ZBD, Bitcoin funds gaming firm, has built-in Bitcoin rewards into Idle Financial institution, a recreation title from TapNation with over 12 million downloads. TapNation is without doubt one of the world’s main cell recreation publishers with over 1 billion whole downloads. The announcement comes weeks after ZBD launched what’s presumably the primary cell app on Apple telephones with bitcoin rewards.
ZBD, a Bitcoin funds firm launched in 2019, was based by Simon Cowell, Andre Neves, and Christian Moss to handle cost points within the gaming business utilizing Bitcoin. Ben Cousens, a former enterprise capitalist and Bitcoiner, joined as an investor after being launched to the founders, drawn in by their imaginative and prescient. In an unique interview with Bitcoin Journal, Cousens recalled, “I bought launched to Simo, the CEO, by telephone, and we jumped on the decision, and he simply mentioned, ‘I’ve seen how the video games business’s bought a funds concern and I feel Bitcoin is the answer.’ And my ears pricked proper up.”
Born out of the 2018-2019 progress of the Lightning Community, the corporate has developed a mature set of improvement instruments that make it seamless for recreation builders to combine Bitcoin rewards into their video video games, together with an API and an SDK (Software program Growth Equipment).
In the present day, the corporate is targeted on the cell gaming market. There are over 3 billion avid gamers worldwide, with a majority of them taking part in on cell units, and producing $95 billion in annual income.
“What actually made me bullish on the enterprise was the business acumen of the workforce. Lots of Bitcoin startups are combating the nice battle for Bitcoin adoption, however shopper adoption exterior of investing and saving has been a problem. Blocks are nonetheless empty at present in 2025. That utilization drawback is solvable while you construct one thing shoppers have interaction with, and I felt gaming was a strong overlap. There are three billion avid gamers on this planet. It’s a really giant business.” Cousens added.
Play Counter Strike, Earn Bitcoin
The startup made headlines within the Bitcoin business with an early check case of its funds know-how. In 2021, ZBD launched a modded Counter-Strike server — a well-liked first-person shooter online game amongst PC avid gamers — which included Bitcoin drops for kills, making a real-money aggressive dynamic, described on the time because the ‘subsequent technology of esports’. Cousens defined, “If I shot you, you dropped cash within the map, and if I ran and picked up these cash, you’d decide them up immediately within the recreation.”
The Counter-Strike demo was a serious success, capturing the creativeness of bitcoiners and grabbing the eye of avid gamers alike. In reality, it was such a profitable demo that hackers and “try-hard” avid gamers began to play, discovering methods to take advantage of the sport and maximize Bitcoin reward payouts. “Once we did Counter-Strike, the very first thing that occurred was clearly individuals farmed the servers and so they simply joined the video games, killed everybody, took all the cash and stop, utilizing wall hacks and no matter. And it was ‘Oh yeah, forgot about that.’” Cousens recalled including that “we then launched really, fairly a easy mechanic for the Counter-Strike instance that labored, which was you needed to pay to hitch the server. That instantly deterred like 85-90% of the unhealthy actors.”
The sport “blew up” in Brazil, rising their discord neighborhood to over 100,000 individuals, a few of whom volunteered to “sit on the server and look ahead to cheats” to manually boot unhealthy actors, rewarding reviews with 100 – 500 sats over the lightning community, relying on the state of affairs. “it wasn’t scalable. It was like Mechanical Turk fashion.” Cousens famous.
Finally, ZBD shut down the Counter-Strike demo. “We’re within the enterprise of offering the instruments to the sport devs, not constructing video games or operating video games ourselves,” Cousens defined. The corporate shifted focus to the large cell gaming market, however the expertise led ZBD down a deep cyber safety rabbit gap, which knowledgeable their developer tooling providers. Sport builders and advertisers alike shouldn’t have to fret about deep cyber safety to combine Bitcoin into their video games, in any case.
For instance of the lengths ZBD goes to stop advert fraud of their video games at present, Cousens shared that they control the telephone’s accelerometer, a sensor that measures the system’s motion, to know if the telephone is in a consumer’s hand. That is to guard in opposition to farms of units operating auto-clicking software program to defraud advertisers.
Reflecting on his expertise working within the Bitcoin business now for over half a decade in a extremely adversarial area of interest, combating off avid gamers who are usually significantly tech savvy and crafty, Cousens famous that “bitcoiners are bloody good cryptographers. I imply, should you’re within the Bitcoin neighborhood, you all the time speak your self down, proper? ‘We don’t know what we don’t know’ or ‘nothing is ever risk-free’, blah blah blah. However that is an business constructed round cryptography and encryption. And that’s additionally cybersecurity. The overlap there may be simply insane. And consequently, Bitcoin engineers and bitcoiners are likely to make fairly good safety individuals. We’re all fairly paranoid by nature, proper?”
The ZBD SDK and API
The SDK, which was not too long ago introduced by ZBD and is getting used within the newest partnership with the Idle Financial institution integration, can also be out there for recreation builders. Cousens instructed Bitcoin Journal, “We simply launched the ZBD SDK, which packages collectively every little thing, all of our safety right into a quite simple and straightforward to make use of package deal, and that’s not gross sales hyperbole. Individuals are in a position to combine this in two or three days as a result of it’s genuinely drag-and-drop. Create a bit Bitcoin asset in your online game, drop it within the recreation, and select how and the place you need to pay individuals.”
ZBD is now actively working with near 40 recreation builders, in keeping with Cousens, all of whom are working to combine bitcoin rewards into their video video games, paid out utilizing Bitcoin’s Lightning Community. Cousens, who’s an enormous fan of the Lightning Community, defended the protocol, saying that “there’s nonetheless FUD about Lightning and I don’t get it… ZBD has no on-chain providing. Lightning is superb.”
The combination of bitcoin rewards into cell video games is way from a gimmick; it’s having measurable outcomes on consumer retention for ZBD’s purchasers. Discussing the affect on Fumbgames’ “Bitcoin Miner” online game, Cousens mentioned, “I’m not going to share their numbers as a result of I can’t, however they’ve grown greater than 10x as a enterprise on account of this. And we see this fairly constantly, while you distribute Bitcoin to gamers, you’re paying them to play. The engagement goes via the roof. And we’ve carried out surveys of Gen Z and labored with avid gamers to validate what’s happening right here.”
The mannequin is straightforward. Advertisers pay recreation builders for views and clicks; a portion of that income will get become bitcoin and returned to gamers as rewards. The bitcoin rewards improve consumer retention, which will increase promoting {dollars}. The identical course of performs out with in-game purchases as properly.
“We targeted on the advert monetization facet of the gaming business, therefore rewards and bitcoin payouts. Our proposition to the video games business was ‘hey, why don’t you’re taking a small quantity of your advert income and redistribute it to the gamers, and we wager you they’ll play extra, particularly if it’s bitcoin.” Cousens remarked.
SaraTobi’s Bitcoin Microtransactions on Apple Telephones
Following the aftermath of the Epic vs Apple lawsuit within the EU, which dominated in opposition to Apple’s monopolistic app retailer practices, the door was now unlocked to do micropayments inside cell apps with out having to pay an exorbitant payment to the system producer. ZBD walked proper via that door, getting approval for the primary cell recreation with in-app bitcoin purchases and microtransactions, SaruTobi. The sport encompasses a cute little monkey that has to swing from tree to tree to gather bananas, which in flip could be traded in for satoshis. “SaruTobi bought via Apple’s evaluate, the place you can make purchases in Bitcoin. That was us doing a little R&D,” famous Cousens.
Idle Financial institution Integration – Bitcoin in Mainstream Gaming
Most not too long ago, ZBD introduced a partnership with TapNation, a number one cell writer with “over 1 billion whole downloads,” in keeping with the press launch. Their flagship recreation known as Idle Financial institution, which already has over 12 million downloads. Idle Financial institution is the primary mainstream cell recreation to ship native Bitcoin rewards to gamers through the Lightning Community. ZBD reviews that since launch, the sport has achieved a 355% improve in 30-day participant retention and a 124% increase in income per participant, demonstrating Bitcoin’s affect on engagement and monetization.
Commenting on the combination, Cousens mentioned, “We’ve identified Philippe at TapNation for fairly a while. He’s very all in favour of in search of methods the video games business can undertake new applied sciences, and he had religion in us that this bitcoin rewards mannequin is highly effective and works, so his groups agreed to combine the ZBD SDK. They did discover it very simple. Idle Financial institution is a recreation the place you print fiat cash and mine Bitcoin secretly to screw over your prospects. I like to recommend individuals play it as a result of you may stack actual sats, simulating being an actual central banker.”
