Bitcoin has blown onto the scene in the past few years with its huge bull run in late 2017. The attention brought to bitcoin was massive, with the conversation of bitcoin coming up at family BBQs and other events.
It was a great time for investors who brought bitcoin years prior as they made a lot of cash. While companies like Lamborghini were accepting bitcoin as a payment method for their cars.
Only a select few companies were into bitcoin at the time. Here we will examine if bitcoin is a viable payment or wagering currency for major online casino gambling and not just at cryptocurrency exclusive online casinos.
The History of Bitcoin
Bitcoin was established in 2008 by a person or group of people going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. The creation of bitcoin is covered in a dark cloud. No one really knows who the creator of the cryptocurrency is, it’s still a mystery to this day. In 2009 the first block was mined to gain the first-ever bitcoin. This block was known as the genesis block.
The price of bitcoin was original $0.30, it soon spiked in price throughout the years until the huge boom in 2017. This saw bitcoin reach a massive $19,783 high. Since then, bitcoin has been going on a downward trend in price with huge volatility.
Where to Get Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is purchased from cryptocurrency exchanges. Major cryptocurrency exchanges allow people to purchase bitcoin using their debit and credit cards.
Bitcoin is easily accessible but it depends on the country you live in. Here in America, you can buy bitcoin from a number of different exchanges such as:
- Coinbase
- Coinmama
- eToro USA
- Coinbase Pro
- Kraken
- LocalBitcoins
There are many more places to purchase the tokens from, but the ones mentioned are the most popular and trusted exchanges on the market. It used to be difficult to get into the cryptocurrency market before these platforms existed.
Now with regulations being put into place, it is becoming easier for everyone to buy bitcoin. Gambling with bitcoin required players to purchase the currency from external sources before depositing it into online casinos. This is where cryptocurrency exchanges come into play.
Bitcoin Casinos
At the moment, there are only a few online casinos that accept bitcoin as a payment form. These small online casinos are known as bitcoin casinos. They offer a whole range of games that accept bitcoin. They usually offer:
- Bitcoin Live Table Games
- Bitcoin Slots.
- Bitcoin Table Games
The main online casinos that accept traditional currencies such as the dollar prefer this payment as it’s much easier for them to process. The games provided on bitcoin casinos are similar to those provided by normal online casinos. The only difference is that you can deposit in bitcoin, and potentially play in bitcoin and selected bitcoin casinos.
Difficulties of Using Bitcoin
Gambling with bitcoin isn’t as easy as it sounds. Players need to understand how bitcoin works before they can gamble with it. This is because there are many things they need to look into before they are able to gamble properly at the bitcoin casinos.
One of the big issues is getting bitcoin deposited onto the online casino’s website. Online casinos will usually let you deposit with bitcoin and then convert it into cash or credits. They don’t usually allow players to wager using bitcoin because of all the drawbacks it brings.
Depositing Bitcoin
The process of depositing bitcoin to an online casino is different from using a credit card to deposit dollars. There are steps players need to take to obtain the bitcoin before they can actually deposit it to the bitcoin casino. Before depositing, players need a bitcoin wallet and an account with a cryptocurrency exchange.
This allows players to buy their bitcoin and withdraw it from the exchange to their cryptocurrency wallet. Depositing then requires players to input the wallet address provided by the casino to add funds to the account.
This is where things get interesting as mentioned before, online casinos will change the bitcoin to cash or credits. But what if they didn’t? What if they allowed players to wager in bitcoin? Let’s talk about what would happen if you wagered in bitcoin.
Wagering in Bitcoin
Wagering in bitcoin isn’t as easy as it sounds. The biggest issue with this is that bitcoin is highly volatile. This means bitcoins price against the dollar is always changing rapidly.
For example, If you place a bet of 0.03 bitcoin on blackjack and you win, your total payout would be 0.06 bitcoin with a profit of 0.03 bitcoin. If the price of bitcoins fell by 5% this means you lose 5% of your profit when you go to convert it to dollars at the exchange. The same applies if the price spiked by 5%, your winnings when you convert would go up by 5%. This makes bitcoin wagering a double edge sword.
One bitcoin is split into one-hundred-million parts which can be difficult to understand how many dollars you’re betting using the cryptocurrency. The online casinos would have to generate an algorithm to automatically calculate how much a small amount of bitcoin would be in dollars. Because price fluctuates there will never be a set amount of bitcoin per dollar.
Bitcoin has the ability to be broken down into even smaller parts if it’s needed. This is because the bitcoin software can be modified and adjusted to what the creators want. It would become more difficult to understand the numbers if they happened.
The Advantages of Bitcoin Gambling
Bitcoin is decentralized
This means you are the only person in control of your bitcoin. No one can remove your bitcoin from your wallet without permission or freeze your cryptocurrency. It also means transactions are quick taking up to 10 minutes to reach the desired accounts.
Withdrawals will also be just as fast once processed by the online casino. It won’t take 3-5 working days as the money isn’t going to your bank account, but your cryptocurrency wallet.
Moving bitcoin from wallet to wallet can be carried out internationally. This means, in theory, you can deposit funds to online casinos from a wallet that is in another country.
You would think this must have huge fees. However, bitcoin transaction fees are made on the blockchain and are extremely low. Fees are around $0.05 per transaction and can vary, the value won’t change if you deposit $20 or $20000 worth of bitcoin.
Bitcoin is unidentified
Bitcoin transactions are made without the person’s name being input onto the blockchain. This makes all bitcoin transactions anonymous. You’ll be able to track the specific wallet the transaction was made to and when it was made. It just won’t have a name on it.
The only way for people to find out if you made the transaction is if they can link you to the wallet. Online casinos will be able to link you to your bitcoin as they will have a wallet on their database.
Betting with Alt Coins
The online gambling world isn’t confined to bitcoin. You can use other cryptocurrencies known as altcoins to deposit and play with. Some altcoins were made as an alternative to bitcoin, while others as specific use cases. Altcoins that are accepted by online casinos are;
- Ethereum
- DogeCoin
- Bitcoin Cash
- LiteCoin
- Dash
- Zcash
- Ripple
Those are some cryptocurrencies available at the moment. In time the websites will accept more cryptocurrencies and the range will be bigger.
Final Thoughts
Bitcoin websites will carry on developing throughout 2020 and 2021. Big changes might be coming in the following years with the proper regulation of bitcoin and worldwide adoption of the cryptocurrency. Keep your eyes open for all types of news related to bitcoin casinos as new developments are always around the corner.
