Gate.io Podcast Interview | AMA with BetU

Marie Tatibouet: Host & CMO at Gate.io
Paul Rogash: Co-founder & CEO at BETU

Marie: “Welcome back you guys. Happy new year!

In today's podcast, we have a guest from BetU, an ecosystem comprising 3 platforms built to disrupt the online gambling industry worth over $500 million.

The 3 platforms include
1. BetU (a sports, esports, and crypto betting platform),
2. BetUverse (a licensed metaverse hotel and casino),
3. and BetU Play-To-Earn, the world’s first play-to-earn sports and e-sports betting game. All platforms are powered by the BETU token.

Joining us today is Paul Rogash, Co-founder and CEO of BetU.

Welcome to the show, Paul.”

Paul: “Thanks for having me, Marie. I appreciate the time.”

Q: All right. Well, before we get started talking about where BetU has been and where it's going, can you first tell us a little bit about yourself and when was your first bet in sports?

A: So about myself, I started entrepreneurship at university many years ago and since then I've found several different businesses in online marketing, technology now sort of industries and founded BetU back in my last year and we had our token sale in around September and now we've just released our first platform, sorry the second platform, the BetU P2E yesterday, so it's a pretty exciting time.

My first bet in sports will say see in Australia, it's a little bit different to the rest of the world. In terms of the betting environment, horse racing is the most popular. I remember when I was 16, I borrowed some money from a foreign account of my father and put on racing on a Friday night because horse racing was very popular. So that was sort of my first betting experience. But yes, I'm pretty excited to release the different products we're working on.

Q: What has inspired you to design a platform where users would be their own bookmakers and what do you think the mix between traditional bookmakers service and smart contract look like?

A: So there's a big opportunity, especially cross border on the use of cryptocurrency to enable people, so we'll have the bookmaker services available, since a valuable asset is always liquidity in the market but there's a big opportunity to be able to bet. So we also would provide and where its cross border makes a lot of sense to actually have a standard cryptocurrency our standard value to be actually betting with because if you've got someone saying in Hong Kong, betting in somewhere in Germany for example outside, which currency do you use? So in terms of the use of the BetU token, it makes a lot of sense for that and also for locking out the funds when someone does place a bet Peer to Peer by using smart contracts to actually lock up the token until a result is actually determined.

Q: Got it. We talked a little bit at the beginning about the BetU ecosystem, can you tell me what you feel the main features of this ecosystem is?

A: All right. Now the main feature is the crypto betting game because it's the first one we released. I’m really excited about it because it's very innovative in the way it's built and it can potentially help and potentially disrupt the industry. In terms of the betting platform which you mentioned, we got bookmaker Peer to Peer. There are similar products out like Betfair which are related to Peer to Peer marketplace and then obviously there is an enormous quantity of traditional bookmakers like Bet365, William Hill, and so on. Regarding the crypto betting game, there is no one else doing it and it's very revolutionary and basically giving people the opportunity to place risk free bets so there is no way that I actually lose their stake, so it's all very near and as of yesterday we kicked off so it's pretty exciting times for us.

Q: That's amazing. Well, I mean “play to earn'' has really revolutionized the industry I have to say since it came around just last year. So maybe you can tell me more about BetU PLAY-TO-EARN model and how it plays out and realistically as well how do you think a player can expect to earn by playing?

A: Yes I did expect BetU PLAY-TO-EARN is obviously gonna completely rely on your performance so it's not like just a you know an hourly rates or anything like that, so you still have to select winners and perform but obviously in the gambling industry, the big companies pry on people that aren't good that is because that's what I make that revenue so by actually providing a service where people need to hold the bet your token to play, and then I just get one percentage of their balance which is currently set at one percent to play with each week and if they lose that one percent, it's not actually talking to the disappearing because we're giving that one percent as free bets every week so there's no risk of loss of their tokens, but they keep up earn up to set limits and currently the set limit is 10 times they're starting balance and so which works out to be equivalent to 10 percent of the bet you tokens you hold and that's every week. So right now, we have we've just launched premier league and the NBA and so then we'll expand to other sports such as the tennis for the strong organ coming up and then all tournaments moving forward, the UFC, Formula 1 and the cricket which would be extremely popular in India which we think will do really well with the Indian premier league.

So yeah, I think it's just a really exciting time in the whole space, quite obviously Axie has gone bananas, its targets were actually southeast Asians and it provides services to millions of people with a small income. In terms of value opportunity to earn money, it’s significantly greater than Axie or any other players earn. Someone who performs well in a way can currently earn up to 1,000 US dollars, so it's a much greater opportunity to admire but obviously I need to select winners and be pretty good at sports betting to be able to achieve that every week, so they on someway would earn 4,000 and people what makes about potentially not lose anything so I don't lose anything so over time distillery making some money which is awesome.

and I think by doing this model, we actually provide a solution to problem gambling worldwide, because you are still getting people winning the thrill of excitement that comes with sports betting but they don't have to worry about the loss. So already just in our community in the BetU community, noticing a lot of people you know they're posting their tips that they're talking about the sport and that's one beautiful thing about sport is, it brings people together. And with the community we think, we've got a real advantage in the crypto space because we can rely on you know the different sporting events and there's always new events every single day. So it's yeah we're pretty pumped about it.

Q: Great. You mentioned a bit of cricket and a bit of everything, but what sports and esports are you most excited about and you know what other platforms will BetU release?

A: So I'm most excited actually about esports. I'm not a esports fiery guy myself, but the markets in the sport are all pre match, so you need to put on your risk free bets before the match sells then at the end of the match yet hideout. Esports offering will integrate in February, you can actually live stream darted to league of legends and put on live bets while you're watching within our platform, you'll be watching set counter strike and you could be putting on risk free bets on who gets the next kill, and it's tied out in game so you can put multiple bets on during the game and then be paying out. We still there's you know those are 500,000,000 people who watch esport who just watch other people play video games and it's just mind-boggling to people who aren't in that space, but the industry is just enormous and it just continues to grow, and so by having that option where people can actually stream that they're already doing it and they could earn money while streaming and watching this play is going to be pretty awesome.

Q: Yeah, I really agree with you, esports is going to be huge and speaking of esports and the metaverse, how should we kind of envision the BetU & Verse and what do you think a casino or hotel in the metaverse is going to look like?

A: Well actually I love to share some photos, we just got a lot of the renditions back today. Actually it's coming along looking magnificent and so they had to bet your vessel works. It'll be a licensed hotel and casino, so your guy would have different floors in the hotel and eventually a beautiful entertainment complex. So the first level of the hotel is the casinos. We will have a sports lounge where you could come in and you use your platforms to place bets on different sports and esports. We also have casinos for slot machines. Different slot machines should all be actually NFT. So people could play on the slot machine to earn a percentage of the revenue where slot machines generate and it is similar with the blackjack tables and roulette tables. We say we can create such an incredible experience there and people actually enjoy it. You know, I made all the people in the metaverse and then created some really awesome experiences and we helped people spend a lot of time there.

and then in terms of the hotel, we have different levels, so the first levels we're working on will be “play to earn’ level, so you come out into the hotel up to the level 2 for example and you can walk around and we have all different quite odd games with our metaverse, and we are going to different rooms, all different areas and play all the games. So it'll enable BetU partner with all the different “play to earn” games and crypto games out there, so it's sort of a win-win for both parties and a longer term as we would look at you know a full entertainment complex in terms of our shopping and wearables and things, but the main things for us is the first, platforms will not platforms, the first experiences with putting out in metaverse is going to be the metaverse casino and then the hotel levels.

Q: Got it. So it sounds like you have a really exciting year ahead. Can you tell me more about what the roadmap for this year is like and then what we can expect from BetU in 2022 but also in like the next 5 years to come?

A: So as we are very newbies as like, you know we started building in May, just put out BetU play to earn obviously as I mentioned yesterday, and we will improve the sport offerings over the coming months. So as we discussed earlier you know, cricket, tennis, golf as well as another big one Formula 1. so roll out to different markets over the coming months, we're expecting out gambling license to come through in the next couple of weeks, which then obviously opens up the full gaming platform where is that you played and it's just a game, so it doesn't actually require the licenses internationally, but BetU platform obviously will have relevant licenses. So expect that gaming license to come through February, we kick off the esports integration with Arden which again as I mentioned that league of legends, Dota 2, counter strike and other trend games will be available that they will put out at all BetU & Verse animation. So going into February, you'll be able to walk around the BetU & Verse, you won’t get a game or anything just yet but you will get a feel for it. You will get an avatar, walk around the casino, go to the bar and that sort of thing and then just develop from as usual.

so we will put out the actual betting platform probably in March in this stage, because the good thing with launching the BetU play to earn first is, we can learn so much from and how we attract a different playas what marketing exercises work and the platform is essentially the same, it's just where one is risk free and the other one is obviously very risky in terms of the gambling sort of things. And the metaverse will just continue to be developed, so we'd like to be having a better version by Q2 this year and then we'll just add different levels as we move forward.

So the long term goals, you know, we would like to be a leading player in the online gambling market which is worth $500 billion dollars a year, you imagine, online on sport, esport and casinos. So the market is enormous and I feel we will be the first company to actually lead the whole crypto integration along with online gambling with our token. And we've always done a lot of development. We've got a really great team and great partners. And just look forward to rolling it out in future and the BetU community is really proud of putting it out into the market.

Q: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today, Paul. But before you go, would you want to share a message with your community and supporters?

A: Yeah, I just like to say thank you for the support that you've given us through the journey so far, and we are just beginning. And we look forward to rolling out some really exciting games in the future and the platforms we are really proud of all the work we're putting in, and we hope that we'll be able to deliver you the token value which you all are very desperately looking forward to.

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Marie: Yes, indeed. Your point that you brought up at the end you know about like price action, a lot of like founders don't like to address that but you can't pretend that is not important you know.

Paul: Yeah, it's so difficult. Well, you know, for a company when you are doing a lot of development and you know things are going really well, but then you have one person who sells them. In the communities, people asked What happened? and he said it's nothing happened, we're still. You know you work hard you know and then someone sold it, and yeah that is the emotions that people get off. Working in the space you know, waking up in the morning and you don't know whether you are going to be really happy or you will have to put out fires and things are very interesting.

Marie: Yeah. I will tell you though the latest I feel like the whole industry has gotten a little calmer, because they had you know previously had a lot of funds and the latest you know downturn doesn't seem to have elicited as much funds. So maybe everyone's getting used to all the newbies getting used to the volatility you know.

Paul: Yeah, well I guess, What are your feelings for this upcoming year?

Marie: I feel very positive, but that's only my opinion. I don't feel like the bull run is over, we're definitely you know still in a bear trends that's how I differentiate them that I think we're in the clear trend, we have to go past the one of the moving averages to go back and be back in a bull trends, but all in due time you know there's a lot of the you know for me and if it's in a bull trends than we spend a lot of time trying to get users and if it's in a bear trend that we spend a lot of time trying to educate them, yeah you know we have to do both, so right now we're trying to spend time educating, you know, that's all.

Paul: How long have you been at Gate for Marie?

Marie: 3.5 years.

Paul: Awesome.

Marie: I know. It's been forever, Paul.

Paul: Is your team scattered worldwide?

Marie: Yes, we are a very international team.

Paul: Cool. Certainly, changing the wider world like that, in terms of corona I think, will change work forever to be honest.

Marie: For sure.

“Stay tuned for the latest insights by hitting the subscribe button. Bye guys.”


Watch the whole episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUL0AvzpfgM&ab_channel=Gateio