Pros and Cons of Bitcoin

Pros and Cons of Bitcoin

Although most players haven’t even considered using Bitcoins for online gambling just yet, we believe that the cryptocurrency deserves plenty of attention from everyone who’s tired of all the regulations making things difficult for both the online industry and the players. You can find plenty of general information about Bitcoin elsewhere, so we’re not going to dig into that in this article. Instead, we’re going to focus on the pros and cons of the cryptocurrency from the bitcoin casino gaming point of view.

Pro #1 – Anonymity

The one issue that many players have with traditional payment methods is that all the transactions can be tracked back to them fairly easily. Of course, some will argue that you can get some anonymity by using pre-paid cards such as Paysafecard, but, even then, your casino account does have your name and address and you’ll eventually have to withdraw your money back to your bank account, which is the point at which there will be no anonymity left.

When it comes to Bitcoins, however, you’ve got your anonymity guaranteed if you move your money around according to the best practices and if you don’t make any mistakes, as you’ll never have to have your name and address tied to your Bitcoin wallet and Bitcoin transactions. Of course, the online bitcoin casino or online bookmaker might require you to submit your credentials, but the operators that deal strictly in Bitcoins aren’t very likely to ask you for them, which is when there really is nothing to be worried about privacy-wise.

Pro #2 – Simpler Withdrawals

If you’ve ever thought that casino withdrawals are too painful, you’ll be happy to learn that Bitcoin can take all the issues that are associated with them away and replace them with a much simpler system that’s also better on virtually every single front.

First of all, you shouldn’t ever need to enter any personal details when requesting a Bitcoin withdrawal – all the online casino needs to know is the address of the wallet you want to use for the given withdrawal.

Secondly, Bitcoin withdrawals – once processed – are much faster than their regular counter-parts. Although they are not instantaneous, the typical waiting time is measured in minutes or tens of minutes, not hours or days.

Finally, the fees that Bitcoin withdrawals come with are very marginal and they are never going to increase substantially. To be fair, many regular withdrawal methods come with no fees whatsoever, but those that do are so costly that they are virtually unusable for smaller withdrawals.

If you’ve ever tried withdrawing from the United States, this all simply has to sound great – and chances are that it does sound great even if you’re currently located in one of the regions that are friendlier towards online gaming.

Pro #3 – Straightforward Deposits

Nowadays, one always has to choose from a large number of methods when trying to make a casino deposit – and each of them comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. It isn’t particularly hard to get used to that, but wouldn’t it be better if there was just a single universal method that one could rely on all the time?

Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to get at Bitcoin-only casinos, as there isn’t anything that would make Bitcoin deposits over-complicated. You just access your Bitcoin wallet, be it a paper one or a software one, and send the desired amount to the Bitcoin address that’s associated with your online casino account.

The transactions fees are marginal and the deposit should take only a few minutes to get processed, so it’s really hard to find anything disappointing on this particular front – and the best thing is that the process is never going to change in any significant manner. Bitcoin deposits are simply as straightforward as they could possibly be!

Con #1 – Volatile Value

Those of you who’ve been tracking Bitcoin for a while now know that the currency has already gone through plenty of roller-coaster rides and that some might even be in the making while you’re reading this very article. While many experts predict that the value of Bitcoins will stabilize in the future, there’s no agreement on what the future means here, as chances are that the market will stay volatile for more than just a couple of years. We agree that a certain balance will be achieved eventually, but, as things stand, you can wake up and see your Bitcoin wallet gaining (or losing) even ten percent of its original value.

This can lead to some hilarious results when it comes to online gaming – for example, your winning sports bets might not even win you any money if the value of Bitcoins dips in the meantime. On the other hand, winning a small Bitcoin jackpot in a slot game and forgetting about it can lead to a very nice surprise if the value increases considerably in the following days. In any case, the volatility does add a whole new dimension to online gaming – and it’s one that many won’t be too happy about.

Con #2 – Maintenance

When it comes to regular currencies, there’s practically no maintenance required on the personal level unless you want to. After all, most of us just carry some pocket money around while storing the rest of our savings in a bank. We can lose our pocket money, but that isn’t going to be the end of the world, as we can sleep soundly with the knowledge that our bank is keeping an eye on the larger chunks of cash we have. Even if we make a huge mistake and get our savings stolen, there’s usually a way to retrieve them – and there are also some insurances in case the bank runs into some serious problems.

Things aren’t that easy when it comes to Bitcoin, however, and that’s what will make some people uncomfortable. The issue is this – every single Bitcoin user is responsible for his or her savings and there are currently no “banks” that one could use for safe storage. And, truth to be told, all the different forms of storage carry some risks that one needs to be aware of, as not knowing about them can easily lead to a financial disaster.

Just to give you an example – chances are that you’re going to accumulate a nice stash of Bitcoins that you’ll want to keep in a safe place that’s not your personal computer. You’ll therefore create a paper wallet on which you’ll store your Bitcoins – at that point, you’ll avoid the possibility of your computer getting stolen (and with it your Bitcoins), but you’ll become exposed to the risk of you losing your paper wallet. You might even forget about it after a while and then throw it away by an accident! There are ways to minimize all those risks and the maintenance costs are fairly low once you get used to everything, but there’s a decent chance that things will never be as simple as they are with regular currencies.

Con #3 – Availability

While regular currencies are readily available, you’ll be required to jump through at least a couple of hoops while trying to get your hands on a few Bitcoins. At the time of writing, there were plenty of methods available, but none of them was particularly convenient or simple. This is naturally likely to change as time progresses, but the infrastructure will always remain to be more complicated than the infrastructure that’s in place for regular currencies.

This might not look like a particularly big issue on its own, but there’s also the small problem of you having to jump through the very same hoops (or even more of them) in case you’ll ever want to change your Bitcoins back into regular money, so that’s something that needs to be kept in mind as well.

Summary

As you can see, Bitcoin is certainly not the panacea that many players are looking for, but it does come with a number of significant advantages and we urge everyone to take a closer look at them and the cryptocurrency itself. Although there are some negatives associated with Bitcoin as well, they’re primarily about convenience and comfort, which is – for many – a small price to pay for, say, being able to stay completely anonymous during online transactions.

Are the advantages important enough for you to make the switch to Bitcoin-only online casinos? Well, that’s a question that you’ll naturally have to answer on your own, but we’re convinced that the Bitcoin-only casinos will soon become a widely-accepted alternative to the ones that are sticking to traditional currencies.