The arrival of cryptocurrencies has had a massive impact on how we manage our money and what we consider to be an investment. Hugely popular tokens such as Bitcoin and Litecoin have given us a degree of financial flexibility that we simply never had before now, but what does this revolution mean in terms of betting online?
Safety and Security
One of the key aspects of online gambling is the safety and security that it offers players. All good online sportsbooks must give players the confidence that they’re safe to use. The emergence of technologies such as powerful encryption methods and secure online banking have been crucial in the rise of online casinos in the last few years.
Cryptos take this a step further by giving us the security offered by digital currencies. Since it’s virtually impossible for hackers to break into a crypt wallet, there’s an even greater feeling of safety when moving money in and out in this way. There’s now no need to use traditional bank cards or ewallets to move money if you don’t want to.
As well as sports betting, we can find Bovada’s Bitcoin casino games, showing how easy it is to find a large range of titles from a reputable casino site like this one. You can play a variety of slots as well as live dealer table games with a real-life casino atmosphere in this way. It’s also worth noting that a variety of different tokens can be used to play in this way, adding to the flexibility.
The Volatility Issue
The volatility of the cryptocurrency market is mentioned by Coinbase here and has been one of the most controversial and talked-about areas of this way of handling our cash. While this is partly what has led to huge increases in the value of certain tokens, it’s also led to the price crashing at times. Trying to predict what will happen next on the price charts is one of the biggest challenges when we use digital money.
Therefore, the big question here is whether this volatility is an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to betting on sports or casino games. Of course, this comes down partly to when you buy and sell the token. If you fund your playing account with Bitcoin and then the price rises before you convert any winnings to fiat, it’s going to give you a healthy profit on top of your casino winnings.
Perhaps the best way of looking at this is that betting gives you a chance to grow your tokens while playing. The truth is that this adds extra volatility too, as betting has a large element of luck involved. If you get it right you could make a big profit, but it’s not risk-free as you might lose more than you win or see the cryptos you use lose value in the meantime.
More Privacy
The privacy issue is one of the main points about cryptocurrencies that people want to take advantage of. CNet confirms that these currencies aren’t totally anonymous, although they offer us the chance to take greater care to avoid our personal details being compromised in the traditional financial system.
In this way, you can sign up to a sportsbook and send money from your private crypto wallet to the betting site’s wallet, rather than linking to a standard bank account or card. This is a way of keeping the details safer and of making sure that your casino account doesn’t have any links to the rest of your financial life that others could exploit.
A Separate Wallet for Your Gambling
The previous point about privacy is one of the benefits of using a separate crypto account for your gambling funds, but there’s another advantage that could be even more important. That’s because the responsible gambling advice offered by the best sites tells us that we should never bet with more money than we can afford to lose.
Since the results of betting are unpredictable, we don’t know at the start how often we will win our bets. Therefore, you might consider keeping a separate gambling fund to be a clever idea. This will allow you to move across a set amount of money that you’re comfortable gambling with.
For example, once you buy your first Bitcoin or other currency, you might decide to transfer a month’s worth of casino funds to your crypto wallet and then move it across to play with. This allows you to then control your funds more easily and be responsible in how you gamble.
Summary
Gambling with cryptos has given us a range of advantages that are worth thinking about when you decide to bet online. It’s still possible to gamble by moving across fiat money in a variety of ways, but for many of us, the chance to gamble with cryptocurrencies has made this activity more attractive and easier to carry out.