Crypto exchange FTX.US is launching a new gaming business

FTX.US, the American affiliate of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX, is launching a new gaming business.

Dubbed FTX Gaming, the new unit aims to help gaming studios integrate blockchain technology and NFTs into their games, according to two job openings posted by FTX.US earlier this month. FTX.US is hiring software engineers with experience in the C# programming language and the Unity game engine. Unity is a popular game development platform created by Unity Technologies.

Bloomberg first reported the news. An FTX spokesperson told the publication that FTX Gaming will provide a “crypto-as-a-service” platform through which game publishers can launch tokens and offer support for NFTs.

Gaming is an exciting use case for crypto, according to FTX, as more than two billion gamers in the world have played with and collected digital items and can now also own them through NFTs.

The news comes a month after FTX.US president Brett Harrison tweeted that gaming will be a big part of the exchange’s 2022 plans. “Excited for the tech challenges this will bring for us — integrating NFT, crypto trading, and wallet tech directly into in-game economies at [a] massive scale,” Harrison said at the time.

In November, FTX also launched a $100 million blockchain gaming fund along with Solana Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners to invest in startups focused on building blockchain gaming studios. The blockchain gaming category has also been very popular among venture capitalists, having attracted billions of dollars worth of investments.