The Bitcoin Association has been aggressively promoting the selling points of Bitcoin SV since the Bitcoin Cash fork made its debut in 2018. Kudos to them for believing wholeheartedly in the project and wanting to get others on board. Most recently, the Association has been making the case for Bitcoin SV as both a gambling token and a platform for gaming.

A recent Calvin Ayer piece highlights just a couple of ways Bitcoin SV can be employed in the gambling arena. Is it better than Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash? Can Bitcoin SV (BSV) truly become a gambling token of choice? That depends on who you choose to believe. If the Bitcoin Association has any say in the matter, BSV will eventually be the cryptocurrency and blockchain platform on which the entire online gambling industry rests.

Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin SV

Doing the Bitcoin Association justice in covering how they promote BSV requires at least a rudimentary understanding of where it came from. In the cryptocurrency beginning was Bitcoin. Bitcoin began as a software project by an individual or group of individuals operating under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The goal was to create an alternative monetary system based on a decentralized digital currency capable of operating outside the domain of government interference and central banking.

Bitcoin was the only game in town for quite a while. But as other cryptocurrency projects began to emerge and adoption took off, it became painfully clear that Nakamoto's Bitcoin didn't scale very well. Bitcoin decision-makers determined they had to address the scalability issue by increasing block size. This created a rift between two camps that each had different visions for how this would be accomplished.

The one camp stayed with Bitcoin and its plan for scalability. The other camp created a hard fork in 2017 to pursue a different strategy of scalability. That forked project was called Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The new BCH had a larger block size than the original at 32 MB. Unfortunately, creating BCH did not end the infighting.

There was yet another disagreement over whether or not 32 MB was sufficient. Another group wanted to increase block size to 128 MB as well as implement a few other code changes. They could not agree, and the two groups split yet again. The BCH fork known as Bitcoin SV was born.

BSV's promoters chose the 'SV' moniker to reflect the belief that their fork was more in line with Nakamoto's original vision. 'SV' stands for 'Satoshi's Vision' - the implication being that BSV is primarily an alternative monetary system instead of a store of value. That leads us to the Bitcoin Associations push to make BSV the default crypto platform for gambling.

Both online and off

It is worth mentioning that the Bitcoin Association is not limiting its promotion of BSV to the online gambling community. They also think it has plenty of potential for off-line gambling as well. For example, Association founding president Jimmy Nguyen sees BSV as a legitimate payment option for land-based casinos. He envisions a day when casino floors are full of slot machines equipped with a piece of hardware capable of accepting BSV payments.

The system would work similar to how phone-based payment systems work. A user would create a digital wallet stored on his phone. He would then populate the wallet with BSV prior to visiting the casino. Once on the casino floor, simply waving his phone at a receiver would result in moving coin from his digital wallet to the casino's.

This sort of convenience would certainly raise the profile of cryptocurrency as an alternative monetary system. It could lead to substantially more utility as well. The fact that it has not been done yet remains a mystery, but Nguyen says that scalability is not an inhibitor.

BSV was designed to be inherently scalable from its inception. Between its higher block size and its dependence on the Lightning Network, gambling operations can do things with BSV they cannot do with the original BTC and BCH.

Provably fair gaming

The Association believes that BSV has even more potential in the online arena. Obviously, it can already be used as a payment system among casino properties that choose to accept it. Gamblers can move coin from their wallets into their online gambling accounts with relative ease. But is there more? Nguyen says there is.

He has recently been touting the availability of BSV as a means of proving online gambling is fair. By running games on the BSV blockchain, casinos can provide all the data their users need to prove that games are as fair as possible. The BSV blockchain tracks the results of every single play and stores them in an irrevocable chain of records.

Even without a cryptocurrency payment system, using blockchain to prove game fairness is big. Provably fair games have been a sticking point in the online gambling arena for years. Gambling properties that make no attempt to certify the fairness of their games do not belong in the space. BSV represents a straightforward and easy-to-implement way of demonstrating fairness to both gamblers and regulating bodies.

Blockchain and eSports

Another area of interest for the Association is eSports betting. If you are not familiar, eSports are high-tech games that simulate real-life sporting events in just about every category. The data-driven games play out - in some cases even offering live video fans can watch - pretty realistically in terms of statistics and scores.

eSports betting has really taken off thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. eSports fans, starved of live action, have turned to the eSports versions of their favorite sports. They are betting on matches as well.

As you can imagine, eSports are data intense even without gambling included. But when you throw in the gambling element, data complexity grows exponentially. Platform developers have to be able to integrate gambling data into the data streams that makes their sporting events run. That data needs to work seamlessly and in real time to satisfy the needs of gamblers.

As you probably guessed, the Bitcoin Association says BSV is the perfect blockchain tool for eSports. They say its speed and scalability can meet the needs of eSports platforms without issue.

Imagine logging onto an online casino and navigating to the eSports section. You find two or three upcoming matches you are interested in and place your bets. Assuming that casino is tied into an eSports platform running on BSV, your betting data is instantly integrated into the BSV blockchain.

The matches play out and you win on two of the three bets. Your payout is instant because the casino's data and the platform's data are simultaneously integrated in the blockchain. You happily go on your way while other gamblers login and place their bets for future matches.

Gambling platforms and other cryptos

The Bitcoin Association has an obvious interest promoting BSV as the default cryptocurrency and blockchain for gambling. As such, they are not likely to admit that any other blockchain could come close to doing what theirs does. That is reasonable. But is BSV truly the best blockchain for the gambling industry?

It is clear that BTC cannot remain true to its original design and still offer the speed and scalability the gambling industry needs. BCH could be made to work, but bigger block sizes would be necessary for proper scaling. What about Ethereum (ETH)?

ETH seems like a good choice for the simple fact that it was not developed exclusively as a monetary system. It was developed as a platform on which to build software. If any blockchain can replicate what BSV does, it seems ETH would be it. But that is just an assumption.

Monero was once touted as a candidate to become a default gambling token. But it has its own problems. First, any usefulness it might have as a gambling token does not necessarily make Monero an all-in-one solution for blockchain based gambling. More important, it is beginning to look like Monero is not as secure as once believed.

Blockchain's time will come

While there may be ongoing disputes about who's blockchain project will eventually rise to the top in the gambling industry, there is little disagreement that one of them will. Blockchain's time will come at some point. The world is moving away from cash, especially now that the coronavirus crisis has more people thinking about contactless payments.

In the meantime, numerous national governments have been quietly developing digital currency projects over the last few years. Once cash is replaced by digital coins, it will be just a short step to creating individualized tokens for different types of industries. Online gambling will have its own token, and that token will likely be integrated with the blockchain platform on which every aspect of gaming runs.

The Bitcoin Association thinks BSV will be the one. They might be right. They certainly have a leg up inasmuch as they are already working hard to get gambling operators and technology developers on board with BSV. They may win the battle just by being the most aggressive.