November 12th saw crypto sportsbook and casino, BetHog, conceived by Nigel Eccles and Rob Jones, two co-founders of FanDuel, announce its public launch with US$6m in seed funding, led by 6MV, a VC firm focused on investments in gaming and Web3 applications.
Nigel Eccles, CEO of BetHog, says: “The crypto casino market has seen dramatic growth over the past few years driven by innovations like provably fair games, robust VIP programs and streaming.
“With BetHog, the goal is to innovate even further by bringing unique and highly visual games to market. I want to offer users unique play-along and skill-based titles, combined with a robust VIP offering. But most of all, this is about maximizing fun for our users.”
BetHog will carry the four major US sports plus soccer, cricket and others, and numerous markets and bet types will be supported. Licensed and regulated by Anjouan, BetHog will not initially accept wagers from the US, Ontario, or the majority of Western Europe, but the company aims to eventually be regulated in each of these locations.
BetHog will provide competition for the BetDEX Exchange, another prominent crypto sportsbook and a contributor to the Monaco Protocol, a permissionless decentralized and open-sourced protocol built on the Solana blockchain.
BetDEX was founded in Scotland, also by ex-FanDuel executives, including Eccles. Like BetDEX, the BetHog casino is built on Solana, with SOL as the supporting token for the company’s PvP titles. BetHog also accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT for account funding.
Nigel Eccles adds: “One of the great things about crypto is that all transactions are public and traceable, and we work with a number of partners to enable us to conduct risk-based AML checks.”
Serge Kassardjian, General Partner at 6MV, concludes: “We think BetHog is perfectly positioned to unlock this massive opportunity to build the most innovative online casino and betting platform of this era of crypto.”
