Billy Bets Raises $1M, Aims to Disrupt Sports Betting with Blockchain
2min read An AI sports betting agent named Billy Bets is aiming to disrupt the traditional tipster industry by leveraging blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. The agent, which operates on the Solana blockchain, provides users with transparent insights into its betting strategies and performance, addressing the lack of transparency that often plagues the tipster industry.
Billy Bets has already attracted significant investment, closing a $1 million pre-seed funding round with participation from notable investors such as Coinbase Ventures, basketball player Serge Ibaka, and CMS Holdings. The project has shown promise, with the AI agent already achieving notable wins, including correctly picking the winning horse for the Kentucky Derby and making it to the final eight in a March Madness college basketball tournament.
The AI agent utilizes a variety of fine-tuned artificial intelligence models, including the OpenAI SDK for research and memory embeddings, a range of Claude models for reasoning, and Grok for its personality. This allows Billy to conduct "custom deep research" based on a framework established by the team behind the project, which is continually being refined.
One of Billy's key advantages over traditional tipsters is its ability to view every bet placed on an event via the transparency of blockchain networks. This allows the agent to analyze data in a way that is not possible with traditional sportsbooks, enabling it to buy and sell parts of a position as the odds of an outcome fluctuate.
However, Billy does not win every bet. At the time of writing, the agent has an 82% return on investment on its five golf bets, but an ROI of -6% on NBA games and -4% on MLB, resulting in an overall portfolio loss of around -3.71%. In comparison, top-level professional sports handicappers typically have an ROI of around 2.29%.
Billy Bets aims to address the issues of transparency and trust in the tipster industry by putting everything on-chain. This means that every bet made by the agent, whether a win or a loss, is recorded on the blockchain, providing users with proof of its performance. The project's roadmap includes the development of an automated betting bot that will allow users to fund their own self-custody wallets and have Billy execute its strategies on their behalf.
The Billy Terminal, which is set to enter open beta later this week, will allow users to view the bot's win rate overall or focus on specific sports. Through the trading dashboard, users can view all of the agent's picks rated on a conviction score, chat with Billy about the pick to understand its reasoning, and place bets via a number of different on-chain sportsbooks and prediction markets.
Billy Bets is tackling issues that have been identified through decades of betting experience, including the opaque and laborious processes of traditional tipsters and the tendency of sportsbooks to ban winners. By operating on-chain, Billy Bets aims to provide a more transparent and trustworthy alternative to traditional tipsters, while also offering users the ability to execute their strategies in permissionless environments.
