With the World Cup just around the corner everyone’s thoughts are turning to football. For many, those thoughts are also turning to gambling. Something to make the less exciting games just a little more interesting.

Online gambling is a huge global industry. The market was already worth $30 billion by 2013, and this figure looks set to double by 2020. By being able to use computers, and particularly phones, the idea of placing a bet has become normalised for many people who may not feel comfortable going to a casino or bookkeeper.

The big trends in the industry are an increasing popularity among younger players, the use of cryptocurrency and ever easier internet access. According to sports network ESPN, “The typical sports bettor is a 30-year-old married guy living in the suburbs, with a household income of $74,000 a year.”

Online gambling in need of disruption

However, there are also serious problems in the industry. First of these is centralization. Online gambling firms are vast depositories of customer data, including financial data, making them hugely attractive targets for hackers. The centralized nature of the industry also makes it vulnerable to sudden changes in regulation, or pressure from government. Accounts may be closed, or funds frozen, without notice or explanation.

Then there are the costs. Gambling firms must acquire expensive licences for all of their markets. They must also keep large reserves of capital to cover their users’ bets. In addition, they will have to use third parties for payment processing, which will have fees and waiting times of their own. These overheads are passed on to the customer in fees, which are usually as high as 10-15%.

The industry is ripe for disruption, and Canadian startup meVu think they have the answer.

Enter meVu

meVu offers a decentralized version of the online gambling model. Users will make bets directly with each other, rather than with a centralized bookie. For meVu this allows, “betting based competition without reliance on payment processors, reduces operational regulatory burdens, and protects against organizational corruption such as fraud and embezzlement.”

Running on the Ethereum blockchain meVu will hold the stakes from both sides of a bet on a publicly viewable escrow, with winnings immediately paid out on the result of the bet. Funds are kept on the blockchain with no individual, company or institution able to interfere with those funds.

Keeping all bets in ETH, rather than converting to fiat, means that fees can be reduced to as low as 2%, while transaction times are considerably increased throughout the system.

At launch two types of bets will be available. The first is the kind of sports betting familiar to most people: football, baseball, boxing etc. The second type is custom or social bets. meVu allows its users to bet on anything which has two outcomes.

Friends could decide to make a bet on who will win a game of table tennis, or who can lose weight the fastest. Making these bets through meVu is cost-effective and prevents players from welching. Any dispute will be settled by an “Oracle”, someone who has acquired meVu tokens in the ITO, who will receive ether for their trouble.

MeVu is currently conducting its private pre sale, and recently announced a major investment from Blockstake, a “next generation utility company” which provides the infrastructure services, such as masternode operations and proof of stake mining, needed by blockchain networks and ICOs.

The public sale will start September 10th 2018.

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