Atari announces it’s working on a pair of altcoins. One for gaming, one for gambling, and both marking a surprising entry for the venerable gaming company.
Atari recently announced the development of two new cryptocurrencies, Atari Token and Pong Token. If you’re too young to remember the company, the important thing to know is that it was part of a movement to decentralize arcade games. It succeeded then; will it now?
The company announced a partnership with blockchain pro Infinity Networks to create tokens as part of an investment deal.
According to a French press release, the Atari Token is specifically for entertainment:
While the second one, Pong Token, is all about a different type of gaming:
You just have to love those names, never before has a cryptocurrency been so nostalgia-inducing. Calling them “tokens” instead of “coins” is a stroke of brilliance.
While this may seem weird, let’s not forget Atari has been at the front of a burgeoning technology market before. Until it disrupted the industry, video games were “centralized” at the arcade. Game cartridges are like crypto-coins right? Alright, it’s weird, but let’s at least wait until we see a whitepaper.
As a final note, it’s worth pointing out Atari seems to be fairly concerned with regulation:
There’s not a whole lot of information at this point, but we’ll update you as we learn more. We’ve reached out to Atari to see if our high-score for Pitfall still holds up, and to ask about this whole crypto-thing it’s doing.
Sit back and let the hottest tech news come to you by the magic of electronic mail.
Prefer to get the news as it happens? Follow us on social media.
Got two minutes to spare? We’d love to know a bit more about our readers. Start!
All data collected in the survey is anonymous.
