Casino, Poker & Sportsbetting with Bitcoin & other Cryptocurrencies

Online gambling activities such as traditional table games, video and classic slots, various types of poker, sportsbetting, lotteries and bingo all have their special place in the mobile gaming market. Activities such as sportsbetting and casino games arguably make up the largest portion of this market, so there is no wonder why online gambling with cryptocurrencies mainly Bitcoin is very popular especially as more and more online gambling operators accept virtual currencies in addition to accepting fiat currencies.

International Legislation on Crypto Gambling

The legislation of online casinos has always been complicated. Even with poker and sports betting, the situation is no different. Certain countries like the USA have always followed a very strict path here and in 2006 they declared practically every form of online gambling illegal. However, with crypto currencies a new situation arises. This insofar as cryptos are partly not even regarded as real money. Nobody can prevent gambling with virtual money. And this is also how some providers of crypto casinos, bookmakers and poker sites see it. Therefore they simply accept players from all over the world. They do not care where the player comes from. One can play anonymously anyway only via a Crypto Wallet – partly without opening an account at all.

Other casinos, on the other hand, at least do not allow players from markets like the USA, UK, France, Spain or Australia. Because here the legislators are particularly strict. These providers want to play by the rules and adhere to the legal requirements.

You can distinguish the offer of crypto gambling providers as follows:
Those that simply offer anonymous wallets and allow anonymous gambling are usually also the ones that do not comply with any legal requirements. Therefore you will be welcome there as a player from the USA or UK. One example is OneHash.

Those providers that function “like normal” casinos, thus offer player registration and have a license, for example, on Curaçao or Costa Rica will very likely also adhere to the laws and be careful at least with players from the USA and UK. Like FortuneJack, Cloudbet, Bitstarz, etc.

Gambling Market in Africa and Legislation

Online gambling activities using different virtual currencies is popular around the globe, but African players are among the majority of players who use cryptocurrencies for making wagers on different gambling activities. Africa is a pretty diverse continent when it comes to online gambling. South Africa is the leader in the mobile online gambling market. South Africa is closely followed by Kenya and Nigeria. Despite the fact online gambling including mobile gaming in South Africa with the exception of horse race betting, sportsbetting and lotteries are not legal, South African players gamble online at some offshore websites and some international gambling sites.

On the other hand, Kenya has one of the most liberalized mobile gambling industries with almost every form of gambling allowed including mobile casinos, online gambling, sportsbetting, bingo, lotteries, etc. When it comes to Nigerian mobile gambling market, it is definitely on the rise as Nigerian gambling licensing authorities have granted their license to many online gambling venues. Besides these countries, African countries including Zambia, Uganda, and Ghana also have ever-growing online gambling markets.

Online Gambling Industry and Cryptocurrencies

Most people know about Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Most people also know all about mysterious Nakamoto and Satoshi who proposed a new type of currency back in 2008. They proposed a truly decentralized virtual type of currency, Bitcoin which is not regulated by any regulatory authority and which does not have any ties with any type of financial institution or government. Bitcoin started a whole new movement and brought with it a fresh digital currency concept that can be used in many ways for safe, secure, fast, and anonymous transactions. With the rise of Bitcoin and similar types of virtual currencies, more and more online gambling venues, especially in Africa, accept Bitcoin as a banking method.

Ten years after its birth, Bitcoin is not ‘alone’ in the virtual currency world anymore. Many new cryptos have been introduced to the market and everyone is very interested in this decentralized payment method. The world of online and mobile gambling has been influenced by the introduction of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Zcash, Ripple, Dash, Litecoin, Monero, Stratis, NEM and NEO which are the main Bitcoin competitors. Judging by what different financial experts think off Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, they are here to stay working on paving new ways for easy and secure transactions for many industries including online and mobile gaming industry as well leading to faster, more secure and anonymous transactions with no reduction in safety and security.

With many online gambling venues following the trend, players from all over the globe have an opportunity to pay for online and mobile gambling activities using virtual currencies without any issues. This payment method is widely popular on the African online gambling market, where players rarely use fiat currencies for paying. This is mainly due to fact that virtual currencies offer easy, fast, secure and anonymous transactions. Another reason is that players feel as their winnings are more secure. Instead of dealing with physical cash, they can easily add their winnings to their virtual currency wallet without any issues or strict regulations involved.

Benefits of Gambling with Cryptocurrencies

There are many reasons why players should hop on the bandwagon and embrace cryptocurrencies, especially with the mobile gambling market. Bitcoin and other altcoins act as your own international online casino chips you can use easily in order to move from one online gambling activity to another in matters of seconds without any worries regarding the security of your transactions. Using Bitcoin, Ethereum od any other digital currency for gambling is a great choice considering the fact that they offer numerous benefits over traditional payment methods.

Using altcoins for online gambling activities is way cheaper than using traditional methods. International transfers tend to be very expensive while Bitcoin transactions are mostly free. Another major benefits of the blockchain and using cryptocurrencies is the fact that they offer full anonymity. In order to engage in gambling activities using altcoins, you do not have to expose your identity as you send your documents, as these steps are not necessary when paying with altcoins. When engaging in online and mobile gambling activities with altcoins, you enjoy fast, easy and secure transactions that take several seconds while traditional methods such as wire transfers commonly take days. Online gambling is illegal in some countries, so those players are not able to engage in any type of online gambling activities. However, using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies you can gamble in those places as altcoins are not regulated by any government. The best part is, you have a massive gaming library available including hundreds of video slots, video poker, classic table games and much more also available for mobile gaming.

Blockchain Poker Technology: Crypto Poker Club

Poker is the most popular card game in the world, especially Texas Hold’em. PokerStars is dominant in the online space, but no one knows the random number generator behind PokerStars. And anyone who has played poker before knows the feeling: you sit at the table with a good hand, invest all your chips and lose in a strange way. Random? One does not know it. You have to trust PokerStars here.

Other providers do not rely on trust but on the Blockchain. That means every hand is provably fair. That means you can always tell if a result was fair or not. After each hand you get a small piece of code in which the entire hand is stored like the order of the cards in the deck. You can use a third party service like Quickhash to check whether the hand was fair or not. So if the river comes up with exactly the one card your opponent needs, you can check to see if it was fair. Or if someone tried to cheat you.

There will be more and more provably fair poker sites and one of the most promising is Crypto Poker Club. Poker lives only if as many as possible play at any time of day. And therefore a site like Crypto Poker Club needs a critical mass.

What is provably fair?

With provably fair a technology is described where the outcome of the game is 100% transparent and comprehensible for everyone. Everything that happens to get a result in a casino or a poker room happens in the block chain. After each result you get a piece of code that you can insert into a hash generator like Quickhash. Quickhash then tells you what result would have been expected from the input. If this matches with the actual output you know that everything went right.

Provably fair means that the casino must offer a fair game and this can be checked by you at any time and completely independently. It is then no longer necessary for an authority from Malta, Gibraltar or elsewhere to control the games. Every single game is fair, transparent and verifiable by everyone. Provably fair is therefore finally a technology that makes fraud in online gambling impossible.