Bling allows players to earn Bitcoin rewards from games

Bling has raised seed funding to enable game developers to give Bitcoin rewards to players who engage with games.

The round included a strategic investment by Coinbase Ventures, which, when the time comes, could be a reliable partner for crypto custody and exchange. Previously, the company raised money from pre-seed investors such as Wavemaker Genesis, Gumi Cryptos Capital, and Blocktower Capital.

The Irvine, California-based Bling’s vision is to make money fun by providing an entertaining and risk-free way for first-time crypto users to enter the market by playing simple games that reward them with points that can be converted into Bitcoin.

Bling isn’t disclosing the amount of money they raised from Coinbase Ventures. But it was a good reward for a company that had to do a major pivot and found itself giving out Bitcoin to players who are curious about earning money playing games. It’s another example of what I call the Leisure Economy, where we all get paid to play games.

Bling also has an opportunity to take those crypto-curious players and get them to auto-invest a dollar into Bitcoin every month or whatever. And that could help them earn cryptocurrency over time. Other companies like Acorn have done that, and that kind of business can make money in various ways.

“I think one reason why we’ve been so successful is because we’ve made it so easy, like you’re no longer risking your money,” Wan said. “It’s risk free. It’s like a fun experience that you’re you’re earning some Bitcoin, which you don’t really know how to get into it.”

With the new round of money, the company will expand its staff of 11 to more people. And it will start testing paid user acquisition. Most of the staff is based near Irvine in Orange County, but it will likely adopt a hybrid remote work and office work routine.

It’s tough hiring engineers now because most of them want to work remotely and they’re asking for big salaries, Wan said.

“We’re hearing a lot of interesting stories and trying to figure out how we’re gonna deal with this,” she said. “I want to let people do a lot more remote stuff. But at the same time, I believe that companies that are not able to get their staff to go into the office might end up losing in terms of competitiveness.” As for things like nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, Wan knows a lot about fintech. But she’s not ready to dive into them yet while the regulatory picture is unclear.

“I think the ecosystem concentrates a lot on how technology is so awesome. And they forget a lot of real-world practical things like user behavior or laws and regulations,” Wan said. “I think NFT’s have a future. I think tokens have a future. But the way that they are being utilized right now to me looks much more like a security.”

News Summary:

• Bling allows players to earn Bitcoin rewards from games
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