Opportunities:
Very solid team with the co-founders having deep expertise in the gaming industry.
Unikrn has already gone through the due diligence process of a number of investors and received their backing. Investors who invested in Unikrn in its Series A include: Advancit Capital (Shari Redstone), Binary Capital, Mark Cuban Companies (Mark Cuban), Freeland Ventures (Elisabeth Murdoch), Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher, Guy O’Seary), 500 Startups, Tabcorp Inc. and Hyberspeed Ventures (Erick Miller).
Unlike most of the other eSports betting platforms, Unikrn’s betting platform is tightly integrated with the gaming experience. For example, you don’t need to go to a separate site to wager your bets. Betting and other interactions with the game all happen on the same place.
Because of the above, Unikrn probably caters more to casual gamers / spectators. Not only can users win UKG tokens, they can also win in-game items such as skins, gaming gear, etc., increasing the use cases for UKG tokens.
The eSports industry is growing rapidly and eSports wagering should follow suit. Unikrn stands to benefit from this trend. According to research from Eilers & Krejcik, gaming projects that regulated sportsbook-style wagering on eSports matches will reach $20 billion by 2020.
Unikrn’s target users (mostly young male) should be receptive to cryptocurrency and keen to try out UKG tokens.
There are not many direct competitors to Unikrn in the blockchain space. Gimli is the only project that also focuses on eSports betting, but Unikrn is at a much more advanced stage.
Concerns:
ICO participants represent 20% of total supply of tokens, meaning that the market cap on a fully diluted basis is $500 million if hard cap is reached. That is a very high valuation for an ICO project.
Because of the growth in eSports, Unikrn faces stiff competition from both traditional online betting companies and startups focusing on eSports. We have looked at numerous pages suggesting the best sites for eSports betting (source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4, and source 5, and Unikrn does not show up on any of the rankings.
Unikrn is probably going to have a hard time getting other third party betting operators to adopt UKG tokens.
Regulations would hinder the speed of Unikrn expanding from country to country.
Unikrn will be releasing tokens that are in reserve in order to stabilize token price, which may limit the upside of the tokens.
Conclusion:
Overall, we are neutral about this ICO for its short-term potential but like its long-term potential. Our thoughts of the tokens for short term and long term are as follows:
For short-term holding
Neutral. The project is very hyped up – this is the first ICO that Mark Cuban is involved in. However, hard cap of $100 million is very high.
The amount of contribution depends heavily on the market environment, which is pretty unpredictable now that the Metropolis upgrade for Ethereum is coming soon.
For long-term holding
Good. Unikrn has a large presence in the eSports scene and is the prime candidate to benefit from the rapidly growing eSports industry. We believe the introduction of UKG tokens would attract crypto investors to try out the platform as they fit the target demography of Unikrn (mostly young male).
If Unikrn becomes successful, it has the potential to become the go-to place for eSports betting and spectating, which is a huge industry in the long-term.
