Bitcoin May Become a Currency For the Online Gambling World

Added: March 19, 2025

The term "Bitcoin" is something you may have heard in the news lately, and you may be hearing more about it when it comes to the subject of online gambling. It would take a bit long to explore all the aspects of it here, but suffice it to say that it is a five-year-old virtual currency that is actually "mined" through employing computer hardware and software to solve some very complicated algorithms, so there is a "proof of work" aspect to it.

There, we have gotten perhaps a little too complicated already.

This is the result: Bitcoin is a method of exchange through which more and more transactions are being processed every day, and has drawn more and more speculators as a viable avenue of investment. It has recently become the subject of much media attention because of its dramatic rise in value, up to $266 U.S. at one point during the last several months, followed by a precipitous fall.

Certainly there is a degree of volatility that makes the currency itself a gamble of sorts, and there is some risk involved in banking it for a certain period of time, but the fact remains that there are characteristics of it that make it potentially very attractive by which to conduct business on online gambling, and some sites have started to engage in it, with more sure to follow.

By its very nature, Bitcoin is anonymous, so that means no one has to know where a player is coming from, or even that he or she is gambling at all. The only thing that actually needs to be known is the number of the Bitcoin "wallet." The transaction fees are extremely low. The transactions are non-reversible, so there are no "chargebacks" to worry about, as is the case with credit card purchases. And there is no worry about identities potentially being stolen, or financial information being known. That makes it even stronger from the perspective of privacy.

Transactions that involve Bitcoin may require that a player make a conversion over to it, using his or her own currency, and do so through an exchange, but after that you are looking at a deposit and withdrawal process that is instant, and that can be a major selling point for an online casino operation. As we mentioned, transactions are not associated with any specific geographic location, so the fact that someone may be playing from the United States is not even a factor. Payment processing software that might be needed for other kinds of transactions is not necessary with Bitcoin. And there might actually be a loophole in the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) that makes the currency feasible and even legal.

This will be a very interesting thing to watch as time progresses.