The traditional setup to gamble is entering the casino to play table games or others, and change the money for chips. Much could be said about the psychological aspect of trading money for plastic to make the gamblers spend more as they are just handing over a piece of plastic.
Even if with bitcoin gambling we don’t use traditional currency either to play, we do use a much more versatile method to pay than chips, and not only they are more versatile, but they also carry more value as we can send them from our wallet directly to the gambling site or any other vendor.
Another plus that bitcoin transactions bring is the transparency, as bitcoin is a public ledger and, therefore, all the transactions made on that site are public. There are gambling sites, like SatoshiDice, that show the latest plays made and addresses involved, creating trust with this simple action.
Some technical information
If we do want to get technical, we can talk about provable trust, which just means that a random number generator combines a key with a hash to make sure the odds aren’t manipulated. More, some sites, like BitSaloon, even make public the way their random number generator is implemented.
This is what provably fair is all about, the operator cannot change the result of any game, and this is made possible by the selection of a daily secret key, meaning the generator from the site is used only once. How the generator calculates their numbers exactly is still unknown though.
Bitcoin can also help casinos by keeping money laundering out. We have plenty of examples of people and companies being charged with illegal gambling and money laundering, something that is harder to happen because Bitcoin is a public ledger.
Sure, anyone can put criminal fiat into the system, mixing the money to hide the original source, something that regulators are currently analyzing, but having a public ledger is certainly making a record available to track down where the money is coming from, so it’s a big plus.
Trust is built over time
The concept of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is still fairly new, but even so there are already billions wagered using the currency. If the crypto community still mostly see the asset as an investment and not a currency and we already reach those values, it’s easy to imagine what will happen with more time and adoption.
Time is all it takes for BTC to develop its legitimacy as a credible mean of payment. Online gambling is, and might continue to be, one of the main ambassadors in making the currency mainstream. The fact that both online gambling and BTC live on the internet, a decentralized world, make it the perfect partnership.
Anonymously or not, there are plenty of advantages or using crypto for online gambling and, at the moment, the bigger ones are lower to no fees, faster transaction times and new bonuses and promotions for BTC users, so there is plenty to take advantage of.
