Entrepreneurs Joe De Pinto and Dan Wagner have created a unique use for microtransactions through Haste, an online games arcade with what they call Instant Leaderboard Payout or ILP games. The idea is that the top players in a game at any time receive payouts from the small entry fees paid by the rest of the players. Everyone’s trying to get to the top of the leaderboard where they’ll be earning money instead of spending it.
Joe explains how he and Dan were inspired by the possibilities created by the micropayment capabilities of Bitcoin SV (BSV): “It’s really simple to understand. You take a quarter, a dime, a nickel, you play a simple game and you split that money hundreds of ways.”
On this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, Charles Miller and the two business partners from Los Angeles discuss all the possible ways a player – or even non-players - can earn money with Haste.
And, as Dan explains, unlike with traditional payment systems, the use of BSV allows players to receive payouts in real time. “It doesn't matter where you're at anywhere in the world, if you're on the leaderboard, your wallet gets pinged immediately, instantly, without the platform ever touching anything.”
Alongside the game play, there are now Haste tokens, which, similar to a traditional arcade, can be redeemed. But instead of being rewarded with a stuffed animal and the like, they get BSV. “The tokens do a good job of representing a way to reward people simply for playing without even having to make the leaderboard.”
Finally, in Haste, users can also create their own NFT player card, which in turn rewards the owner with a 10 percent rebate each time they play. In addition, all players can also buy and trade cards.
Joe and Dan, who are also co-founders of a popular app called Barpay, a platform that allows customers to order and pay for their drinks at bars and restaurants, bring their previous experience in business into Haste. Barpay has been successful in helping customers make payment transactions in establishments, especially in crowded places. In the past year, Dan said Barpay saw a sudden growth in demand. With the pandemic, he points out that more establishments wanted their customers to be able to access their menus online - a need Barpay could address.
“Before Covid, we were in several dozen restaurants with just an app that you could use to order and pay for drinks during the busy times. At this point, we have over eleven thousand digital menu type accounts, several hundred order and pay accounts that are allowing people to scan a QR code to place an order and pay for it.”
Dan sees Bitcoin being used as a form of payment on Barpay in the future. “We can take that [Bitcoin] to the rest of the market, telling these owners, we just figured out how to save you three percent on every transaction. That is going to be an absolute game changer for these merchants.”
What’s next for Haste? Expect new features in the near future as two senior developers will be joining the team very soon.