Everyone knows that online poker has always had a trust problem owing to multiple cases of misconduct by the operators. Fortunately, thanks to the wonder that is blockchain technology, a solution to this problem may finally be on the horizon.
Virtue Poker, a blockchain-powered poker operator that is currently holding a token sale to fund the development, deployment, and marketing if its platform is at the helm of this advancement. The company utilizes the same principle that cryptocurrency technology applies in keeping financial transactions honest and transparent to its online poker platform. The idea here is to keep digital card sharks at bay and thus restore customer trust in reputable online poker sites.
As Ryan Gittleson, the co-founder and CEO confirms, customers have had no option but to have faith in online poker sites since the first step when playing online poker is usually a transfer of funds not betting. While this kind of engagement requires an immense amount of trust, some online poker sites have betrayed their customers and gone ahead to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from their customers.
How Blockchain Can Help
Unlike many other online poker platforms, Virtue Poker does not have any main account where player’s money is held. Instead, the players’ funds are sent to a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain which in turn autonomously and automatically handles payouts. As such, there is no room for any malicious activity and mismanagement of the platform by selfish individuals.
In addition to this, Virtue Poker offers a decentralized poker environment that makes it virtually impossible for hackers to penetrate the system.
“Since the deck isn’t on a central server, a hacker would have to simultaneously hack all players in the game and break multiple levels of encryption,” Gittleson explained.
The company through its CEO has assured interested poker players that it “will operate wherever we are able to operate legally and get gaming licenses as needed.” This is great news for poker enthusiast but in cases where the company might face legal hurdles the question of whether established platforms such as PokerStars could eventually adopt a similar model arises. According to Gittleson, these companies will have to go through some major overhauls if they hope to compete on the blockchain front.
“To do what we have done, PokerStars would need to create an entirely new platform and implement it in a space where they have no experience and no edge.And for such a move to make sense, PokerStars would have to leave their entire current infrastructure behind—a difficult move for any company and a gut-wrenching move for the market leader,” he says.
