A video game streamer was gifted over $70,000 worth of bitcoin yesterday, while he played the game RuneScape on the video streaming service Twitch in front of an audience of about two thousand. The several separate donations came as a shock to Sick_Nerd, the player’s gaming handle.
Several viewers recorded the stream and Sick_Nerd’s reactions, who had a hard time believing he was not the subject of a prank. He wrote yesterday on Twitter:
Thank you to my mysteriously benefactor [sic] whoever you are, genuinely a life changing amount of money that I or nobody deserves [sic] but look what happened. Crazy
The bitcoin was donated by a user going by the handle of “lightpuma.”
I don't even know wtf to think pic.twitter.com/EpZhY0wCnM
— Sick Nerd (@Sick_Nerd) January 11, 2019
RuneScape, developed by Jagex, is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records in 2017 as having the most users in any Massively Multiplayer Online video game – more than 250 million.
The particular version of the game being played by Sick_Nerd appears to be so-called “Old School Runescape.”
Twitch Accepts Crypto
Twitch began offering a crypto donation option, in addition to Paypal, in mid 2018 through another company called Streamlabs. They then launched support for all the usual suspects: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash. Streamlabs is compatible with Twitch, as well as other streaming platforms such as YouTube, and offers a full suite of software to help streamers manage their livefeeds, content, and donations.
Some gamers make big money livestreaming their play, with one of the biggest streamers claiming to take in $20,000 a month from a combination of donations, advertisements, and subscriptions on Twitch and YouTube. According to TwitchTracker.com, 560 billion minutes worth of Twitch was watched during 2018, all the way from 292 billion in 2016.
