Betting on Ignorance. The Tombola Games ICO
We aren’t the biggest fans of ICO’s and Altcoins, (hence the lack of content about them on our site), very few have launched that look like COOL projects instead of “people with an idea, that will probably fail.”
Tombola Games is a Hong Kong startup from wayyy back in late 2017, when they met to research and create their concept, as outlined in their whitepaper.** Then in Q1 of 2018 they released the whitepaper…as everyone who has an idea does now. And now here we are in Q3 of 2018 with their ICO being promoted heavily to raise $22 million and launch the future of useless gambling sites!
**Editors note: Tombola edited their whitepaper after this article appeared (we saved a copy to publish later) and changed the protocol from EOS to ETH in the middle of their ICO
The Pitch
Tombola believes the world needs a provably fair lottery on the EOS blockchain. People stupid enough to bet with odds of 1 and 14 million, will then be able to prove they lost their money fairly. But wait there is more….they are going to launch not one but TWO dice games. Everyone knows the masses can’t stop dice betting online and Tombola is going to give the people what they want! They also plan to launch not one but two other unique games when their lottery and dice games launch. Anyone who doesn’t see value in this “company” Tombola, doesn’t understand online gambling companies and the morons who start them.
The Problems
We’ve already asked a few questions in the bitcointalk forum where they’re promoting their ICO to the bitcoin community.
Here are a few of the reasons we won’t buy TOMBOLA (TBL):
1. The ICO is on ETH, the gambling platform will run on EOS and they will create their own token on EOS (TBL) to gamble with.
The launch requires 3 different altcoins that a bitcoin holder would have to buy (or trade) just to gamble on a NEW platform that plans to offer lottery and dice….sounds lame.
2. Tombola is a UK bingo company, a BIG one.
The Hong Kong gambling startup should expect problems with offering crypto gambling using the same name as a brand launched 18 years ago in the UK.
3. The whitepaper makes up baseless revenue estimates to “sell” investors on how much can be earned by launching this project
“The block chain casino service “FortuneJack”, which was launched in November 2014,
provide games such as Dice, Slot, Blackjack, and Bacara in dozens of versions. The
accumulated number of bets since the opening of the service amounted to about 8.9
billion times, which is about 8.2 billion dollars when converted into the accumulated bet
amount. (1 BTC = 9400 USD x 870000 BTC until May 10, 2018)“
The calculation assumes every bet placed, players lose $0.92. The current price of bitcoin is only $7,400 compared to whenever they calculated this but the $8 billion revenue estimate is an early indication on their lack of intelligence.
That is in addition to the fact they aren’t launching slots, blackjack or baccarat to actually compare their project to these sites with thousands of games.
4. Online lotteries and dice games are everywhere for real money. There are also tons of bitcoin dice games and bitcoin lottery offers available.
Anyone currently playing real money, bitcoin lottery and dice games will have to buy TOMBOLA (TBL), just to play whatever games this team plans to launch. Why not just use real money or bitcoin rather than taking huge effort to support a shitcoin?
5. They don’t have a lawyer or know how online gambling regulation works.
The whitepaper claims the entire world can gamble on their platform:
With the advent of cryptocurrency in 2009, the potential of the existing lottery market has been maximized. The winnings, which are usually collected only in one country, are now no longer centrally controlled, but all countries can use highly credible currencies with no geographical limit, and as the value and use of cryptocurrency evolves over time, the size of the prize money in the cryptocurrency lottery market can be much larger than the amount collected only in certain areas.
They may have launched an ICO before checking Hong Kong gambling laws (available on Wikipedia) that state:
The Hong Kong Jockey Club holds a government-granted monopoly on horse races, football matches, and lotteries.
The project is based in Hong Kong, so this could be a problem with the Hong Kong authorities. As mentioned above, the UK gambling company named Tombola (and regulated in the UK) will probably have a problem with this project having the same name offering online gambling worldwide for a token named after an existing gambling company.
6. They didn’t google their own name before launching an ICO
It’s the first result guys. It’s a bingo site that launched in 2000 called Tombola. Nobody on your team thought “can we use that name without being sued personally or having a government come after us?” For fuck sake.
7. 50% “profit share” promise to ICO investors
Online gambling sites run at a loss when launching a new product or site. Gaining customers isn’t easy when your competitors have two decades of experience and trust with online gamblers and you have none. Giving “fake” revenue estimates to potential investors and claiming they will get “profits” when you’re going bankrupt isn’t profitable for anyone.
Conclusion
When looking at an ICO, always ask if it’s a scam or just stupid.
If this isn’t a joke, then the team behind TOMBOLA has a lot of details missing from their whitepaper that any sane “investor” would ask before giving these people money.
**Editors note: Tombola edited their whitepaper after this article appeared (we saved a copy to publish later)
This site is intended for people over the age of 18 that never gamble what they can’t afford to lose.