The Best Gambling Guide to Finding Bitcoin Casinos Online
The concept of bitcoin as a payment method for online gambling is seeing a meteoric rise.
Gambling using bitcoin at bitcoin-friendly online casinos offers multiple benefits, including lower house edges than traditional online casinos (1% to 2% lower, because of lower operating costs from payment processors), faster deposits and withdrawals, and the option to deposit, withdraw, and gamble anonymously.
What Is Bitcoin?
What exactly are bitcoins?
How did they come to be, and how did they evolve into a stellar payment method for real money online gambling?
In its purest form, bitcoin is a fully decentralized virtual form of currency. This means that it does not exist in the physical world (like real cash in a bank does). This also means that it does not run through a central banking system, such as the United States Federal Reserve.
Bitcoin is used by over 20 million individuals and business of all sizes all over the world. Bitcoin transactions, sales, and purchases have dollar amounts well into the hundreds of millions every day, all without the need for a middleman, bank, or credit card company to get involved in the transactional process.
Fascinating, right?
Situated firmly amongst these individuals and business are bitcoin-accepting online casinos, each offering its own unique array of betting games, from blackjack to slots to roulette and beyond.
Benefits of Bitcoin for Online Gamblers
There are casinos online that specifically do business solely in bitcoin. These casinos have a considerably lowered house edge, sometimes by up to 2%. Many bitcoin casinos also go by the concept of provable fairness, using algorithms offering transparency, and showing that there is no way for the website to game their players. This process stretches also to live bitcoin casino gaming as well.
It should be standard though, that when searching for a top-notch bitcoin casino, you do your due diligence and check the casino’s historical reputation. There are hundreds of bitcoin casinos across the internet, all with their own special set of offerings.
Before Bitcoin
Let’s face it, deposits and withdrawals at online casinos have never been as easy as they should be. Much of this is outside of the control of the casinos themselves as every jurisdiction has their own regulations about payment instruments for online gaming. Given the hostility of some countries toward the gaming freedom of their citizens most online betting sites have done a decent job offering their clients a variety of deposit and withdrawal methods. That brings up another problem—some payment methods are archaically slow while others are only cost effective for larger transfers. The potential problems don’t end there since depending on where you live the bank or credit card company you will code your deposit or withdrawal as a gaming related transaction. If you’re lucky that’s no big deal—just informational data to better understand their client base. Other times, this may cause your transaction to be declined or to have your account ‘flagged’ and given greater scrutiny in the future.
Even money transfer services like Western Union and Moneygram have been known to decline or limit transfers to and from online casinos. It’s ironic that you can transfer funds to convicts in prison with no problem whatsoever but you don’t have the same freedom to spend your hard earned money to enjoy a leisure activity like online gambling without some type of hassle.
Why Bitcoin Is Great For Online Gamblers
It’s not hyperbole to suggest that Bitcoin is the best thing to happen to online gambling—at least from a banking standpoint. For most players it’s definitely your best choice for money transfers. Bitcoin has all of the contingencies covered. As we noted in the opening section what makes Bitcoin unique is that it is a decentralized and encrypted payment platform. This means that it circumvents banks, governments and other third parties. No more ‘blocked’ transactions simply because your bank or credit card company has decided to not accept gaming related transfers. Bitcoin puts you in control of your financial privacy. This privacy is further enhanced by Bitcoin’s encryption protocol which makes it among the most secure and safe payment transfer methods available.
It gets even better since despite Bitcoin’s high level security and privacy it doesn’t compromise speed. In fact, Bitcoin is faster than most other online casino banking options. You can purchase Bitcoin in a matter of minutes and depending on the exchange you use the funds will often be available to you instantly. You can learn how to use Bitcoin very quickly and once you know the basics you can fund your betting account from anywhere in the world. You can do it on your computer from the privacy of your own home or you can do it while traveling using a Bitcoin wallet on your mobile device.
Bitcoin can’t be beat for convenience either. Deposits and withdrawals are available almost immediately. The transfer to or from your favorite online casino happens instantaneously once approved by their accounting office. No other payment method can match Bitcoin’s speed of transferring and confirming funds. Bitcoin’s fees do fluctuate, but generally speaking it is the the least expensive online transfer instrument for gaming enthusiasts.
Bitcoin At Online Casinos
Bitcoin is a great option for both players and online casinos which is why many top ranked gaming sites have adopted it as a payment method. It is such an excellent way to transfer funds that some casinos have made the decision to operate exclusively in Bitcoin. These relatively new gaming sites have also brought some fresh approaches to the industry. Many Bitcoin exclusive casinos embrace the concept of ‘provable fairness’ by using algorithms to provide full transparency and to demonstrate that there is no way for them to cheat their players. This covers both software based casino platforms as well as live dealer casinos.
It should go without saying that you need to do your homework when evaluating any online casino. This is particularly true for Bitcoin exclusive casinos. Generally speaking, they don’t have the years of building a solid reputation that ‘legacy’ casinos enjoy simply because the Bitcoin technology is relatively new. The good news is that you can evaluate a Bitcoin casino just like any other online gaming site. There are hundreds of Bitcoin casinos online and they offer the same wide variety of gaming options and player experience as a traditional online gambling website. One good place to start is this website—we apply the same strict criteria to Bitcoin casinos that we do to every other online gaming business. In the next section, we’ll talk about how we evaluate Bitcoin casinos.
Low-Quality Bitcoin Casinos to Avoid
Some online bitcoin casinos are unsafe and unfair.
These include Balzac Casino, Grand Reef, and Euro Play Casino.
Balzac Casino has consistently engaged in dishonest casino practices. They offer no information regarding their licensing on their site.
Grand Reef has loose gameplay when in free-play mode, but tightens up when you play for real money. They also have slow payout times for bitcoin withdrawals.
Euro Play Casino has many complaints regarding a lack of timely customer support and unresolved issue. They’ve been reported numerous times for unprofessional business practices.
Avoid these options, regardless of how enticing their bonuses might be.
How We Choose Our Recommended Bitcoin Online Casinos
Our in-house team inspects online casinos to ensure that we only recommend the best bitcoin online casinos.
We use a rigid standard list of criteria, and only recommend casinos scoring well in the following areas:
- Variety of Games: Top bitcoin online casinos will generally support hundreds of various betting games, table games, card games, dice games, and slot machines. This ensures that players will always have an ideal game for their playing style and preferences.
- Quick Player Payouts: Technological advancements are such that it should not be an issue for online casinos to release winnings in 2 or 3 days. This requires strong organization and a carefully developed payment process.
- Security and Safety: All top bitcoin casinos must use the strongest encryption levels available an the most developed and latest online security parameters to protect players’ personal data and finances.
- Promotions and Bonuses: These top-rated bitcoin online casinos need to provide a high value for the loyalty of their players. Whether that comes in the form of welcome bonuses, weekly offers, monthly promotions, or random giveaways, there needs to be incentive for bitcoin users to keep playing.
- Options for Banking: Besides the security of players’ personal data, it’s important that bitcoin casinos ensure that money transmits securely both to and from the casino and that there remains a variety of payment methods and transmission preferences to fit any budget and preference.
- Strong Customer Service: One of the most important aspects of a solid bitcoin offering online casino is a wide variety of options for players to contact customer support. Whether this comes from phone chat, email correspondence, ticket tracking, live chat or smoke signals, players need the assurance that their questions, comments, and concerns can be addressed quickly and effectively.
Alternatives to Bitcoin
- Best alternative to Bitcoin for other electronic wallet options: Instadebit, Skrill, Neteller, Entropay, PaySafeCard
- Best alternative to Bitcoin for more wide-ranging payment capacity: PayPal
- Best alternative to Bitcoin for real credit cards: MasterCard, American Express, VISA