For months I have followed ICOs and alt coins FunFair is potentially seriously undervalued. While the price generally trades in the same area I have been buying the dips and trying to accumulate as much as possible. A lot of friends and family are tired of hearing me say to buy FunFair so here’s my rationale. Again full disclaimer, this is not trading advice, and I am not a trader. This is my attempt to rationalize why I have been talking about FunFair for months. I am also in no way affiliated with FunFair, just a hodler.

What is FunFair?

FunFair is a online gaming protocol and platform built on Ethereum. They are not a casino. This is an important distinction as they do not need a license and do not distribute dividends of any kind. They are trying to take advantage of the $120B worldwide gambling industry as it increasingly moves online (~$40B in 2016).

FunFair provides provably fair games and using state channels is able to achieve near instant results with near zero gas costs* (under development). Their plan is to create the best technology to power engaging games and license that technology to casinos who wish to operate on the blockchain. This is key as it allows the FunFair platform to be used in as many casinos as they choose all the while ensuring fairness to the end user. To me this is analogous to creating all the black jack and craps tables that go into casinos. You don’t need any of the overhead or regulations you just need gambling adoption which has never been a problem.

They have a number of games at showcase.funfair.io and the overall reception has been really encouraging as the games are easy to play, engaging and numerous. They have many more on the way and plans to have the entire platform ready for licensing as early as Q1 2018 (maybe Q2?).

Why I Invested in FunFair?

First, the team. Jez San (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jez_San). Jez has been in the gaming industry for decades, cutting his teeth on a chip that powered Star Fox and then later founding an online poker startup. Jez knows the online gaming industry, understands regulations and has been one of the more active CEOs when it comes to engaging with people and answering questions on social media. The FunFair team is up to about 20 employees in their London office, transparent about hiring, regularly receiving legal advice to ensure they stay compliant with all laws and overall one of the better teams I have seen.

Second, the plan. FunFair requires casino operators to hold enough FUN to cover their losses if people win (need confirmation) this means if you are going to have a slot game with a $1M jackpot the casino needs to hold at least $1M in FUN to cover just that possibility. This becomes really interesting when you think about the number of casinos / licenses that are possible and how much each casino would have to hold in FUN (remember the plot of Oceans 11?) Beyond that there is a small fee of FUN per transaction which is burned, therefore drawing down on the overall supply of FUN, theoretically increasing the price.

Third, the competition. Edgeless keeps coming up as the main competitor but I don’t see it that way. Edgeless is a casino and trying to get a gaming license at the time of my writing. I for one am rooting for them. If they get a license, then what happens to casino 2 that comes along? Or 3 or 30? Are they going to want to reinvent the wheel each time or will they want to get the license and use FunFair’s technology? My money is on the latter. This is encouraging even before you consider that FunFair has far more games, better looking games (imo) and a better underlying protocol (again imo).

The biggest complaint made of the FunFair team when I lurk around their telegram channel is that they don’t do any marketing. I am fine with this. I would rather have the price go up naturally as they reach milestones than to have artificial buzz spike the price only to see if fade. There is no point in marketing until the they are ready for casinos to license the platform. Right now the only purpose for marketing would be to raise awareness and drive up the price. It’s not usable now and I don’t believe it’s worth their marketing dollars. The other large complaint is the lack of poker. I am not convinced that FunFair will never support poker but for now, I think there is more that enough of a market for traditional table games and if I have to wait years for poker I don’t think that influences my decision. The other major complaint is the possibility of a phase 2 token sale. This was in their original white paper but the team has wavered about whether or not to go through. The alternative would be to burn the tokens but either way some people have stayed away because of the uncertainty. If they do have a phase 2 sale I believe they will execute it in a way that the price does not tank and burn the rest.

Now when you take all of this together I don’t see how this is a $80M market cap company. If you are looking to trade short term this isn’t for you but if you fast forward 2 years and blockchain gambling exists (it will), it is very likely FunFair will be powering a large part of it. If that is the case then the value of a FUN token will be far far greater than the ~$0.02 that it is currently.