You Can Now Earn Bitcoin by Playing Solitaire and Sudoku

Fans of all-time classic games such as Solitaire and Sudoku can now enjoy the already familiar gameplay with the added benefit of getting rewards in Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

This became possible thanks to the extended partnership between Bitcoin-centric gaming startup Zebedee and London-based mobile games studio Viker, who joined forces to bring crypto rewards to three popular games—aside from classic card game Solitaire and logic puzzle Sudoku, the list also includes Missing Letters, a Wordle-like game where players have to identify which letter is missing in each word.

“These games are played literally by billions of people, for hundreds of hours over many years. But so far, none of them have been able to earn anything for their time. Why continue that, when we’re now in an era where games can reward you with more than just fun?” Dan Beasley, a co-founder of Viker, said in a statement shared with Decrypt.

According to Beasley, Viker has the largest play-and-earn portfolio of casual games, with as many as 500,000 players earning Bitcoin every month.

As with Wheel of Trivia and Balls King—some of the Bitcoin-powered games that have been previously launched through the partnership between the two companies, players need no technical setup or prior knowledge of crypto.

All that is required from players is to write their Zebedee Gamertag (a profile username within the Zebedee ecosystem) into Viker’s app, where the gameplay is happening, and press withdraw to see the earned coins appear in the Zebedee app.

Bitcoin gaming goes Lightning

Zebedee’s gaming wallet, which is available via mobile apps and desktop browser extensions, is based on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network—a layer-2 scaling solution that aims to make Bitcoin transactions nearly instant and cheap.

“There is no better way to introduce next-generation play-and-earn mechanics to a broad gaming audience than to take the games people already know and love and refresh them with Bitcoin, seamlessly and unobtrusively,” said Zebedee CEO Simon Cowell.

According to Cowell, titles like Solitaire and Sudoku “have seen basically no meaningful innovation in many years;” however, thanks to innovative tools such as Bitcoin rewards, “even more players are now able to enjoy a more rewarding gameplay experience in the games they love.”

Today’s news comes hot on the heels of Zebedee raising a $35 million Series B funding round led by Kingsway Capital, with participation from several other investors, including Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix.

Earlier this year, Zebedee integrated the services of crypto payments firm MoonPay to simplify the process of playing games built around Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.