The real money gaming market online is a massive industry unto itself. Incorporating everything from poker rooms and blackjack tables to roulette and slot arcades, it’s an expansive branch of internet gaming that caters to more players (and ropes in millions more dollars) with each passing year. What’s more, this industry is still expanding and evolving. According to one analysis done last year, the casino gaming market can expect growth of 10.16 percent between 2017 and 2021 (thanks in part to the ongoing rise of app-based games in the genre).
It’s estimated, meanwhile, that this growing market will exceed $50 billion in size this year. That’s a great deal of money that players care very much about keeping safe and secure, and for that reason it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that many are turning to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies whenever possible. Given that the very point of this type of currency is to remain secure, decentralized, and encrypted, it seems on the surface to be perfect for use in online gaming activity.
The Huffington Post actually delved into this idea back in 2016 and did a nice job of lining up the valid reasons behind operators using bitcoin. To summarize, they focused on the following points:
Less Competition – Starting a bitcoin gaming business is simply easier than trying to compete in the existing, massive market of sites operating with regular fiat currency.
Lower Fees – Generally speaking transaction fees for bitcoin payments are either zero or close enough by comparison to some of the fees that can typically be associated with online gambling deposits.
Wider Markets – Because bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency that isn’t subject to universal regulation, it can be used for online gaming in certain places where this sort of activity may typically not be accessible.
Non-Reversible Transactions – From an operator perspective there’s simply no issue related to chargebacks or questioned withdrawals or deposits, because bitcoin transactions are final.
Flexible Licensing – Simply put, at least in some cases, there is no requirement of a gaming license to launch a bitcoin gaming platform (though players may still gravitate toward platforms that have certain licenses or certification.
Because of these factors, we have indeed seen a rise in bitcoin gaming sites. One of the larger sites for information in the real-money online gaming industry identified some of the current market leaders as BitCasino.io and FlutterClub, but many other alternatives have emerged over the last year or two as well. Bitstarz, CloudBet, Betchain, and Oshi are some of the names you’ll find with just a little bit of research, for instance, and all have certainly become more prominent of late.
These sites don’t all operate the same way. Some accept only bitcoin, some a mix of bitcoin and altcoins, and some will even still accept some ordinary currency. But overall it’s become very clear that because of the benefits outlined above on both the user and operator side of things, cryptocurrency is the new big thing in online gaming.
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