An online gaming room with continuous investment contests is the bet of the startup Fund Fantasy presented Wednesday at the Bitcoin and blockchain conference, Swiss edition, in Geneva. For its founders, one premise: all investors are players.
The beta version of the site has only been under test for two weeks now, and already 611 people are participating in the first fundfantasy.com contest, open to all. The principle of this investment contest, which is free of charge: invest 10,000 virtual dollars in assets classified into four categories: stocks, commodities, currencies, cryptocurrencies.
On 28 February at midnight, the investor with the best return on his basket of assets earns 0.3 bitcoin (approximately 3500francs at the current rate). “It’s a promotional offer, to let us know, says Daniel Vaisman, co-founder, that we’re going to renew by free contest, from two weeks in two weeks, until the official opening of the site in June”.
On the model of online poker
The project is openly inspired by online poker rooms to propose an offer on the same model. From June onwards, several competitions, ranging from a few francs per entry to several thousand, depending on the means or profile of the player, will take place simultaneously. Players will choose each of the four asset categories, with a breakdown of the rewards to choose from, the winner takes everything, to a more balanced distribution.
The duration will also be optional, from a few minutes to several days.
The site will take 5 to 10% commission on the sums played, the rest will be redistributed to the winners, always on the model of poker platforms on the internet. “The advantage for a gifted investor is to be able to win for example 20 or 30 times his stake, even if the stock market drops, says Daniel Waisman, even in the case of Krach! All it takes is for your basket of stocks or currencies to perform better than the others. For those who want to test their investment potential, free or low entry competitions are offered. Once the bets are made, you can see the choices of the best investors (the winning baskets), learn from them and progress.”
Daniel Vaisman, a former Forex trader, focuses on block-chain technology that automatically secures transactions without human intervention:”On Forex, there has been a lot of fraud. FXCM lost its license in the United States for “bad practices”, clearly fraudulent. Blockchain avoids manipulation, especially on rates.”
Attract “whales” to the game
Fund Fantasy benefits has the advantage of a good timing, the last few months have seen the multiplication of investments of small investors in the crypto currency market, in a playful approach on which the company is trying to capitalize. This makes it difficult to imagine professional investors investing large sums of money on an online betting site that combines investment and entertainment. However, the platform intends to take up this challenge, notably through its ICO, which will raise funds on the blockchain by selling chips.
“The sale of our chips will start in five days. These Fundtokens are not securities – titles – but “utilities”, explains Daniel Vaisman. That is to say, they are used directly to pay the entry fees for investment competitions. At the end of each contest, 0.5% of the wagered chips are deducted from our commission and burned. The deflationary logic makes tokens gain in value, and are not declared as securities. In addition, profits are not gains from trading, but from the game, which can be a tax and other advantage for the biggest wagerers.” Fund Fantasy aims to sell the equivalent of $15 million in tokens (chips) through its ICO.
Whether the platform will meet the same fate as online poker sites, the question remains open. In the midst of an explosion during the major Texas Hold’em great fad’s in the years 2005 to 2010, they suffered from a crisis of confidence, at the end of the fad’s effect, and the weariness of the majority of losers. Especially since crypto currencies are currently undergoing a correction.
Daniel Vaisman and the other co-founders, however, express their belief in the investor’s appetite for “gambling”: “A Taiwanese study showed an effect of subistution between the national lottery and the markets: when the lottery had a particularly high prize pool, market activity weakened. This transfer shows that investors are by nature players. We’re just offering them to assume it.”
