There are numerous factors to consider when you’re trying to pick a casino to play at. Do you just try and find the site with the best slots machines online? Do you try and compare bonuses and read reviews from across the web? Or is your primary concern simply how secure your funds will be if you play on this site?
Online casinos will usually offer a variety of ways to deposit money – either through dedicated services like PayPal or Skrill, or directly via your bank account through a credit or debit card. Both methods have some in-built safety measures which are intended to give you peace of mind. But in recent years, with the dawn of cryptocurrency, some casinos have begun to offer a different method to move funds and allow gambling with cryptocurrency. The only safety measure here is the one built into cryptocurrency itself, blockchain.
Cryptocurrency is a purely digital form of currency that exists through a public ledger with transactions authorised by miners. This essentially means every transaction is authorised and noted down by a large group of independent people, as opposed to one person/organisation, and helps reduce both transaction cost and transaction time. Most cryptocurrency transactions can be completed in seconds and don’t require authorisation from a bank, the only required element is that a miner can note the transaction in the ledger. The miner, in turn, will be rewarded with some coins if they’re the one to authorise the exchange first. Theoretically, this should make cryptocurrency both faster and more secure than regular payments but they introduce a few new risks.
Recently, a cryptocurrency operator was hacked which caused a major drop in the value of all cryptocurrencies across the board. This means the value of your currency could be more volatile than standard country-backed fare, and this poses a risk to any bets you make as the pay-out will be calculated on current rates. This is also ignoring the danger of a hacker simply stealing your wallet of Bitcoins the same way that Coinrail was.
While there are definitely pros and cons to cryptocurrency use in online casinos, is the market ready for this new method of payment? We’ve got this handy infographic below to run you through some of the major benefits of each method so you can form your own opinion.
