Hello OGS, long time no see. As the title says, what are your thoughts on the virtual betting currency used by asian servers such as Fox, Tygem etc.? None of the western servers I am aware of has implemented such a feature, why do you think this is so?
Personally I think it’s considered a gimmick idea, because the virtual currency offer little use outside of betting for the sake of betting. If that is so, why is it so popular in asian servers?
Offline Go betting is part of Oriental Go culture, whereas it isn’t in the West.
That’s the simplest explanation at least.
I loath the idea of betting on OGS. They say that you should only play poker for money with people that you know. Similarly, I think betting might be okay in a friendly IRL Go environment but to attach it to online Go sounds like a recipe for disaster and endless hassles to me.
Even if we played for virtual matches, some people would be motivated to manipulate results and ranks to win more matches.
It seems every sport you can bet on is plagued by betting scandals these days. Even highly paid professionals can succumb to addiction or manipulation. How much easier is that online?
I don’t want to have a big win on OGS only to be left wondering if my opponent threw the game due to behind the scenes betting.
I’ve mentioned this before, but one explanation that has been handed to me is that when you implement this, it might leave the server open for lawsuits – even if they are unfounded. And with OGS being run by volunteers for the most part, avoiding even unfounded ones would be a good idea.
aside from that I don’t mind too much, although it could give ppl incentives to manipulate ranks
I think it would be fun. I haven’t spent too much time on the Asian servers though
Haven’t heard about the lawsuit argument before. What sort of dispute would there be for a virtual currency? The only case I can think about is if there exists a black market that exchanges virtual currency for money in real life, and someone’s using that as a form of gambling… And it’s probably not hard to imagine such a market existing for any kind of virtual currency.
We should tie dogecoin wallets to everyone’s accounts and bet with that.
In fact, BitCorn is a new cryptocurrency being developed specifically to bridge the gap between social engagement points and real-world economy 
wait and see if it gets off the ground
True, it would probably be an unfounded lawsuit, but having anything resembling legal grounds (and tbh a lot of things like lootboxes, while legal due to the lack of being able to exchange for currency, are often argued that they are ethically questionable due to how it preys on the same kind of addiction to generate profit) would probably not be great, as you would still need the funds to work through the lawsuit before you got compensation for legal fees from winning.
I don’t see the problem of it if there’s no real money involved.
Besides, I like the idea in Fox of getting some virtual coins every time you win or loose, and every time you do some actions. You can use these coins for betting but also for “paying” for AI reviews.
It makes me go there and play at least two games a day to do my daily objective (the fact that you can get a game with more casual time settings with two clicks also helps).
If winning, leaderboards, tournaments and challenges are not enough fun, maybe Go is just the medium?.. Just my two cents.
There’s always someone shilling a new cryptocurrency, eh?
Obviously the early miners are desperate for other people to buy in and confer value on the otherwise worthless data they’ve accrued.
Not saying the existing features aren’t enough fun. There always exist ways to add more variety to a service that is already entertaining. It’s possible that the virtual currency (usually used solely for betting) can be used as a medium for other gains, but some Chinese weiqi content producers also use it as a source of humour to show their support for their favourite professional in tournament games, and make a scene out of losing billions!
I like @bugcat’s simple explanation that it might just be of interest for some cultures.
Usually where there is a currency I’m almost certain there’ll be real money involved if the ecosystem has enough interest. For example, I know brokers who would sell Fox coins for ~70 RMB per million (or was it 10 million, it’s been a while!).
For few times a day Fox hosts automated games for people to bet on, which is where all the brokers try their luck. Putting everything else aside, it sure gauged a certain part of the player base on it
Interesting. Had to re-read the name because it looked like BitCom at first glance! 
It’s also hard to search for without getting a ton of bitcoin results lol but we Go players are used to that 
I feel like something like a Guess the Move game would be more fun than betting on the outcome.
You could give observers of the game points based on the numbers of moves they got correctly, or even just points to the most accurate guesser and let them trade it in for ai reviews if one really wanted to.
I vaguely remembered Chess.com having something like that and then I found a video (I mean the guess the move game, not necessarily trading in points for anything).
Another plus of a feature like a guess the move game is it might encourage more people to watch games and possibly kibitz to gain points
A few days ago in the ogs chat, we were talking about an ogs site wide currency named something like komi-cash, or kyu-credits
Some ideas people had for uses:
Let me just say I was against this
No one’s mentioned that Chinese? pro yet who was advertising a sketchy go-related cryptocurrency. I believe there’s a thread about it somewhere.
Korean?