Mikhail Vakhrin, SP8DE co-founder, talks to Crypto Beast (podcast transcript)
Transcript of the podcast streamed by Crypto Beast. Ambitious plans unveiled and difficult questions answered by Mikhail Vakhrin, SP8DE co-founder!
Crypto Beast (CB): What's up good people, Crypto beast here and today I'm joined by Misha who's the co-founder of SP8DE X. Now SP8DE X is basically a gambling company which is tackling the blockchain. I know a lot of you have heard me ramble on and on about the blockchain joining the gambling industry. I think you know as mass adoption starts, and more and more people start using cryptocurrencies, gambling will become a very very big thing. So, any company tackling this industry right now, I think, it's something you should be looking into. So, before I start going into my Q&A mixture, I want you to tell me a little bit about your project in your own words.
Mikhail Vakhrin (MV): All right, thank you very much for having me, sure guys, good day. Yeah, just in a couple of words. So on the most abstract level, our project is really nothing more than just an RNG. It's a random number generator which can be used obviously in the gambling industry, but also elsewhere, and so we're also kind of gaining some attention from other industries such as for example pharmaceuticals, where you have to use the Monte Carlo simulations to trial your drugs and stuff like this, but anyway, so at the basic level this is just an RNG. If you go a bit up, it becomes not just the RNG but the platform to which all kinds of casinos online, on-chain and whatever can get connected and be using our RNG. Basically, just indicating, just like signaling to their clients that guys, even if we would want to, we wouldn't be able to trick you in any way, it’s just mathematically impossible. So, this is our original idea from the ICO - something worth tackling right now, and yet in the future we are going to be expanding our offering to somewhat wider by the range of things included, and so in the end what we envision ourselves to be is something like a service provider for the gambling industry, primarily gambling but also some other ones, but on the most epic level this is just an RNG so we're more like a scientific project not so much a gambling one.
CB: Alright, that's fine. Just some things I personally wanted to add because of, what I'm doing right now, as many of you know, I'm going through and interviewing and meeting every single company I personally invested in 2017. So, this was one of the projects and what I really liked about them at the moment is that they're based on the Cardano blockchain. Now this is quite huge, I'm sure all of you know Cardano, and I think this blockchain is going to go very far in the next couple of years, so any project working on there is basically very good and also Spade, they're going to be doing a poker game which you're going to be able to actually use SP8DE tokens. Am I correct in saying this?
MV: Oh yes! And no, so you're going to be able to use the SP8DE token basically for any random generation around. So whatever the game is - our game or the game which is... Let's say Poker Stars starts using SP8DE.
CB: Yeah!
MV: In order for Poker Stars to be using our randomness, they got to buy and use our tokens. So we are also going to have, of course, our own poker, because this is just a dream to have your own poker!
CB: This is, yeah! This is what it looks like. So, I am happy to hear that is something that you all are aiming towards to.
MV: Also, just to mention quickly, we do realize this problem that many of these gambling on-chain gambling projects, they use their own token which is utility token used in their ecosystem for betting purposes, and this token is also traded elsewhere and this creates a problem that kind of you're betting double your betting on the outcome of the game and you're betting that some whale won't come to some exchange and dump your token. This volatility surely factors in, so we're going to have for this purpose a special stable token which is going to be used for gambling in the gambling kind of applications within the system.
CB: Alright that's perfect. So, let's get into the questions and answers. So, the first question I want to ask - I looked at your road map, you know, obviously before I start investing into your ICO and in my personal opinion it was very bullish and maybe not realistic, so I want you to tell us what's life been like off the dice here and what difficulties and successes have you found so far?
MV: I was terribly broke (laughing). No, no, no, I'm joking. So actually, the life was just… because like the ICO project itself, it's so much completely different from what the life becomes once it's over.
CB: I keep on hearing.
MV: It's because you got to go into this administrations stuff. You got to start building up this thing. You actually got to create something that works and that's very hard, simply because normally all those ICO entrepreneurs are people with an idea but not so much of an experience in organizing the living organizations and that's exactly one of those cases. So, we struggled probably one month before we actually got rid off all those people we didn't need anymore, who were just like some artifacts remaining after the ICO and stuff like this, and at the moment when we pick those people which we actually did need and after we realized who of those people actually were worth to stay in the company… this takes time indeed.
CB: Absolutely!
MV: Yet just to mention, even though our road-map was kind of aggressive, at the same time we really lived up to every single promise that we had there. So, we didn't delay the delivery of any of those things which we basically promised there. We are probably going to have problems delivering the entire working casino by 2019 and so, yet, as of now just something like an update, let me use this chance to give it, we are surely on the track with those people that we wanted to have in the company and all of us are just working towards the same goal. Soon we're going to have the RNG and MVP of the product and with it we're just going to go and conquer the world.
CB: Go to my second question then, so given your B2C orientation, what games are you going to have available for the users of your platform?
MV: Yep! So just a very kind of small thing before I proceed with this question. This is like a frequent misconception, which is somehow proliferating within our community: we are not a B2C platform, that's the big thing. We're a B2B platform. So let me tell you just very quickly a story without names. I was once on a conference, gambling conference basically. There were some on-chain, online projects, everything and so I gained by calling and so there I was doing something like a communication. I'm not going to name those people, but you know, a person from a conventional kind of online gambling space was speaking to a person from one of the successful on-chain kind of gambling projects. And so, the guy from the blockchain gambling, he was carrying and he was like “hey bro! We have the same as you but on-chained, everything, like all the back-end, fully decentralized!” The other guys like “okay nice, you know, it’s okay, nice”. So then something like an awkward silence starts, because one guy knows that his marketing budget in the month is like twice what this guy have raised through the entire ICO! They are not afraid of it – they are more convenient, they are more known, they are not associated with this, you know, “oh, like, this block-chain is used for money laundering!” - so with all this stuff, and the other guy – yes, they have the entirely working back-end, so what, they just can't compete! And I was looking at this thinking, you know, probably decentralizing the entire back-end is not such a good idea, in the end, at least for now. So what makes sense is just to become a part of the conventional industry, but to bring all those benefits of decentralization that we can, to bring it in the all of the industry, that would make sense - instead of trying to revolutionize something, create something new, we will just create something new and integrate it into something old – basically, become an evolution instead of revolution, and so that's what we are trying to do right now. That’s basically our goal!
CB: Okay! Alright, you know, what you said goes straight, you have changed the couple of things around and you're heading in a right direction by the looks of it and that's very good to hear. But regarding the actual platform itself, people playing and gambling, are they going to be able to only use SP8DE tokens to do this?
MV: Yes! I would say yes, but - in order to use our RNG yes, but in order to play - let's call it somehow “chain game” right now - some new ICO project in gambling, so a very good one chain game, so in case if this chain game would love to offer its clients some mega poker which nobody else has and still would prefer to use our RNG, then of course gaming in their poker would require their tokens, but for them to use our RNG would require our tokens.
CB: Alright! You know, the question a lot of people have been asking and I've actually don’t know the answer to this: people invested in the pre-ICO, they've got a completely different token, I think it was called like DSPX or something along those lines. Do you have any plans for that token, or is that it is just going to be thrown away?
MV: Okay, we do.
CB: That's what I want to hear, okay.
MV: Well, first of all - in case if anybody listening to this podcast still has not received his SPX to substitute this DSPX, please contact support as soon as possible [email protected]. So… sooner or later we're going to have our own casino...
CB: Yeah!
MV: And because whoever has DSPX, it means, that these are the guys who believed in us earlier than anybody else, because DSPX was only available during the pre-ICO.
CB: I am one of them.
MV: So please, don't throw away these DSPX, leave them as they are, because they can entitle you to a lot of nice things, as the early believers when they're actual casino will be open - so it's going to be something like tickets with some bonuses.
CB: A lot of people will be happier to hear that and so am I. Going to the next question, this is a question I actually asked every single company I've met, and I figured it's a difficult one. Let's see, is there any plans to increase the token price from your side?
MV: That's kind of simple one. Of course, basically we just want to put forward one statement. This statement is that the demand for any token is always derived from (A) speculative demand and (B) natural demand. So, all our efforts are aimed towards the natural demand. Now because we could have already for a long time started issuing all kind of pumping use and all those kind of articles - this kind of super expensive social media, and not only social but just crypto media, like an article that doesn't say anything, just pumps the thing. You know well, of course, a lot of people are coming and start buying and then they start selling, so the thing is that the speculative demand always means reversing, so it's always coming back to the price where it has to be pumped and dumped. In other words, what we are trying to do is just increase the natural demand, that's why we put all of our resources into developing an actual MVP which is actually going to give rise to this natural demand, and so that's what we are basically doing and of course here all of our efforts are just aimed at basically increasing the token price… so yup 😊
CB: Okay, alright, fine. Also, what's the deal with github? Is it still empty?
MV: The thing is that we're working on the code, but the problem is that in case if we're just going to make it public right now, then nobody is going to interrupt anyone to just copy it and come to any kind of casino with their own offering like, you know, it’s not SP8DE but SP9DE or whatever SP8De… why?
CB: It’ll be easy to do, yeah exactly.
MV: Exactly! The point, before we have the first contract with any actual casino, that's A, and before we have actual intellectual property protection on our code - before these two things satisfied, we don't want to publish this code. So, I would actually ask our community, whoever is hearing me right now, to post in our blog or in our telegram group or any other means of communication available to you, some kind of way in which you would like to be sure to have this code and this code is being written because we cannot publish it, but at the same time we are working on it day and night. So the MVP will be ready somewhere by September/October max. and this moment just anybody will be able to open a new and shiny wallet and try to generate some random number.
CB: I personally look forward to it, so now going back to the Cardano. Are you guys collaborating with the Cardano core team at the moment?
MV: Well so, the thing is that no, and there are a lot of questions about this - you know, like “how you guys can say that you're working together with Cardano? Well, you're not even collaborating”. Like, go to any kind of ERC20 token and ask them, why they're not collaborating with Buterin! (laughing)
CB: That actually makes a lot of sense.
MV: That's basically - we are using the Cardano, well, we are looking at Cardano technology. It's not ready yet, that's the basic problem, while we are working on Ethereum until now, the thing is that the smart contract - basically nothing is ready in Cardano right now. They are delaying their road-map and that's why we are delaying ours, so - I'm not blaming them, for it should actually sound like blaming them, because they are doing something of epic complexity! And of course they're going perfectly fine, but we cannot right now base our technology on them simply because theirs is not ready. As soon as it will be, we’ll port everything we have right now onto their platform.
CB:Just of interest, have you so completely decided to be on Cardano or you're looking for another option? This is just our interest for myself.
MV: You know, the thing is that we have a lot people who invested in us simply based on the premise that we're going to be using Cardano. Okay, so that's why one of our implementations and the first one in other languages but Solidity will be on the Cardano, this I can promise, but of course we also go looking at other platforms and we're probably going to make it a multi-platform in the end so that anybody can use it.
CB: Because of what I would do obviously, I've never really done this myself but maybe run like a poll and ask people - you know, this is the benefits, this is the negatives. What's your force, maybe for your telegram group or something, that's just an idea that I'm throwing out.
MV: I promise to you like give us one month, we're going to make this poll.
CB: You never know, maybe now things have changed, since Cardano, there's other ones like EOS which might be a possibility, so just throwing it out there, so look, before this drags on for too long, I do like to keep on the 20 minute, so is there anything else that you personally want to add just to tell the viewers and the listeners of this podcast?
MV: Oh yeah! There is one thing, actually two! First of them, any investors in us, like you, in the first place - thank you for believing in us. I know that we have done a lot of things right, a lot of things we have done really wrong, but these are the things unfortunately to be expected, for many young enterprises, so thank you for keeping belief, that's first. And the second thing is just to assure you that things are moving, things are going, we are now in conversation with a kind of a fund which is busy investing in many major casinos, which you know.
CB: This is a big figure, be very cautious about what you say.
MV: So yeah, there are movement on this side, we will keep you updated, informed and as soon as something pops up, pop out, we're going to just make it public. Right now I cannot elaborate on this, simply because many of these things are under NDA, but just let me tell that the things are moving and soon we're going to in order to reflect this progress somewhere by the end of July, I hope, probably like first dates of August - we're going to release a new website with a bit of a different conception which we are embracing, and then basically all those things will open and probably , if you would be willing to help me again on air I would try to go over that website and explain like every single detail there.
CB: I'll be more than happy to do that, so I am glad that there is more development, my ears are always open for that. It has been a pleasure speaking to you today, you've sort of answered all my questions and I'm sure you've answered a lot of questions investors and people who haven't invested into SP8DE have had to ask, so thank you very much for coming on to the podcast today.
MV: Thank you for sharing me, thank you guys for listening.