Mevu’s innovative gambling platform goes down the IEO route

Mevu smart contracts decentralise and facilitate P2P betting

Recent IEOs have boomed in the main and start-ups listing this way appear to be benefitting far more than when they were listing via the ICO route. Bit torrent, Fetch, Celer and Matic can be said to have been wildly successful rides and have left investors scrambling for a piece of the action. Harmony is the next moon rocket to leave the IEO launch pad and I don’t see its trajectory being any different.

The Mevu IEO begins on the Korean exchange Probit on June 3rd with 7 million MVU up for grabs at $0.09. There are 3 further rounds on different exchanges, with the final round terminating with 20 million MVU at $0.12. A maximum of 55 million MVU will be available over the 4 rounds, out of a total supply of 105 million.

What is Mevu?

MeVu (Me versus you) is an astonishingly simple yet incredibly creative concept that, if it gets some traction, could spread like a forest fire across the online sports gambling sector.

This is a sector that is experiencing huge growth and various platforms such as 1xBit.com, BETONLINE.ag, CLOUDBET and others are offering such attractions as high betting odds and limits, anonymity and the choice of using various cryptocurrencies.

“Me Versus You in a round of golf tomorrow?”

Nonetheless, Mevu has its own totally unique concept and the ability to bet against your pals on just about anything (a round of golf, a game of football or even a roll of the dice) makes it a fascinating proposition.

Why should Mevu be successful?

1. Strong backers/investors give solidity to the project. 

Global Blockchain Mining (FORK), Blockstake and Voxel Ventures are among those invested in Mevu and they provide the capital to give Mevu that all-important runway until it becomes profitable. Global Blockchain has recently diversified into overseeing token asset launches and will administer the Mevu IEO.

2. Traditional betting establishments are ripe for disruption 

Traditional betting establishments have overheads such as the buildings, upkeep and staff wages etc. This all obviously gets recuperated out of the fees levied on punters. Middlemen abound in this space and all get their little slice of the betting pie.

A decentralised platform that just has the utility of matching counterparties for a particular wager, instead of those parties having to go through a central bookmaker, will have a pretty massive cost saving advantage (2 to 3% as opposed to 10 to 15% with a casino)

3. Licences and certification

Depending on any given jurisdiction, certain licences and certification are required by law and are time-consuming and expensive to acquire. These gambling regulations are needed given that the betting establishments need to hold punter’s betting funds and must administer the payouts. They would be required to also hold a certain amount of funds in their banks in order to be able to cover possible large winning bets.

Mevu’s platform does not require any of this as it is only matching the bettors and putting the information into a smart contract, which is written to the blockchain. Additionally, Mevu holds no betting funds and is therefore not able to take part in any embezzlement or corruption.

4. Fully automated process

Payments are made based on player reports on the particular betting event. Should there be a dispute the result will be verified by ‘oracles’ who are token holders. The oracles are paid in eth to come to a consensus on who won. If a player report was inaccurate then their MVU tokens go to the oracles. The oracles themselves are required to stake MVU so if they report incorrectly they lose half of their stake, thereby practically eliminating fraud.

5. The online gambling market

According to Statista, the present size of the global online gambling market is around 50 billion US dollars and is expected to almost double to 94 billion in 2024. With a shift in consumer gambling habits from traditional services to far easier internet and mobile devices it can certainly be predicted that this sector will see some huge future growth.

The unregulated gambling sector is believed to be far larger than the regulated sector and according to Patrick Jay, an independent betting expert, the global online sports betting market could be turning over a figure as high as 1 to 3 trillion US dollars. Up to 90% of which he estimated to be illegal.

Mevu’s platform, without any illegality, would surely attract a lot of the unregulated market given that it has none of the downsides of the regulated sector such as high fees and wait times for pay-outs.

Challenges for Mevu

Given the fact that Mevu will have first mover advantage, being the only platform of its kind to offer P2P betting with the odds decided by the participants, you would imagine that all would be plain sailing into the future. However, getting your token out to a global client base and getting the online sports gambling world to sit up and take notice is not an easy nut to crack.

Mevu did hold a private sale round back in March — April 2018 but only raised $399,000. More have been sold privately since then but the project will need a lot more in order to ensure that encouraging start for what is such a promising venture. 

Marketing of the project has also been fairly thin up to now, probably due to its hereto organic growth. A small flurry of publicity was caused when Mevu launched its test-net in time for punters to bet on Superbowl L11 earlier this year but overall Mevu remains below the radar and its reach is yet to spread globally.

However, 4 rounds of an IEO spread across separate exchanges should go a long way towards getting the token out there and should establish an initial user base of punters who will actually utilise the platform.

Conclusion

The whole gambling world should definitely sit up and take notice of this project as it is the most innovative platform in this sector today. The Blockchain movement is all about transparency and cutting out third parties and Mevu is taking this concept to its furthest frontier.

Token holders will definitely see this as an investment opportunity but they will also highly likely want to use the tokens in order to save a huge difference in fees and to also bet safely without any middleman, regulatory body or government interference. This platform deserves to succeed.

Disclaimer: I have a varied portfolio, which does include a small amount of MEVU tokens. All the above views are my own and should in no way be taken as financial advice. All those wishing to invest in the crypto market should do their own research or use the services of a fully certified financial advisor.