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 cellular recreation publishers with over 1 billion whole downloads. The announcement comes weeks after ZBD launched what’s probably the primary cellular 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 fee 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 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 business’s acquired a funds difficulty and I believe Bitcoin is the answer.’ And my ears pricked proper up.”
Born out of the 2018-2019 development 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 Improvement Package).
Right this moment, the corporate is concentrated on the cellular gaming market. There are over 3 billion players worldwide, with a majority of them taking part in on cellular units, and producing $95 billion in annual income.
“What actually made me bullish on the enterprise was the business acumen of the group. A whole lot of Bitcoin startups are combating the nice combat for Bitcoin adoption, however shopper adoption outdoors of investing and saving has been a problem. Blocks are nonetheless empty at the moment in 2025. That utilization drawback is solvable once you construct one thing shoppers interact with, and I felt gaming was a strong overlap. There are three billion players on this planet. It’s a really giant business.” Cousens added.
Play Counter Strike, Earn Bitcoins
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 preferred first-person shooter online game amongst PC players — which included Bitcoin drops for kills, making a real-money aggressive dynamic, described on the time because the ‘subsequent era 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 significant success, capturing the creativeness of bitcoiners and grabbing the eye of players alike. Actually, it was such a profitable demo that hackers and “try-hard” players began to play, discovering methods to take advantage of the sport and maximize Bitcoin reward payouts. “After we did Counter Strike, the very first thing that occurred was clearly folks farmed the servers they usually simply joined the video games, killed everybody, took all the cash and give up, 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 affix the server. That instantly deterred like 85-90% of the unhealthy 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 unhealthy actors, rewarding experiences with 100 – 500 sats over the lightning community, relying on the scenario. “it wasn’t scalable. It was like Mechanical Turk type.” 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 working video games ourselves,” Cousens defined. The corporate shifted focus to the huge cellular gaming market, however the expertise led ZBD down a deep cyber safety rabbit gap, which knowledgeable their developer tooling providers. Recreation 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 the moment, Cousens shared that they keep watch over the cellphone’s accelerometer, a sensor that measures the system’s motion, to know if the cellphone is in a person’s hand. That is to guard in opposition to farms of units working 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 players who are usually significantly tech savvy and crafty, Cousens famous that “bitcoiners are bloody good cryptographers. I imply, should you’re within the Bitcoin group, you all the time discuss 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’s 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 lately introduced by ZBD and is getting used within the newest partnership with the Idle Financial institution integration, can be out there for recreation builders. Cousens advised Bitcoin Journal, “We simply launched the ZBD SDK, which packages collectively every part, 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 somewhat Bitcoin asset in your online game, drop it within the recreation, and select how and the place you wish to pay folks.”
ZBD is now actively working with near 40 recreation builders, based on 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 cellular video games is way from a gimmick; it’s having measurable outcomes on person 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 because of this. And we see this fairly persistently, once you distribute Bitcoin to gamers, you’re paying them to play. The engagement goes by the roof. And we’ve accomplished surveys of Gen Z and labored with players to validate what’s occurring right here.”
The mannequin is straightforward. Advertisers pay recreation builders for views and clicks; a portion of that income will get changed into bitcoin and returned to gamers as rewards. The bitcoin rewards enhance person retention, which will increase promoting {dollars}. The identical course of performs out with in-game purchases as properly.
“We centered on the advert monetization aspect 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 guess 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 cellular apps with out having to pay an exorbitant payment to the system producer. ZBD walked proper by that door, getting approval for the primary cellular 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 might be traded in for satoshis. “SaruTobi acquired by Apple’s overview, the place you would make purchases in Bitcoin. That was us doing a little R&D,” famous Cousens.
Idle Financial institution Integration – Bitcoin in Mainstream Gaming
Most lately, ZBD introduced a partnership with TapNation, a number one cellular writer with “over 1 billion whole downloads,” based on 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 cellular recreation to ship native Bitcoin rewards to gamers through the Lightning Community. ZBD experiences 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 with 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 straightforward. 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 folks play it as a result of you possibly can stack actual sats, simulating being an actual central banker.”
