Good morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you are in the world. Thank you for tuning in for another AMA. As usual, we’ll just give it a few minutes to allow people to join live, and then we’ll get going with answering the questions that have come through over the past couple of weeks.
All right. Well, there have not been as many questions coming through as usual. I can imagine that most people can’t foresee which ones have come through but I will get started with what we have. If anyone does want to ask anything, please feel free just to request to speak and I’ll bring you up here as well too.
The first four questions came from Jetson. They weren’t so much as questions; it’s just addressing four separate things here so I’ll go through them one by one. The initial one is to address the Android app, which I guess is probably the main question coming up here.
The Android app is going well. The back end will be connected again and playable hopefully tomorrow morning or this evening American time- probably tomorrow morning my time. So we’ll be back on QA. Timewise on release, I’m still hopeful for Q1. That’s still my intention. I’m getting more nervous, obviously, with the fact that it’s now already the 4th of March. I don’t particularly foresee it being delayed into Q2, but there is a potential and obviously we’ve done that before. So I’m hoping that we’re still on everything from the development standpoint and from what we’re being told, Q1 is still should be easily done. But I am nervous now because if things start to come up, then it may end up running just over that line. So fingers crossed that that doesn’t happen, but just to be more realistic than empty promises, just in case it does, there is a small potential. So, yeah, I don’t foresee that happening but I do want to just make sure people are aware that there is a chance. So fingers crossed it’s all looking good, but you know that can change quite quickly, as I have learned.
The second thing here to be addressed was Neo-Tokyo. So there’s been a bit of an issue. It’s not been as simple as expected. It’s not seemingly a one- step process so I have reached out from the company to Alex Becker himself just to get some assistance on this. So the process is still ongoing so hopefully we hear something back shortly. So it’s not like nothing’s being done. It’s just not actually as simple as I would have hoped so hopefully this week. If we don’t hear anything by the end of this week, I will send another message or an email and hope we get through to someone and actually get that ball rolling on that.
The third thing here was the white paper. The white paper is completely done so it’s ready to be published. There were a couple of amendments requested from some of the stakeholders in the company. As soon as we get approval from them, then we’ll put it public. So I’m hoping to hear back hopefully this week. If it’s not this week, then I think I’ll just put it live anyway. So somewhere between now and Friday, we should be able to have that on the website with only minor changes and just a couple of edits on the terms and conditions on there, so nothing major. That will be public and we’ll pop the links on social media for you guys to check it out too.
And the fourth thing is the roadmap. Basically, maybe we should have just removed the roadmap from the website at this point in time until this game is out. We can’t give solid answers on the next step so we can’t publish a roadmap. Everything is going to be delayed obviously until this mobile game is out and live — everything else is dependent on that. So I’m kind of at a point where it’s a little bit hard to give a precise timeline on things when this is one thing that we’re uncertain of is this bit. So as soon as we get past this hurdle, then the rest is actually quite sort of explanatory. We will easily be able to see how long we’ve got to hit the other marks. It’s just this one mark with the time on it that it’s actually quite uncertain. The good thing is a lot of the work that’s just been done, especially with moving the language into what we did, it does make a lot of the future work a lot simpler. Everything will revolve around a much simpler pattern, and the architecture will be a lot easier for everything added on, even for the mini games. So I know it’s added quite a large amount of time. It’s been frustrating for me so I’m sure it’s been frustrating for you. I do believe that once this game is out now, the game will be a lot quicker on all fronts. I know I’ve asked people to be patient enough times, but we’ll just ask one more time. Just be patient on this one little bit, because I do think that we will be able to see a lot of benefits, maybe not as visible to you guys, but you’ll be able to see it in the speed that we can put things out after this one.
I see there is a request from Pandonia to speak. I have approved that. Please feel free to ask.
Pandonia : Hey. What’s up? Sorry. Can you hear me?
Conor: I can hear you. Yes.
Pandonia : Hi, there. Yeah, sorry. Every time I come up, it kind of bugs me. So I can’t hear for those five seconds. I was wondering one thing. If you don’t mind explaining, how are you guys combating the legality of gambling worldwide? Because this is a play to earn, right? And you are advertising yourself as a poker game. And many different countries have many different kinds of legislation on gambling laws,right? Because essentially that’s what it kind of is. How are you combating that, or are you just going to be selective on the countries in which you’re releasing?
Conor: Now that’s a really valid question so thank you for that one. We are completely non-gambling. We are classified as a social casino. The play chips can’t be sold, so you can never cash out for physical cash so from this way although we are play-to-earn. The NFTs — you can withdraw, deposit, customize, sell. That’s completely fine. Because you can’t actually physically cash out winnings, we don’t fall under any gambling regulation internationally. So we’re not going to geo restrict any countries. We do have legal opinions from Singapore on this, from the US. I do believe we have one from Liechtenstein now as well. Obviously it is quite an issue because trying to tell someone that you’re a non-gambling poker platform has caused a lot of roadblocks for us, especially with exchanges. Obviously they hear ‘poker platform’ and ‘non- gambling’ and they go bullshit. We’re not the only non gambling poker platform out there. Zynga games have had Zynga poker, which is fully non-gambling for I don’t know how many years now, since 2007 I believe. WSOP also has a fully non-gambling poker platform. And there are others too. So we are a social casino, but we are legally and approved legally non-gambling on that front.
Pandonia: So if I may ask, sorry. So my background is legal, by the way. That’s the primary reason why I ask because I’ve practiced in the US and in Europe so my knowledge on international law, let’s say, is quite up there. If you’re classifying yourself as a social gambling, you’re correct. And personally, I love WSOP. That’s why I kind of wanted to jump onto this.So since you are a play-to-earn, right, I assume then I earn your tokens and your tokens I essentially can trade afterwards into USDT and that’s the way I earn, correct? Or did I misunderstand your concept?
Conor: If we were doing that, which is how some of the other play-to-earn poker platforms are, if we look at ice poker, you’re earning a token. I don’t think we would be able to get around the gambling laws on that one. I think we would be in very murky water. So our play-to-earn model is different. When you are playing, you’re actually earning the NFTs. All of the accessories on them that you’re earning as well have benefits. You can then withdraw, sell, and buy them on the open market. So you can buy one, deposit into the game, and play, or you can earn one, withdraw it from the market and sell. So we’re not rewarding any tokens and you’re not cashing out any of the play chips, and obviously we’re not dictating the price either. We have no market control over what people are selling the NFTs for. It is still a loosely gray area, but it does seem to be approved in the US, Europe, and the Asian markets. So yeah, our token itself, we’re not giving out in this game. We will give out PKR in play-to-earn games, however, not in this one just due to the fact that it is a poker platform and we don’t want to risk falling on the sweepstakes or gambling laws.
Pandonia: Fair enough. No, it makes sense. It makes sense. It’s just always with gambling laws, they are quite difficult to circumvent. And exactly what you said earlier, a lot of it is loose terms on (sic) what a gambling law is. So, for example, in the Middle East, gambling is considered completely illegal, whereas in Europe, depending on the jurisdiction, it’s somewhat legal. And social gambling again is somewhat legal, but not everywhere. So indeed, that’s why I kind of wanted to come up and ask, as the project has been very interesting to me so far. But you know, these types of questions can’t get answered anywhere except for an AMA.
Conor: No, I really, really appreciate that. Actually, it was a good question. Um, and it has probably been a massive pain in the ass for like four years, managing to ensure that we are legal everywhere that we intend to operate. So it has not been easy to avoid these regulatory issues but we don’t want to operate as a gambling game. So for now, this is the way we’re doing it. We will have the poker platform. So potentially later down the line, we may be able to lease that out to someone who wants to use the platform for gambling but that won’t be done by us.
Pandonia: Well, thank you for answering that.
Conor: Okay. Thank you, Pandora.
So there were actually two more questions, but they are the same. And so I am aware, and I know maybe some of you are aware, at least Fabius and Tomislav, that the LP staking on Steer Protocol has come to an end. I made the decision not to extend it due to the lack of use. I know this is very DeFi. It was required to actually deposit into the liquidity pool, use the receipt token that you received from the liquidity pool to go to Steer Finance, deposit that receipt token to actually stake. I know that for people who aren’t into DeFi, even for people who are into DeFi, it wasn’t a simple process. Considering by the end, when we had our staking pool for PKR on Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum, we had multiple millions of dollars worth of PKR locked up. Even when the API was, last time I looked, like 520%, there was like 3K worth of LP. So we made the decision not to extend that as it seems the couple of people who were using it were making a lot of money out of it. And for most people, it was just either it was just too many steps, too difficult, or too risky for them to participate. Obviously, we’ve always had staking, or at least since September 2021 when we first launched it, so I do want to continue with that. Looking into other options, the most likely option is that we put back the same staking pools that we had before — PKR for PKR — and have them back on polker.game, exactly how it was basically before the hack on Poly Network. So that’s the current plan. If there are other suggestions that people want to put forth and there’s enough support behind those, and they’re, well, obviously better, or at least you guys, as the community, decide they’re better — then I’m happy to hear them and I’m happy to proceed with them as well. But yeah, the reason that we haven’t actively continued with Steer Protocol was simply due to lack of use on that.
Conor: There is another request to speak here and that is from Lucas Spencer. You should be approved to speak.
Lucas: Thanks for taking my question. It pertains to the PKR token, which is much newer than the project itself, which is fine. However, if the in-game currency is Spades, and obviously you’ve covered this every AMA and all of them, you’re earning NFTs, what exactly is the use case for PKR and for all the investors? The project wallet had 40% for years. Never changed and then it ran up. And now it’s down 60%. With 30 million tokens out of the project wallet, it (sic) would be more than enough to significantly reduce everyone’s holdings. I mean, is this just like a funding thing? I’m having trouble drawing the use case and the value other than providing money for the project.
Conor: I’ll be honest with that. Until November or December last year, not a single PKR was sold by the project to be used for the project. It’s been fully funded from the original private sale and IDO and self-funded by the founders as well. So that is not the case 100%, but until November, that was the way it was. We didn’t sell any of the tokens during any of the bull market or anything like that. So no, it’s not a way to self-fund the project. That’s never the intention of it either. The current roadmap for what we have for the token is that at the moment we have the first game, which is poker. This we want out, that’s going to be live, nice and easy. But from then on, I do want the rest of the company to also agree that we’ll move the project to more of a community-driven project, so you guys can decide what comes next, how we are doing it, and we can put questions to you kind of like with the staking. But instead of me just asking, we can actually run it as a proper DAO. You guys can vote in the future of what’s going to be moving next with Polker. So running the DAO is an important thing, especially moving towards decentralization. And that’s coming up. We will have the staking rewards back. They were a big part of the project until the Poly Network hack last year in July. Before that, obviously, we had a huge amount of our tokens locked up in those so we do want to make sure they’re back again. I know that people were enjoying them and people were making money holding them. We will bring back the purchases. That will allow people to purchase things, the PKR pass and Spades and all of these directly with PKR. Currently that has been disabled after we put the new token back out on Polygon. I know that all of our developers are focusing on just getting this mobile game out right now, but as soon as that’s out, or even just before, that will be switched back on. And then also, we will want the token to move to being deflationary. So we have a buyback methodology — 20% of the profits will buy back tokens from the market. So that should push the price up because we will buy at market rate. We won’t be buying OTC or anything. Then from what we buy back, half of those will be burnt so instantly. Since we have a max supply of 1 billion, anything that we burn is creating a deflationary mechanism. And the other half of those are going to go back to community rewards. So whether that’s a staking pool or something else we’ll continue running — all of that will go back to you guys, not to the company in any way.
Lucas : If I may ask, what happened to the hundreds of thousands of dollars of proceeds from the 30 million tokens that are no longer in the project wallet?
Conor: I don’t think there’s been 30 million tokens.
Lucas : It’s 370 million now. It was 400 million, which I’ve seen myself on the blockchain. Anybody that’s into DeFi can see that. And it’s in the white paper that it started at 400 million. So that 30 million went somewhere. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Conor: I would agree with you. I don’t know if that’s been moved to another project wallet. Let me just check.
Lucas : Well, if you look at Polyscan, I mean you can see all the wallets and I didn’t see any new ones there with 30 million in it. I mean, that’d be like a top 2 or 3, 4 wallets. Yeah, it would definitely be hard to find.
Conor: I know we have PKR required for tipcc,which was an oversight that we owed their liquidity still after the hack. But that wasn’t 30 million though, either. So let me just have a look.I don’t have an accurate answer for that one and I should do. It definitely wasn’t me personally moving those tokens, which is why I can’t tell you exactly where they are. But what I can do, though, is definitely inquire and check myself on Polyscan and then just check with the others what they were moved for and where that money went, but there will definitely be an answer. So they are moved. I can see that straight away here. I can’t give you a precise answer without making it up right now which I don’t want to do but I would definitely be able to bring you that I can either bring it to you in a message or I can bring it back up on the next AMA if you want.
Lucas : Yeah. I mean, either one or both. Yeah, any of its fine.
Conor: Perfect. Yeah. Good question. And thank you for asking because that has brought that to my attention too.
Lucas: Thank you.
Conor: All right. Do we have any other questions from you guys who are here live? I hope the answers have been satisfactory, except the last one. That definitely wasn’t satisfactory. I hope you guys all have a good week. It seems that the ETFs in the US have definitely set fire to Bitcoin and triggered a slightly earlier rally than most of us were probably expecting. So, good news in the crypto markets. Medium good news from us regarding it. Not maybe excellent news, but not bad news. But have a great week, guys. Keep sending any messages across on social media and tune in again in a couple of weeks and hopefully have some better answers from you, guys.
