As a result of the rapid spread of COVID-19 earlier this year, a lot of events and live conferences had to be canceled the world over. The cancellation of the events was done keeping in view restrictions imposed by countries. The crypto world was not immune from such restrictions. Resultantly, many companies in the ever-expanding crypto video game space were forced to alter their plans for showcasing their games and potential.
However, these restrictions led to the creation of another crypto gaming company called MintGox.
Desiree Desiree Dickerson, VP of Business Operations at Lightning Labs says the idea of MintGox came when she was on call with Simon Cowell. Cowell is co-founder and CEO of Bitcoin payment platform ZEBEDEE. This was one of those companies that had planned on showcasing its tech at gaming events earlier in the year. They loved the idea and included Christian Moss and Andre Neves of ZEBEDEE along with Jack Everitt of THNDR.GAMES. She told that she wanted to bring their plans to fruition as soon as possible.
MintGox is a monthly online competition based on Bitcoin-centric games. The concept is simple – players earn Bitcoin by winning competitions. The main event is held monthly and streamed live on the MintGox website. The website includes a dashboard where different e-sports tournaments are listed for various crypto games and other interactive activities.
MintGox has, so far, featured games such as Donnerlab’s first-person shooter Bitcoin Bounty Hunt and ZEBEDEE’s Mario Kart-esqueBitcoin Rally. Also Satoshi’s Games’ battle royale shooter Litenite and THNDR.GAME’s arcade-style Bitcoin Bounce was featured by MintGox as well.
Desiree Dickerson told Decrypt in an interview that MintGox enabled viewers and players to tear down the fourth wall between them. This allowed them for an all-inclusive highly interactable experience that had no example elsewhere. Citing an example, she said that viewers could pay satoshis to drop power-ups within games. In this way, they can help other players whom they were supporting. This concept was unique and hadn’t been seen elsewhere.
Each main event features a prize pool of 5 million satoshis, or 0.05 BTC. MintGox #10, scheduled to be held on December 27, is expected to have a larger prize pool. This is because MintGoxpopularity had been rising as well as the numbers of its players had been growing exponentially. The first-ever event hosted had about 100 players and 1000 lightning transactions. However, at the last event, the number of players was 4,400 players and there were more than 15,000 Lightning transactions.
