For many, cryptocurrency remains a mysterious fad, another topic that millennial techies like to use to confuse their elders. For others, it’s become a viable workaround to the characteristically fragile and contrived currency systems upon which the global economies depend. The practice of playing cryptocurrency values as one would publicly traded stocks has caught on as a popular—and in some cases, very lucrative—practice. Still, the idea of day trading cryptocurrency isn’t the most intuitive, research is necessary before you invest in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or buy Ethereum on paybis. One company has been trying to change that. Blockium, an outgrowth of Fokoya, hosts daily mock-trading competitions.

The tournaments are either free or cost a small amount to join. Before they begin, players pick three stocks or coins to either buy or sell. Based on the value won or lost during the duration of the tournament, Blockium selects winners, who are awarded cash prizes.

“Blockium was founded based on the principle that financial trade is a peer to peer action,” said Gilad Raz, Co-founder and CEO of the Tel Aviv-based company. “Our strategy is to combine markets by bringing innovative concepts to them The first version of the concept over a year ago, was creating interactions between opposite financial positions in real time. Since then the concept had a few evolutions, the latest of which is our exciting live trading tournaments. The users create portfolios of stocks, currencies and cryptocurrencies and compete against friends and strangers, learn and progress in financial trading, and win real money. The company’s peer to peer vision allow us cut out brokers, account managers, and institutions, and to bring much fun and excitement to financial trading.”

Getting People Familiar with Trading Cryptocurrency

The idea for Blockium emerged roughly a year ago. Fokoya had already developed a gamified stock trading platform. Incorporating cryptocurrency was a natural next step.

“The team was in high volume of development while the crypto industry was booming with new companies and ICO’s launching almost every day, many of them founded by Israeli friends and colleagues, some even right from our building in Rothschild, Tel Aviv,” Raz said.

“We couldn’t stay indifferent to the opportunity with a product which already had the perfect structure, concept and features to include the cryptocurrencies in it. The company always believes in sophisticated and educational activity on its products, therefore, we invest a good deal in designing and creating our features, social media and even our business models to foster a place for people to learn about new markets with minimum risk and maximum potential.”

Blockium’s Google Doc Has Everything You Need to Know

To aid in this, Raz and his team also developed an ongoing, open cryptocurrency database. The public Google doc, which is open to the public to edit, collects all known cryptocurrencies along with their value. On the database, cryptocurrency enthusiasts can learn about everything from upcoming ICOs to podcasts and blogs on the subject.

“This spreadsheet is a center of information for almost every relevant detail about the crypto market. It is also a social platform, everybody can offer relevant information and categories and to provide more solutions to the community. The database is a historical solution for people to learn, educate and even become professional in the market in minimum time. It is one of many other educational tools the company provides to its community,” Raz said.

To think that a free crypto trading game gives out daily cash prizes might sound too good to be true. But according to Raz, it’s all part of the plan.

“These days the company’s strategy is focused on creating a large community of super-engaged, educated and qualified users for different markets. For us, Blockium is an execution product for our growing community, and there is no better experience in the world for the user than collecting his winning funds to his bank account. The concept of educating your community how to make money and provide them with the opportunity to convert this knowledge into profits is a game changer. Every day we research, analyze statistics and learn more about how to optimize and innovate this mechanism. In parallel, the company is developing different projects with different business models such as an innovative crypto exchange, our initial coin and more – all will be inventively offered to our great community.”

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While many deal in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies because it is requires no third parties, its value is rising, and it’s 100% secure, some people just use it to buy cats. These cats aren’t mammals; they’re digital, made up of unique blockchain code. Cryptokitties have different breeds and distinct features based on their resulting Ethereum blockchain segment. For a price, owners can breed their cryptocats with others and pass down desirable ‘cattributes.’ This is no web app or downloadable sim. All of the CryptoKitties husbandry practices occur via Ethereum blockchain logic. The website serves as the interface.

If any of this sounds confusing, or you want to start your own blockchain-based game, we will refer you to CryptoZombies. It was developed by a team at Loom Network in order to teach would-be cryptogamers exactly how the sausage gets made.

How It Works

You do not need an advanced knowledge of programming to realize your cryptogaming fantasy. The developers say that a knowledge of Solidity (the programming language used), programming and blockchain technology always helps, but there is no prerequisite for this online educational tool.

The learning material is pretty much half coding, half crypto-collectible strategy game. In the first lesson, learners build their zombie factory which will later produce their zombie army. Each zombie has an automatically-assigned unique DNA which translates into a different physical appearance. Loom is still in the building phase and one new lesson will be released every week.

Each lesson focuses on a specific area and takes you through the basics of Solidity and how to apply it to gaming on the Ethereum network. All lesson modules and coding in Solidity occurs right in the learner’s browser window. What’s more, CryptoZombies is 100% free.

As learners progress, they will be rewarded with unlockable achievements and stickers. Lesson 1 can be completed in one sitting and, by the end, the developers promise, “you’ll know enough to officially call yourself a Solidity developer!”

According to the developers at Loom, this is just the tip of the iceberg. They plan to build a platform dedicated entirely to running decentralized applications (dApps as they are known) of any kind on Ethereum side-chains. These will undoubtedly include more than a couple cryptogames. Because of the decentralized nature of these apps, which are built with segments of blockchain owned by different users, the scale they can achieve is kind of mind bottling. The folks at Loom hope to exceed the scope of StarCraft with their future games.

“Games are one of the areas where we think blockchain will really revolutionize things,” the company writes.

“So we built CryptoZombies to help educate and inspire the next generation of blockchain game devs.”

The Wide World of the Ethereum Blockchain and Decentralized Apps

Blockchain-based gaming has already been around for years. One of the most popular is called Etheria, a minecraft-like game in which players can pay one ether for one block, mine it, and build. Because it is owned by its users, it can never be taken down or altered.

Numerous other dApps exist. Many, such as TenX and Raiden Network, seek to facilitate the transfer of cryptocurrency. Others, however, bear little relation to cryptocurrency. Gnosis, for example, is an unofficial polling platform where users can ask any question they like. EtherTweet is a communication dApp.

Wow. This is a lot. It’s time to take a step back and get a drink of water. When you’re ready to jump back in to the world of the blockchain and cryptogaming, CryptoZombies is by no means a bad place to start.

The post Forget CryptoKitties, CryptoZombies Will Teach You Everything You Need to Know About Creating Your Own Ethereum Game appeared first on eLearningInside News.