In the online gaming world, there is an entire community of designers and developers that have devoted massive amounts of time to developing what has become known as “skins”. These are files that simply change the visual appearance of particular objects and characters in games. These skins can be developed and implemented to improve the graphic performance or visual aesthetic to the individual preferences of the gamer. With such a massive community of online gamers trading skins, an online cryptocurrency platform has been created to buy and sell these skins in addition to various other uses.
“Skincoin” will be used to buy and sell skins of popular games like, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and among many others. The new cryptocurrency begun an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) campaign that was launched in June of 2017. They are using the Ethereum platform to make the jump into the cryptocurrency industry by backing their ICO in Ether. Ethereum has had a growing presence in the online gaming community because of its close ties to the world of software developers. The ICO was set with a minimum funding goal of 5000 ETH which was met in less than 24 hours and has already sold over 60 million SKIN tokens since June. The ICO campaign will run for only 1 month until July 21 and has set a maximum funding goal of 100,000 ETH. During the campaign, Skincoin will offer 600 million SKIN tokens with a set value of 6000 SKIN per 1 ETH.
As the team behind Skincoin focuses their investments in the form of Ether, they have had to face some value losses in recent market fluctuations. Shortly after the ICO campaign kicked off ETH experienced a massive congestion of its network that produced a hefty backlog of transactions to the blockchain. It has been reported that ether’s recent surge in popularity coupled with several ICO’s launched on Ethereum have produced a negative effect on the value of the currency. After breaking a record, reaching $400 per coin, Ether fell around 10% after the bottleneck of the Ethereum network occurred. Despite the looming volatility, the cryptocurrency has consistently recovered from the temporary losses and is still favored in the eye of cryptocurrency investors around the world.
Alexey Zakharov and Igor Solomatin are the lead developers behind Skincoin and have spent years working in the eSports industry where they realized the potential for a new cryptocurrency. They intend to connect gaming platforms, marketplaces, stores, and betting services by building an ecosystem that relies on the trading of their cryptocurrency for skins, services, while also making it available to place eSports bets with. The virtual skin market in online gaming was estimated to be worth upwards of $5 billion dollars, accommodating over 3 million consumers according to estimates based on last year’s activity. eSports already enjoy a strong presence at reputable sportsbooks that accept crytopcurrencies such as Bitcoin and Litecoin. It is highly anticipated that Ethereum and Skincoin are next on the agenda for offshore sports betting markets.