It’s not easy to understand blockchain. A recent panel at the Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow & Convention decided it was best left unexplained.
According to Samir Patel, an associate attorney with Holland & Knight, the code for blockchain is different than the code for Ethereum, while the code for HyperLiquid varies from the code for Cardano.
“To get yourself into the game, you need education, and it starts with the future generations,” said Patel during the session “Blockchain in Tribal Gaming: Opportunity or Distraction?”
“When I go to the NCLGS (National Conference for Legislators from Gaming States) and I talk about blockchain technology to regulators, they look at me like I’m a heretic. But when I talk to the younger generations about blockchain technology, they get it and embrace it. So education starts from the ground up and it starts with the future generations.”
Blockchain is becoming an increasingly important concern in tribal gaming. Michael Running Wolf, the cofounder and lead architect for First Languages AI Reality, said he is skeptical about blockchain technology, but isn’t totally against it.
“There is a conventional way to accomplish the same things,” Running Wolf said. “Those technologies are cheaper, easier to implement, and well regulated. … [Blockchain] introduces entirely new risks, entirely new technical challenges. It’s a really frontier thing right now.
“There are interests in there who see the wealth of the tribes and say, we can get that money through a novel thing with a bubble and that they don’t necessarily need. So if you want to build crypto for yourself, understand that vendors have an agenda. The technology is introducing quite a bit of risk to your systems, including policy risks. Remember, you have compacts with your state government. What are they going to think about this?”
Moderator Earle Hall, CEO of Axes.ai, said that years ago there was talk about using blockchain exchanges for rewards points.
“Are we ever going to see tokenization?” Hall asked. “Are we ever going to see token exchanges? Are we ever going to see the ability to move rewards points, loyalty points, promotions, between different organizations, verticals, and industries?”
“Rewards points are best suited for not being on blockchains,” Patel said.” It is overly complex for rewards points. The whole notion of decentralization and blockchain technology is to disintermediate demand, to disintermediate regulators, to own your own assets. I think rewards points are an added value to using a product, but having rewards points in your own pocket under your own control, nobody, nobody cares about the self-sovereignty of the rewards points.”
But Running Wolf said there’s a good use case for blockchain and using rewards points in gaming.
“Suppose multiple tribes and the casinos want to share points,” Running Wolf said. “This would be a really good way to experiment with blockchain technology that doesn’t require a whole lot of investment.”
But Patel noted that the return on investment for using blockchain technology with rewards points isn’t worth the costs.
“Who’s on a blockchain scanner and looking at wallets and how many rewards points people have?” Patel said. “Who’s going to put in the economic cost to reverse engineer blocks in a blockchain so that they can give themselves a bigger allocation of rewards points?”
Hall said there are four words to remember in any discussion of what blockchain actually is: Blockchain, crypto, tokenization, and stablecoin.
“Technology always takes 10 years to stabilize and 10 years to monetize,” Hall said. “We’re heading into the second 10 years. Right now, monetizing is starting, and you have to remember that four use cases are emerging. I really hope you do dig into the most important word that Samir said, you have to be educated. If you take charge of your education, you’ll be able to educate others.”
