Shuffle’s first global sporting partnership as we embark on our journey to becoming the biggest and the best betting platform in the world - very excited for this one and what we can create with Sunderland 🤝

In the early days of Shuffle, we tried to raise $2.5M a few months before we launched. I thought we had a strong pitch, we had an absolute weapon in Ishan taking the conversations, a clean pitch deck, and a fairly obvious opportunity with a practical path as to how we would take advantage of it. We ended up only closing less than half what we were looking for, and really struggled to get a lot of potential investors across the line. Around 6-12 months later, I caught wind of a couple raises for other casinos - they managed to raise 10x what we did in about 10% of the time it took us to close. Upon reflection, the VC game is a game that we weren’t willing to play like some other more traditionally experienced teams were, and so we struggled with that. In this case, it worked out fairly well for us, with the jury still out on whether these other teams will be able to deliver on the lofty promises handed out to investors. I see a lot of similarities between that time, dealing with VC for Shuffle, and where we’re at now with SHFL. There is a game in crypto that seems to be won (at least short-term) by teams who are willing and able to spin a narrative bigger and better than any others. Generally we see a recursive cycle that looks like: - narrative pops up, usually VC-driven - opportunistic teams create tokens to capitalise, often attached to vaporware - the market realises over time there’s not much genuine value in the narrative/tokens - value reallocates into blue-chip tokens or completely exits the space It happens repeatedly because it’s genuinely a very profitable strategy for the teams/investors that are early enough in the cycle. To be clear, I have no interest in operating a business or a token like this. From day one, I’ve told our team that our main priority is on building the best product we can, with genuine utility, that optimises for the experience of our users. Spinning a narrative that jams flighty money into the token to hit insane valuations temporarily until buyers get bored doesn’t fit within that. I want to build a generational business, not a flavour of the month. I see maybe 3 businesses that are actually used in crypto; exchanges, lending and gambling (more broadly, payments). You can see this in the products that have been around for years and will likely continue to exist into the future - products like Binance/Bybit, Aave, and more recently Hyperliquid and Pump(dot)fun. Pump(dot)fun has separate considerations in expanding outside of just memecoins (a narrative whose cycle we’re seeing the tail-end of) that will affect their long-term trajectory, but I have faith that their team is strong enough to capitalise on the huge leg-up they’ve built. I say all of this because I want to make sure I’m continuing to give insight into how we think about Shuffle, SHFL, and what will be the biggest lottery in the world. I get a lot of varying opinions daily from a range of people on where we should be taking our token, but our only focus right now is on building the biggest business and the best product, and ensuring we make the right choices around how and where that value accrues. I know if we continue doing that, we’ll make our mark as a cornerstone of actual value in crypto.