Why Mark Cuban Has Chosen to Participate In Our UnikoinGold Token Sale (AKA) ICO

In recent times, online betting has gained legitimacy in countries such as Australia, the UK, Europe and more. Esports, the next step in online gaming has also found its own space in the sun. In this post, I’d like to talk about how we leveraged the trust and value we provided the users on our platform into creating a cryptocurrency and selling it in a token sale, or what many refer to as an ICO. Unikrn is my company, we are an esports company and we are about to create UnikoinGold, a cryptocurrency based on Ethereum.

Unikrn is a venture-backed esports bookmaker (established in 2014). A little over two years ago we raised $10 Mn from investors like Ashton Kutcher, Guy O’Seary, Mark Cuban, Elisabeth Murdoch, Shari Redstone, Tabcorp, 500 Startups, Binary, and others.

To put it in simple terms, Unikrn essentially sits at the intersection of betting and video games. We have built a betting experience for fans of video game tournaments (or esports). Our team operates regulated betting in Australia and the UK currently, and Unikrn’s own book is profitable. For the uninitiated, esports book betting is the traditional sports betting model applied to esports.

The Unikrn Token Sale: UnikoinGold

About a year and a half ago, our investor Mark Cuban emailed and suggested that Unikrn should start looking at Blockchain for the business. For those of you who don’t know, Blockchain is to banking and commerce what TCP/IP was to telephone companies. He suggested, blockchain and cryptocurrencies will help us define the future of fintech and will definitely play a pivotal role in the future of Unikrn.

Back in 2015, Unikrn had already created a token for our users called “Unikoin.” The Unikoin is a free token that allows users from around the world to play on the Unikrn platform legally. It was created to allow people to engage on the platform from more places around the world.

The Unikoin allows for testing the efficacy of the company’s esportsbook and also test new betting products. The Unikoin also helps determine the hottest places for esports betting and helps shape the company’s future road map.

It has been super popular: with a turnover of 250 Mn tokens. The biggest demand from users is, “How can we get more value for the Unikoin?”

So a decision was made to convert the Unikoin into a cryptocurrency – UnikoinGold – with a website and a white paper. Moving on with his support, Mark Cuban recently came out publicly in favour of it saying that he would be participating in the UnikoinGold token sale.

Let’s Talk About “ICOs”

We are now on the journey to a token sale (otherwise known as an ICO). A token sale is when a company produces a cryptocurrency that can be used on their platform (and possibly others). That cryptocurrency can also be traded on any major crypto exchange for Bitcoin, Ethereum and pretty much any other cryptocurrency.

For example – a company can produce a finite number of tokens, the maximum number is 1 Bn. They can then sell parts of those tokens to the public in order to raise funds for the building of a new Blockchain platform.

This is happening every day. However, the good deals are becoming hard to find. There will be hundreds (if not thousands) of scam ICOs because of the sheer size and scale of the opportunity. Anyone, anywhere, can buy tokens using any cryptocurrency. It’s pretty amazing.

What Makes For A Good ICO

You have to do your homework, research the team, the backers/investors, the technology, the brand, the community, their PR and news, etc. This is because many of these deals are unknown – being created by unknown people – and most of them haven’t written a single line of code short of the website collecting for their ICO.

When getting involved in a token sale these are the most important things to consider:

• Learn about Blockchain and cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum. There are plenty of places to go online and find information. Learning about decentralised applications over Ethereum is a good place to start.
• Remember that coins are NOT equity in the company: People often refer to an ICO as an investment. It’s NOT an investment. It is not investing for equity, it is a token that one hopes will generate enough usage to increase demand.
• Research the company to develop confidence that they will drive value into their tokens: Look at their backers, their team, their technology, their brand, community, etc.
• Read every single line of a prospective company’s whitepaper!

Think of buying into a coin like accepting buying the first US dollars ever minted. It’s not like owning a whole country, but part of something that other people will want if the country does well. Cryptocurrencies get value by demand like anything else, so you want to be sure the team offering a token is capable enough to drive usage and demand.

Look at their use case, their technology, their team, their backers, their community and brand, and everything else. You want to walk away with the gold standard of cryptocurrencies.

Unikrn is working very hard to do this right for our users with UnikoinGold, with a focus on building an amazing platform for the users and community and create engaging betting experiences for esports, while ensuring wide distribution of the token.

I’ll say it again – a key to a successful token sale is that the company creating it will drive value with the token. If there is usage, there is demand, and the token value, therefore, will remain strong.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.