In the 15 months since Bitcoin peaked at over $68,000, the crypto industry has been hit with an ongoing winter due to macroeconomic challenges and catastrophic events, from the collapse of Terra Luna and the FTX fallout, to the recent Silvergate-induced banking crisis.
The crypto market capitalization is now at US$1.06 trillion, down nearly 67% from its highest, according to crypto tracker CoinMarketCap.
Crypto had a bull run in 2020/2021, but the market has not maintained its pace as well as many projects had hoped. A lot of projects that had their own tokens and NFTs launched during the bull market, have been flushed out.
But social gaming and casinos are perhaps sectors most resilient to the effect of the price plunge. That’s more than a little ironic for an industry that is often described as gambling in disguise for its speculative trading culture.
Candy Club has found that, with little regard to what the token price is doing, gamers will keep playing, and high rollers keep rolling.
The global online betting market is expected to reach $93 billion by 2023, even a small share of this niche can be quite promising.
Spotting this relatively bright spot in the crypto economy, Candy Club, a social casino and gaming platform was conceived amidst the market downturn.
Backed by Hong Kong-based Plutus VC, Candy Club embraces the gambling nature of crypto, answering crypto natives what they ask for.
The platform offers a gaming ecosystem that comprises over 650 games, live casinos, slots and sports games to the communities of various token projects built on Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain and Tron blockchain.
“Regardless of the utility and use cases of these projects, the price actions of practically all altcoins are linked to Bitcoin‘s. Needless to say projects built with little intrinsic values and utility would have a particularly challenging time to survive when the bear market unfolds,” said Bhavdeep Dhingra, Business Development Lead at Candy Club.
“By way of partnering up with token projects, our platform keeps their communities active and engaged through gaming. This extra utility eventually drives up the trading volume and transaction of their tokens through the crypto winter,” he added.
Since its launch at Token2049 in November last year, Candy Club has brought in over 80 projects. Instead of providing liquidity or meeting any upfront costs, partners are only required to collaborate on marketing efforts.
During the night of Fifa Finals, the platform reached an all-time high transaction volume, with US$3 million bet on the platform in 24 hours, bringing the total all-time volume to US$36 million in December 2022.
Seeing this rising popularity in crypto casinos as well as sports wagering games, the platform has been receiving overwhelming interest from various token projects.
While the platform still brings in token projects on a case-by-case basis, the team is now directing their efforts to improving end users’ experience through enhancement of the UX/UI, game features and regular challenges.
Currently, players can place a bet using the derivatives of each project’s native token and win their prize in the same tokens. But from 21st of this month [March 2023] onwards, the platform will introduce a new feature: CandyGold. This enables players to enter the platform with over 80 different tokens and claim rewards in five different tokens, directly deposited into their wallet.
