Not so long ago the idea of a casino that only trades in a crypto-currency would have seemed like something George Lucas had dreamed up on a particularly good day. After all, the concept of gambling with money that never actually exists in a material form is pretty out there. When you stop to think about it, it’s just a short step away from that sort of idea to things like hyper-drive, battle stars and Jedi mind tricks.
But as we gear up for The Force Awakens, out there in what they used to call the real world, one aspect of science fiction is becoming increasingly familiar as a fully substantiated fact. There is already an online casino that only takes bitcoins. It is branded as caino.io and it is entirely committed to the future of bitcoin technologies. You can do everything that you would expect to be able to do at any regular casino site. The only difference is that everything that happens – every bet, every win – is transacted in a currency that only exists as a matter of bits and bytes of digital code.
Bitcoin is merely the most well-known crypto currency, and it is steadily gaining a place alongside regular material currencies as a way of exchanging value. For all the hype about its price in recent weeks, bitcoin’s practical utility is likely to see it continue to force its way into the mainstream.
There are, of course, advantages to playing with a currency that has equal value all around the world, doesn’t need to be converted into or out of a local currency and always remembers where it has been. It makes for a truly global meeting place for gamers no matter where they hail from or where they are actually playing.
The idea that those players might soon be represented by 3D holograms that appear in each other’s living room is maybe a step further than the site’s developers have so far managed to achieve, but that does not mean it is not something they are already looking into.
After all, the whole Oculus Rift thing is already happening. Not so long ago that sort of 3D virtual reality experience would have seemed like something that could only exist as a matter of science fiction. George Lucas’ galaxy brimming with unimaginable technology is maybe not as far away or as fanciful as you might imagine.