Bitcoins and Online Gambling

August 30, 2013

If you are an online gambling fan, then you may well not have heard of Bitcoins before now. Or maybe you have, but don’t really have any idea about this new internet based currency, and whether it can be used for online gambling. Below we take a look at Bitcoins, what they are, how they work and whether they should be used at online casino sites.

Bitcoins are a fairly new virtual, internet based currency. Bitcoins have an exchange rate and a value (which changes just like a real currency), but you can never hold a Bitcoin in your hand, it only exists in the virtual world of the Internet.

Bitcoin users need to download a simple application, called their Bitcoin wallet, and this is used to store their Bitcoin balance. Bitcoins can be bought with real money from Bitcoin brokers, and they can be sold in the same way, turning them into real cash. A full virtual currency in every way.

Some online casino sites already allow players to use Bitcoins to pay for their online gambling, although only a few. The real advantage of using Bitcoins at an online casino, is that your online gambling spending is always entirely secret, there is no paper trail. Bitcoins are also very cheap to use, with no heavy transaction charges.

However, there are some heavy downsides to using Bitcoins for online gambling. For example, some countries have begun to ban the use of Bitcoins, as they do not want an unmonitored and uncontrolled currency diluting their local currencies. So if you were holding thousands of dollars’ worth of Bitcoins in a country that suddenly made them illegal, you would end up out of pocket.

Another problem is the value of Bitcoins. Normal currencies are closely monitored and controlled, so that the actual value only ever changes slightly in one single move. Sure, they can devalue over time, but they seldom crash. There is no such control over Bitcoins, and indeed, we have seen several price crashes in recent months, seeing people lose a lot of cash. This is the major risk associated with using Bitcoins.

Overall, Bitcoins are a good idea, but one that is trying to do something that every major bank in the world does not want it to do… upset the financial status quo. Therefore, it is doomed to failure and we do not recommend Bitcoins for paying cash into an online casino site.

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