Summary

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1. What exactly is " SkinCoin " ?

2. Lets look at the competition

3. How about the market then?

4. Concluding

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What exactly is " SkinCoin " ?

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I am going to give you a quick overview of what SkinCoin is, but i did write an article explaining a bit more in-depth all the features of SkinCoin, you can find the article here.
The following text is originally taken from the article i wrote, refereed to above.

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SkinCoin is a new cryptocurrency that's based on the ethereum network. The project is focusing on the business off in-game items, more specifically CS:GO, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 items. The token SkinCoin has adapted is called SKIN and will be exclusively used for betting services and game items trading (buying/selling).

The name SkinCoin comes from the most usually traded gaming commodity, namely skins, items which change your in-game appearance. Though the name suggests that it will only be used for trading skins, that is not true in this case as the usability is extended to all sorts of items (weapons, upgrades etc).

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Right now many companies are trying to ride the crypto wave in any way that is possible. Many projects are focused on the same thing, and sometimes it can be hard to draw clear distinctions between different companies that are yet to launch.
One of the biggest competitors of SkinCoin is Firstblood. Lets see what Firstblood has to offer and how SKIN can respond to the competition.

Firstblood - Play eSports, win rewards

• Play competitive matches online with set rewards (rewards given in official token SŦ)

• You can start and host eSport tournaments with multiple levels off winning games required to set one winner.

• Act as a jury and witness in the Firstblood competitions. Your role will be to then vote on the outcome of games, this to ensure fairness and thwart any cheating attempts.

• You will earn rewards in the native Firstblood token (SŦ) for acting as a witness, a winning player or a tournament host.

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Firstblood Vs SkinCoin - 3, 2, 1, FIGHT!

While SkinCoin will offer multiple services, namely in the form of both eSport betting, gambling and virtual-item trading, other companies like Firstblood will only offer one service. That service being exclusively to the eSport betting market. Except for that, there is also one other key difference that also speaks for SKIN which is the set-up of their tokens.

While the Firstblood token only will be used on their website, to be used for betting and receiving economic rewards, the SkinCoin token is trying to take it's place as a "global" gaming currency. They want you to be able to simply use SKINS to trade virtual items easily and effective with other players on a myriad of different websites. They already have 3 operational marketplaces (since 2013) where SKIN will be implemented with haste and are exploring options with more partners.

Three Key competitive advantages

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• While the eSport betting function off Firstblood will solely be determinant upon that the 2 witnesses required for each match are honest, SkinCoin will monetize their eSports games to make sure no cheating or corruption is involved.

• The Firstblood tokens will only be used for betting on their service. This will require a real hefty user base to push the price up, as the only avenue to do this is trough the use of their own service. After you win you will then have to exchange the token to some other form of payment like bitcoin to be able to do anything different with it then just betting on games.
  SkinCoin will offer a token with a broad spectrum of usability inside the gaming world. After you win some SKIN tokens you can just directly buy some cool in-game items (also the stability of the token exchange will most likely be higher as the price can get a push from 2 directions). They are trying to create a whole infrastructure with their token for the gaming community.

• SkinCoin already has 3 live sites running on 4 years old each (you can see more information about them in my previous article). They already sell virtual gaming items and have built up a customer base giving them 25,500 transactions/day in total from these three sites. The SKIN token will be used on all these sites after launch. Firstblood does not have a ready and tested product with an already supportive community base.

SkinCoin WINS! Flawless victory. Fatality!

How is the market looking?

SkinCoin made a good analyses of the market in their whitepaper, which i will share here but can also be found on page 7 in their whitepaper 1.0.

As Narus Advisors reports, the size of the market amounted to about $7.4 billion in 2016. This is the total sum of bets made in skins by players all over the world.
According to Eilers&Krejcik, more than 3 million people have made their bets on the results of eSports games with skins worth $2.3 billion during 2015.
Despite the fact that this kind of bets can hardly be considered mainstream or be compared with the cryptocurrency market, the growth of the skin gambling market is really fascinating: more than 300% in 2016 compared to 2015.

The market for skin gambling is distributed across a handful of dominant products.
Sportsbook-style betting (wagers on esports matches) is the largest vertical. The second most popular is jackpot-style games, essentially lotteries where players receive tickets based on the value of their deposited skins. Simple forms of roulette games, coin flip games, and blackjack games make up much of the remaining turnover.
In terms of market participants, the skin gambling industry grew quickly from a handful to hundreds of sites in the course of a year. The vast majority of those sites were variations on the basic jackpot product theme. Ultimately, we believe the bulk of handle in the skin gaming industry

Concluding

SkinCoin is looking like a interesting oppurtunity. I have not invested in them myself yet, as i feel some more due diligence upon the exact market conditions is needed. When compared to other similiar projects based on ETH, they do seem to stick out. One strong point for me personally is also the already established sites they have, with a active community. This + the fact that they are aiming for a global gaming currency speaks to me much more then projects like Firstblood.

I hope you got some value from this and perhaps start doing your own research if you find it interesting. Always remember to act with due diligence when investing.

Peace & Love Friends. Steem on!

Sources

1. https://firstblood.io/#info

2. Firstblood Whitepaper

3. https://skincoin.org/

4. SkinCoin Whitepaper 1.0