 | |
Type of site | Corporation |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2014 |
| Headquarters | , United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Founder(s) | Rahul Sood, Karl Flores |
| Industry | Online gambling |
| Services | Online Esports betting & gaming |
| URL | unikrn.com |
Unikrn Inc. (styled as "Unikrn") is an esports betting and entertainment media company based in Miami, Florida.
In August 2021, international betting, gaming and interactive entertainment company Entain acquired Unikrn. [1] [2]
Founded in November 2014, Unikrn primarily offers real money [3] and token-based wagering on competitive video game tournaments, otherwise known as esports. [4] Unikrn creates betting markets on esports (organized video game competitions) matches akin to traditional betting.
The company was founded by Rahul Sood and Karl Flores in November 2014.
In 2016, Unikrn became an investor in BIG (Berlin International Gaming), [5] a professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team. Unikrn also has an investment in MAINGEAR, [6] a high-end PC manufacturer.
In the second quarter of 2017, Unikrn acquired LEET, [7] an esports startup based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Unikrn also owns an Indian-based esports company, DotaProHub. [8]
In November 2017, the company released UnikoinGold, an ERC-20 cryptocurrency, running on the Ethereum blockchain. [9] [10] [11]
In September 2020, Unikrn agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after raising $31 million via a digital asset called UnikoinGold in an unregistered 2019 token sale of digital. [12] Unikrn volunteered to settle without a determination of guilt by paying a $6.1 million penalty to be paid via a Fair Fund to its token holders. Unikrn also undertook to disable UnikoinGold [13] Unikrn settled despite lack of consensus within the SEC that Unikoingold constituted a security, with Commissioner Hester M. Peirce saying, "I do not concur in my colleagues’ opinion that Unikrn’s token offering constituted a securities offering[...] By failing to challenge ourselves to experiment with new approaches to regulation, we, and those whose interests we are pledged to serve, risk surrendering the fruits of innovation. I respectfully dissent from the Commission’s actions today relating to Unikrn." [14] She further clarified, "[Unikrn] is not alleged to have engaged in any fraud."
In 2021, Unikrn partnered with FYX Gaming to work jointly on development of an updated monetization structure. [15]
Rahul Sood is the CEO and co-founder of Irreverent Labs, the former CEO of Unikrn), and was the founder of VoodooPC. Sood was also an early investor in AR/VR company Vrvana he's also an investor in blockchain play to earn horse racing game ZED Run, and high end PC gaming company, MAINGEAR.
Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network that is open to financial institutions worldwide and was created by Ripple Labs Inc., a US-based technology company. Released in 2012, Ripple is built upon a distributed open source protocol, and supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other units of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes. Ripple purports to enable "secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks". The ledger employs the native cryptocurrency known as XRP.
Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States by trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-source software.
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), sometimes called a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), is an organization managed in whole or in part by decentralized computer program, with voting and finances handled through a blockchain. In general terms, DAOs are member-owned communities without centralized leadership. The precise legal status of this type of business organization is unclear.
The DAO was a digital decentralized autonomous organization and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. After launching in April 2016 via a token sale, it became one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history.
Cardano is a public blockchain platform. It is open-source and decentralized, with consensus achieved using proof of stake. It can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with its internal cryptocurrency, ADA.
An initial coin offering (ICO) or initial currency offering is a type of funding using cryptocurrencies. It is often a form of crowdfunding, although a private ICO which does not seek public investment is also possible. In an ICO, a quantity of cryptocurrency is sold in the form of "tokens" ("coins") to speculators or investors, in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ether. The tokens are promoted as future functional units of currency if or when the ICO's funding goal is met and the project successfully launches.
EOS.IO is a blockchain protocol based on the cryptocurrency EOS. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second. It was developed by the private company Block.one and launched in 2017. The platform was later released as open-source software.
Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is a global company that operates the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high frequency trading software. Binance was initially based in China, then moved its headquarters to Singapore shortly before the Chinese government imposed regulations on cryptocurrency trading. Binance subsequently left Singapore in late 2021 and after that, had no official company headquarters.
Cryptocurrency and crime describes notable examples of cybercrime related to theft of cryptocurrencies and some of the methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that has been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.
The Open Network is a blockchain-based decentralized computer network technology, originally developed by the Telegram team. In May 2020, Telegram withdrew from the project after litigation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for deploying smart contracts. The native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain is the tez. The Tezos network achieves consensus using proof-of-stake. Tezos uses an on-chain governance model that enables the protocol to be amended when upgrade proposals receive a favorable vote from the community. Its testnet was launched in June 2018, and its mainnet went live in September 2018.
TRON is a decentralized, blockchain-based operating system with smart contract functionality, proof-of-stake principles as its consensus algorithm and a cryptocurrency native to the system, known as Tronix (TRX). It was established in March 2014 by Justin Sun and since 2017 has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source software.
Paxos Trust Company is a New York–based financial institution and technology company specializing in blockchain. The company's product offerings include a cryptocurrency brokerage service, asset tokenization services, and settlement services. ItBit, a bitcoin exchange run by Paxos, was the first bitcoin exchange to be licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services, granting the company the ability to be the custodian and exchange for customers in the United States.
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Axie Infinity is a non-fungible token-based online video game developed by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis, known for its in-game economy which uses Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies. It has been called 'a pyramid scheme that relies on cheap labor from countries like the Philippines to fuel its growth.' In September 2021, most Axie Infinity players were from the Philippines.
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Richard Heart is an American cryptocurrency developer and businessman. Heart is the creator of the crypto token HEX and PulseChain, layer-1 blockchain software for Ethereum.
Esports and competitive video gaming | |
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| MOBA |
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| Real-time strategy | |
| Shooter | |
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| Multi-genre | |
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| Defunct organizations | |
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