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 likely one of the world’s main cell recreation publishers with over 1 billion complete downloads. The announcement comes weeks after ZBD launched what’s probably 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 deal with fee points within the gaming trade 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 acquired launched to Simo, the CEO, by cellphone, and we jumped on the decision, and he simply stated, ‘I’ve seen how the video games trade’s acquired a funds concern and I believe Bitcoin is the answer.’ And my ears pricked proper up.”
Born out of the 2018-2019 progress of the Lightning Network, the corporate has developed a mature set of growth 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 Improvement Equipment).
At the moment, the corporate is targeted on the cell gaming market. There are over 3 billion 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 industrial acumen of the crew. Plenty of Bitcoin startups are combating the nice struggle for Bitcoin adoption, however client adoption exterior of investing and saving has been a problem. Blocks are nonetheless empty at this time in 2025. That utilization downside is solvable once you construct one thing customers have interaction with, and I felt gaming was a robust overlap. There are three billion avid gamers on the earth. It’s a really giant trade.” Cousens added.
Play Counter Strike, Earn Bitcoin
The startup made headlines within the Bitcoin trade with an early take a look at case of its funds expertise. 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 choose them up immediately within the recreation.”
The Counter-Strike demo was a significant success, capturing the creativeness of bitcoiners and grabbing the eye of avid gamers alike. Actually, it was such a profitable demo that hackers and “try-hard” avid gamers began to play, discovering methods to use the sport and maximize Bitcoin reward payouts. “Once we did Counter-Strike, the very first thing that occurred was clearly folks 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 truly, 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 dangerous actors.”
The sport “blew up” in Brazil, rising their discord group to over 100,000 folks, a few of whom volunteered to “sit on the server and look ahead to cheats” to manually boot dangerous 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 type.” Cousens famous.
Ultimately, 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 mustn’t have to fret about deep cyber safety to combine Bitcoin into their video games, in any case.
For example of the lengths ZBD goes to stop advert fraud of their video games at this time, Cousens shared that they regulate the cellphone’s accelerometer, a sensor that measures the gadget’s motion, to know if the cellphone is in a consumer’s hand. That is to guard towards farms of units operating auto-clicking software program to defraud advertisers.
Reflecting on his expertise working within the Bitcoin trade now for over half a decade in a extremely adversarial area of interest, combating off avid gamers who are typically significantly tech savvy and crafty, Cousens famous that “bitcoiners are bloody good cryptographers. I imply, in case you’re within the Bitcoin group, you at all times 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 trade constructed round cryptography and encryption. And that’s additionally cybersecurity. The overlap there may be simply insane. And because of this, Bitcoin engineers and bitcoiners are likely to make fairly good safety folks. 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 all the things, all of our safety right into a quite simple and simple to make use of package deal, and that’s not gross sales hyperbole. Persons are capable of combine this in two or three days as a result of it’s genuinely drag-and-drop. Create just a little Bitcoin asset in your online game, drop it within the recreation, and select how and the place you need to pay folks.”
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 wonderful.”
The mixing 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 stated, “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, once you distribute Bitcoin to gamers, you’re paying them to play. The engagement goes by means of the roof. And we’ve executed 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 enhance consumer retention, which will increase promoting {dollars}. The identical course of performs out with in-game purchases as nicely.
“We centered on the advert monetization aspect of the gaming trade, therefore rewards and bitcoin payouts. Our proposition to the video games trade 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 towards 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 gadget producer. ZBD walked proper by means of that door, getting approval for the primary cell recreation with in-app bitcoin purchases and microtransactions, SaruTobi. The sport incorporates 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 acquired by means of Apple’s evaluate, the place you would make purchases in Bitcoin. That was us performing some 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 complete downloads,” in keeping with the press launch. Their flagship recreation is 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 by way of the Lightning Community. ZBD reviews that since launch, the sport has achieved a 355% enhance in 30-day participant retention and a 124% enhance in income per participant, demonstrating Bitcoin’s affect on engagement and monetization.
Commenting on the combination, Cousens stated, “We’ve recognized Philippe at TapNation for fairly a while. He’s very concerned about in search of methods the video games trade 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 clients. I like to recommend folks play it as a result of you’ll be able to stack actual sats, simulating being an actual central banker.”
