Money laundering is a major problem in the sports betting industry. In late 2019 the team behind aggle.io thought about drafting a solution to counter this problem. They discussed ideas to open up the market, making it a lot more fair and transparent for everyone involved.
Resulting from these early mind experiments and ideas were concepts about a fully decentralized sports betting exchange that would employ open accounting and EU-AML compliant KYC processes. We set out to develop and test a prototype by May 2021. After the very welcoming & positive response from our participants in the testrun it was clear that aggle.io(https://aggle.io) is in demand and that we have to push our solution live to the testnet.
Be(at) the Bookmaker!
aggle.io not only serves the bookmakers: While we do indeed offer our own quotas as well, this is only done in competition with our community. In the long term we want to move away from the requirement of creating quotas on our own entirely but instead, want to provide a platform-only solution. This means: Both sides of each bet are entirely driven by the community and we only take a commission of a few basis points per transaction. In the long run, we want to position ourselves as the world’s biggest decentralized sports betting exchange.
Transparency and Anti Money Laundering
The sports betting business usually has been banned and forced into black markets by governments all around the globe in the past, all the while businesses offering financial derivatives have flourished under solid regulatory environments with clear-cut sets of rules and authorities supervising and auditing their processes. As a consequence sports betting markets have been pushed into the black or gray markets, and overall adverse situation. The only way to counter these mistakes from days past is by employing fully transparent payment processes only.
By employing the Binance Smart Chain, an Ethereum derivative, all payments coming to and leaving from our smart contract are openly visible for everyone. As of today, we have also integrated Sumsub, a well-reputed 3rd party KYC provider, to securely match the wallet addresses of our users with their real identities. Already today we are protecting our customers from criminal activities, creating a better and, most importantly, safer society.
Go Live on April 16, 2022
The next big step is the migration from the Binance Testnet to the Binance Smart Chain. This opens up the initial stage of our platform for our customers and enables us to scale it up from here. Our platform’s go live will be teamed up with the initial go-live of our bookmaker liquidity pool. Keep in mind that the official release for the pool to the public is still Q3 2022 to generate data for a decision-making process for potential outside investors.
We are very happy to be earlier than initially anticipated with our timeline originally scheduled for Q2 2022 and internal plannings more towards June than April to clarify accounting and taxation beforehand. We believe this is an important step in the life of our startup as well as for our token’s long-term potential.
Upcoming Cornerstones
The go-live is just one step of a lot more steps to come: Initially, our customer base will only be opened up for customers in India: This is due to the issue of licensing & regulation which we need to build step by step. Wonder why we still offer football there? India internationally is the 4th highest-grossing nation when it comes to football bets. But of course, Cricket, Tennis, and Badminton will be there, too.
Our next destination is Europe, a more regulated market compared to India. This comes with its own set of challenges, specifically when it comes to taxation and licensing. We are looking for a Whitelabel solution agreement with a Malta Gaming Authority licensed firm by the end of the year.
In terms of taxation, in the EU taxes in B2C are to be paid at the country of the customer, not the firm. Therefore, we will need to roll out a new taxation system for each and every country we expand to. India is our test market. Europe is the challenge. We have already prepared our smart contracts in a way that will allow us to fully employ optimized taxation for every major country within the EU as well as the UK.
Disclaimer: This is a paid post and should not be treated as news/advice.
Source: https://ambcrypto.com/aggle-io-a-fully-decentralized-sports-betting-exchange/