For years, people have bet on the ponies with horse racing an activity that includes betting in person at racetracks and also online thanks to the rise of online sports betting and horse wagering.
Fans of cryptocurrency might have a new form of animal betting with the rise of Hamsters HAMS/USD and other animal racing-linked cryptocurrencies.
What Happened: A new blockchain-based platform called Hamsters.gg was recently launched, which offers viewers the chance to bet on hamsters in live-streamed races and wager and win cryptocurrency.
“The hamsters are real and the bets are real. The hamsters are running on a track and the first hamster to cross the finish line wins,” the Hamsters website says.
Streamed on Twitch, four hamsters race on a short track with users betting with Binance USD BUSD/USD. Bettors can deposit tokens from either the BNB Chain or Ethereum ETH/USD.
According to Coindesk, the HAMS whitepaper says that the platform takes 5% of all bets placed. Of this total, 4% is distributed to HAMS token holders.
The rise in bets on the platform helped the valuation of HAMS soar in recent days, hitting a high of $3.32 on July 21, before coming back down to under $1.
The Hamsters Twitter account has promised more to come for betting on Hamsters and has also brushed off allegations of using replays and renaming the same hamsters for races.
Related Link: How To Use Binance Smart Chain
Why It’s Important: If using hamsters in the world of cryptocurrency sounds familiar, it might be because you remember a hamster named Mr. Goxx.
In 2021, Mr. Goxx captured the hearts of the cryptocurrency world as he completed live trades via a Twitch account. The hamster would run on a wheel and then select one of dozens of preselected cryptocurrencies. The hamster would then also pick whether it was to buy or sell the token in question.
The decisions made by Mr. Goxx were turned into real cryptocurrency trades and saw Mr. Goxx outperform Warren Buffett, Cathie Wood and other stock investors over a short period of time.
With the rise of hamster betting, cryptocurrency degens might already be moving onto the next animal racing type. New crypto-themed betting platforms for races involving snails, rats and rabbits have also popped up, according to Decrypt.
Coingecko now tracks a new category for animal kingdom race-themed tokens, including HAMS.
Connecting horse racing to the world of cryptocurrency and NFTs also saw the launch of Zed Run in 2019, which was one of the early hits during the NFT bull market run of 2021. Users are able to buy horse NFTs, breed them and race them for tokens.
While betting on hamsters or a token associated with the project, it is worth the reminder that sometimes new tokens drop in value and investing and crypto fads can fade away.
For the crypto degens, betting on animal races with tokens might be a fun activity or a rewarding exercise.
HAMS Price Action: According to data from Coinmarketcap, the HAMS token trades at $0.6496 at the time of writing. The token has traded between $0.3821 and $3.32 since tracking began.
Read Next: Crypto Trading Hamster Mr. Goxx Is Back From The Dead
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