to evolve and mutate as the company reaches different stages and needs. Presently, I’m mostly involved in marketing and figuring out long-term growth strategies since we firmly believe in the larger outlook of our product rather than immediate results. Once/if we pass the initial growth stage I’d re-pivot back over to large company strategies and game development.
When I’m not working on helping MintDice succeed (which is most of my free time presently), I like to spend time with friends, eat nice dinners out and engage in various sports including cycling.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
I’m a pretty open book, so I don’t have too many secrets. Something I didn’t really know about myself until a few years ago was that I realized that I really enjoy highly productive work and challenges. I had the opportunity to retire at a very young age a few years ago and yet I had zero desire to do such a thing. I’d prefer to subject myself with ongoing intellectual challenges rather than sitting on a beach paradise any day of the week. I’m fairly convinced that no amount of money would pull me away from simply the pursuit of highly efficient productivity since that’s what I seem to enjoy.
What makes you smile?
My close friends. The country of Switzerland, theoretically. Cycling and it’s proponents. Accomplishments that I deem worthy of smiling for.
What scares you?
A 1984-style government overreach in this data-driven society. Not presently, but what the future will bring relative to this. I feel that individual citizens are getting weaker by the decade and that virtually nothing can be done about this with the overall global care level even lower.
Bryce, do you have any hobbies?
I don’t take many things too seriously at present, but I have done some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, bouldering and parkour over the past few years.
Which historical figure do you most admire?
I don’t have too much to say about this. I do think the founding fathers of the United States were brilliant individuals. Presently, I highly admire three people: Edward Snowden, Elon Musk and Sal Khan.
Can you share two of your favorite quotes with us?
“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
“Living well is the best revenge.”
If you had the power to change just one thing in the world what would it be?
Realistically, I wish people would drive less and use bicycles more. I think this alone could help solve a lot of the world’s problems. Unrealistically, I would like the democratization of virtually everything onto open sourced blockchain technology to eliminate the need for all sorts of bureaucratic inefficiencies and increase power to individuals.
For more information on Bryce Daifuku or to experience MintDice, please visit https://www.mintdice.com
