More and more people are acquiring, exchanging, and investing in cryptocurrencies, and their uses and their influence is gradually spreading across many economic sectors. Bitcoin, among others, is increasingly solicited by online casinos and players, because of the significant benefits that their use offers players and operators.
What is a Cryptocurrency?
A cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to function as a securely encrypted medium of exchange aimed at securing financial transactions, controlling the creation of additional units and verifying the transfer of assets. Cryptocurrencies, which can be considered as virtual cash or gold, are decentralised, which means that they are transferred from person to person directly without going through a third party thus without being controlled by any bank or government. This form of virtual currency was born in the early 1980s but was confronted at the time with the double-spending problem posed by the duplicable and falsifiable character of the first digital currencies. To put it simply, it was impossible to know if a virtual currency unit had ever been used in a previous transaction, and it was easy to duplicate the currency since there was still no global ledger to compare operations and know if a virtual currency unit had already been put into circulation. It was in 2009 that Bitcoin came up with a solution, by integrating all transactions to a peer-to-peer network, to this problem and, as a result, gained so much popularity that economists around the world are seriously studying the actual and potential impact of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on our economy today.
The decentralised control, under which every cryptocurrency operates, works by sharing the records of all transactions made with the cryptocurrency in question, since its creation, amongst all the devices connected to the peer-to-peer networks in which these transactions are carried out. This exchange of data is commonly called the blockchain. As long as trade exchanges continue to be done using a virtual currency, its ledger will continue to grow and build on itself. Since their ledgers are made public to everyone and their information is continuously distributed across all users around the world, and their data is synchronised in real time, every cryptocurrency user will always share the same information on them. The mere fact of transferring the equivalent of $ 10 in the form of a cryptocurrency is recorded on public registers and is visible to all other users of the same virtual currency, which brings us to the next characteristic of cryptocurrencies, self-regulation.
Cryptocurrencies are self-regulated by what is commonly called miners. Miners are computer programs that are dedicated to verifying each transaction carried out with a given virtual currency by using complex algorithms. Once a transactions block is verified and certified legit, it is added to the blockchain and the miner is rewarded with a new unit of the cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies offer their users the possibility of making financial transactions at infinitely smaller costs than with traditional banking methods, without going through any official financial institution and without having the currency under the control of a bank or a government.
Cryptocurrencies Bring Significant Advantages to Online Casino Players
Virtual currencies, or cryptocurrencies, offer online casino players a series of advantages that entice them to adopt this form of payment to fuel their bankroll. The first of these benefits is the increased confidentiality that the use of cryptocurrencies implies. Indeed, since the transactions do not go through a third party but directly between the player and the casino and are recorded in encrypted code only readable by the crypto-wallet peer-to-peer network used to process transactions, it is impossible to identify the sender and receiver of any transactions and is impossible to distinguish that the financial exchanges are related to an online gambling activity.
The second significant advantage is once again related to the privacy inherent to cryptocurrencies. Some countries of the world, the USA in particular, do not prohibit players from playing online casino on their territory per say, but forbid any financial institution to engage in monetary exchanges between players and online gambling platform. The pseudonymic nature of cryptocurrencies preventing the identification of creditors or debtors allows circumventing the jurisdictions imposed in some countries and enables players to play online casinos for real money in countries that ban the use of fiat currencies for gambling online. Although the US legislation is slowly but surely moving towards a relaxation of the laws regulating the gambling in general, online gaming in particular, it will take a few more years before online casinos are wholly legalised on the entire US territory. Today, many online casinos have adopted Bitcoins as a method of payment for the reasons we mentioned earlier.
Last but not least, amongst the many advantages offered by the use of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to play online casino that we want to put forward, is the fact that financial transactions between two parties are faster than with the so-called traditional banking methods. Since the exchanges are made directly between the casino and the player without going through a third party, the withdrawals of players' winnings, who can usually take between 3 business days up to 2 weeks, are much faster (+/- 48hours).
Is the Blockchain Technology About to Revolutionise Online Gambling?
In conclusion, we want to bring seasoned gamblers’ attention to a new phenomenon that could potentially revolutionise the online gambling industry. Several start-ups claim to be able to integrate blockchain technology to casino games to offer players 100% random games where the question of whether or not the casino can be trusted to host fair games would not arise anymore because the games would be checked 24/7 in the same fashion blockchain mining operates. We are not going to expand on the subject here, but the integration of Blockchain technology in the online casino business is to be carefully monitored because it could bring online gambling platforms 100% guaranteed fair to online gamblers. Stay tuned for more about blockchain casinos!