A Look Into How Bitcoin Casinos Work

What Is The Bitcoin Casino Fad?

Enabling a new economy to flourish in parallel to the existing traditional currency-based economy, the popularity of Bitcoin as a digital currency has made the Bitcoin transactions continue to gain popularity has also enabled a new arena for gambling, gaming, and lotteries through online bitcoin casinos.

What Are Bitcoin Casinos?

Being the most popular digital currency or cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has a few online casinos transacting in them while others offer Bitcoin as the additional currency of transaction in addition to transactions in traditional currencies like USD. With a growing number of online casinos offering gambling and money based games in Bitcoin currency, they operate from all over the globe. Through these Bitcoin transactions, the casinos offer a wide variety of options for players to bet their Bitcoin money on:

casino games

gambling games

sports-based betting

online lotteries

spread betting

There are a few popular Bitcoin casinos like 

- the Satoshidice, the bitzino, the satoshibet, the swichpoker, the StrikeSapphire, as also bc-casino.com, and the BtcSpiortsBet, along with BitLotto, etc.

How Bitcoin Casinos Operate

At the heart of any online gambling or gaming business are the software and the same holds for Bitcoin casinos with the most popular being Bitcoin casinos with large user bases running their gaming software developed on their own. Whereas other smaller players are usually purchased or rented versions which may be customized by adding a few unique features to the game. 

Subsequently, the software conducts and runs the game with minimal human intervention as for games needing all human players the software plays the role of the table dealer. As the digital nature of their businesses come into play Bitcoin casinos face the challenge of convincing the users about the fairness of their operations. In an attempt to establish trust most Bitcoin casinos openly disclose how their software algorithms work and for the rest, it is more of a peer to peer reference that works for the unique identity of their offering mainly in the casino games.

Why Bitcoin Casinos Are Gaining Popularity

The biggest advantage for Bitcoin casino users is anonymity as for any Bitcoin transactions and even the founder of Bitcoin is the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. It is because whereas most of the Bitcoin casinos sites offer zero transaction fees there are unlimited free daily transactions whereas traditional currency based casinos have set limits and transaction fees.

This adds to the online digital nature of business enabling global access and easy availability of players in large numbers round the clock. Ever since then, online games are largely beyond the purview and control of authorities where many online games have been customized with tweaks in the rules of the game. Thereby such variations are not allowed legally in traditional currency based online casinos and this has been a major reason for the popularity of Bitcoin casinos.

Why Bitcoin Casinos Are Under The Microscope

Whereas the fact remains that traditional online casinos transacting in traditional currencies have defined regulations with payments in traditional currencies enabling tracking and identifying individual players, dealers as well as casino operators. To conclude it is not the same in the case with Bitcoin casinos.

Being purely digital the Bitcoin transactions have audit and verification as a challenge whereas an example, in an online card game, is the guarantee that the cards have been shuffled and distributed fairly? Thereby it has to be noted that in addition to it the player’s anonymity is generally maintained because he or she pays anonymously through digital currency as fair business practices become further questionable. 

There are a lot of Bitcoin casinos requiring minimal user details with no age verification, no location check, or other details. Thereby gambling is not allowed in many countries across the globe as Bitcoin casinos make it further difficult to regulate and control it at the global level. To state the fact whereas all the above operational methods have proved a challenge for authorities’ a new parallel economy is taking shape as although digital currency based systems that may be cited for their advantages as the casino based gambling is surely becoming a challenge at most of the multiple levels. 

The Impact Of Bitcoin Casinos On Bitcoin Transactions

The lack of publicly available information about Bitcoin makes it difficult to assess the details and impact of Bitcoin casinos on Bitcoin itself. While it is based on some limited information available, it is understood that the April 2012 launch of gaming site SatoshiDice.com was sufficient enough to boost the total number of daily Bitcoin transactions nearly five-fold indicating how the anonymous world is keen on gambling.

The reality that finally remains is that Bitcoin casinos are getting more and more transactions with a steady growth rate since 2012 further fuelling the usage of bitcoins.

The Bottom Line

Whether based on conventional currency transactions or anonymous digital currency transactions, casino gambling has always been a debated topic on ethical grounds whereby adding to the complexity of Bitcoin transactions, as well as operations of Bitcoin casinos becoming further challenging. As it was always exciting to get carried away with easy money making options, users should keep in mind the legal aspects, challenges, and risk areas.