Quote:
Unnecessary is the perfect adjective because decentralized poker is not needed in a regulated environment whereas a cheap/fast method of payment is the holy grail of every industry. ...
I get that you've been around online poker racking up the billable hours since the beginning. But neither you nor any other poker site can claim they created the demand for NLH and poker tourneys. NLH and the idea of tournaments were popularized by the media in movies and on TV. There was an evolution to the product offerings early on, but the site operators were not thought leaders by any stretch. When site operators innovate, they come up with spin an go's.
What catalysts are there for decentralized poker to evolve and takeoff now or ever if regulation happens everywhere? Can you direct towards where the demand for it is coming from? Can you explain how it will improve upon the business of online poker in a regulated environment now or ever versus a black box operator?
I think you have your innovative chickens and eggs mixed up. The WSOP was a NLHE event for 25+ years before there was online poker.
What innovative online operators, like PStars and Party and others did was recognize and provide services to new demands from the market, demands which were either new, unmet or impossible to meet through the live gaming providers. An undeniable contribution that online poker operators made to poker early on was the idea of online satellites to the WSOP Main Event. Another innovation was micro-limits play. Multi-tabling became key to site liquidity and appeal.
FWIW, I was not racking up billable hours "since the beginning", in my early life I actually helped launch and ran a site/network and development company. Since 2012, I've been meeting with regulators across the world to promote adoption of crypto for games. I would posit that conflicting regulation is a drag on innovation, especially in the payment processing area; the major gaming regulators have been receptive to crypto-payments for years, it is their financial regulation counterparts that have resisted its adoption.
As for gaming-specific innovation under regulation, you would be hard pressed to cite a poker industry innovation of real merit arising since say 2006, aside from marginal improvements to the UX.
Do I see a current demand for decentralized poker specifically at the margins of player liquidity sufficient to challenge the business of traditional game engine providers who adapt to crypto payments ? Not presently, but folks smarter than me see an operating advantage to layering gambling, including poker as an element, onto a blockchain environment. There is an some irony that you try to contrast "decentralized" gaming and "regulated" gaming; in reality a transparent blockchain based gaming environment is the antithesis of the "black box" you decry.
I've never claimed to be an innovator, I did not see a demand for online poker during RGP days, not until I later saw Paradise operating ....There were, for sure online gaming innovators, some of whom may now see a customer demand for less traditional gaming that the 2001version of poker or its current progeny online.
What is the future ? I'll wait and see, invest time and effort into some specific assets or projects and take my chances on catching lightning in a a specific bottle. There are interesting cross-overs between poker playing and crypto-seeking behaviors and not just among the name players jumping into crypto trading.
But you go right ahead and pronounce your judgment.