Is there room for cryptocurrency in video games?

bitcoin crytocurrency in games

The world keeps turning and the internet is still in its infancy. Cryptocurrency is certainly a newcomer and if you think about it, bitcoin is just 10 years old.

People often think of bitcoin as this digital thing that people started collecting by utilizing their computers to mine and now it is this digital money. While true, the real breakthrough beyond bitcoin being worth money is the driving piece of bitcoin called the blockchain.

bitcoin owners

bitcoin owners

The blockchain is where things get interesting and may have a potential fit for gaming. Quick and simple explanation time. The blockchain is a public ledger. Think of a hotel anonymized registration list that allows you or anyone else to see everyone that has ever stayed in a room of the hotel and for how long. That list continues to grow as the hotel continues to be open and the history can never be changed.

Blockchain technology in gaming seems like a no-brainer to me that will take more years to develop and catch on.

Here are some simple ways I think that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology could be used in the world of gaming.

  1. Virtual currency or items – love it or hate it, it would be easy to use the blockchain ledger to track who has what items or currency. It would allow very creative economies to be created in games. Imagine a game like World of Warcraft that had a limited number of items and currency. The items and currency could be traded between players. It would really make the tradesman elements of the game more powerful. Leathersmithing could create items that have rarity traits to them that can be traded.
  2. Game key codes – Right now we know that Steam game codes are a powerful form of currency. They are generated by Steam and redeemed by Steam. The main issue comes when trying to trade or sell keys for games that you may have in duplicate. There is no way to tell if a key is redeemed or not until you try to redeem it. That causes lots of issues for people buying game codes from 3rd party people because scammers can claim they have a fresh code, collect the money, give the used or fake code, and hide on the internet. With blockchain technology every code ever generated would be anonymized within the blockchain. A code can be verified if it is fresh, used, or fake by checking the ledger.

I have other ideas that could work with blockchain technology and games, but I want to save them to potentially build.

What do you think? Do you have any ideas for using cryptocurrency and its tech in games?