Bitcoin Online Casinos

Bitcoin Online Casino Guide

Bitcoin is the most visible and popular cryptocurrency in the world. It is the first of these currencies to move from the fringes of the web to the mainstream, and it is a brand that you will now see on many online casino sites. Players can now deposit Bitcoin at many online casinos.

Here we will explain what Bitcoin is, whether you can use it safely, how Bitcoin interacts with the casino world, and how to keep yourself safe while using Bitcoin to gamble. And, we’ll ask if Bitcoin’s acceptance will mean that cryptocurrencies more generally can be used in online casinos – and whether you should use them. And we’ll have a look at some big casinos that use Bitcoin and how you can use the currency at these sites.

Let’s start at the beginning, with:

Choosing Your Bitcoin Online Casino

Let’s take a look at how to choose a Bitcoin casino and to do so safely.

We will repeat our warning that you should be extra wary of sites that offer only Bitcoin as a payment method. But you shouldn’t let this put you off a site completely. In the past, cryptocurrencies have been used for criminal purposes, but they are now a legitimate and specialist market. You may find Bitcoin-only casino sites, but it’s nice to have more than one payment option whatever casino you use.

Is Your Bitcoin Casino Fair?

However, you fund your gambling you want it to be fair.

Fair games make a profit for casinos, but they use genuinely random sequences of numbers in order to generate the games. You should have a chance of winning every time you spin a reel or turn over a card at any casino.

You should be able to see that the Bitcoin online casinos you use are offering you fair games. They should give you a load of information about their games theoretical return to player and also that their games have been audited and use probably audited random number generators.

Is Your Bitcoin Casino Legal?

Fair sites are legal and legal sites are fair. Legal licensing is the best way to ensure that you have a fair experience and that you’ll have recourse to get compensation or a refund if your experience is bad in some way.

So the first thing you should do with any Bitcoin casino that you want to use is to see that it is licensed. And you should see that it is licensed in a way that is accepted in the country you are using it from. And you should be sure that it is licensed for you to use legally.

Don’t ever use a Bitcoin online casino that you’re not legally allowed to use. Don’t cheat geographical restrictions with a VPN. And don’t lie about your age. Good quality licensing and age verification might seem boring, but it’s what helps to keep you safe.

Is your Bitcoin Casino Good Quality?

A payment method is one thing, but what’s the point of finding a Bitcoin online casino you can fund in your favourite way if there are no games there that you want to play?

When we suggest our safety checks we always suggest looking for good quality sites. Scammers don’t want to go to all the trouble of designing a site and stocking it full of good-quality content and games. Quality is a good sign of safety.

Look for games – that you want to play – from well-known game providers. Look for a good live casino offering. And look for well-written content and good design too: if you’re going to spend time at a site then you should make sure that it’s a pleasure to spend time there!

Is Your Bitcoin online Casino Transparent?

Look around before you sign up! Highly attractive headline offers are how a casino gets you through the door. But getting through the door with a big boost in your bonus funds isn’t the key to a long relationship with a site.

Check out what the site tells you about itself. Will it let you look around and see what’s on offer, not just on its gaming side, but also in its loyalty scheme, help and support services, and plans for the future.

Look for reviews, forum discussions, social media and more to see if your Bitcoin online casino is going to be there for the long haul and that you’re happy that you know enough to trust this site with your money.

This is especially true with Bitcoin, which remains decentralised and somewhat less regulated than other financial systems.

Some Bitcoin Casinos

The number of Bitcoin online casinos (and other crypto and alt-coin currencies) is only likely to grow. Bitcoin is not the flash in the dark it once was but is now an established (if still sometimes controversial) way of moving money around online.

It retains its strengths: decentralisation, discretion, and freedom.

It also retains its weaknesses, including the fact that it might collapse in value in short periods of time (it might equally shoot up!).

Here are a few examples of Bitcoin casino sites in the EU:

  • 7Bit Casino,
  • BitStarz Casino
  • Bspin.io Casino
  • mBit Casino
  • King Billy Casino
  • FortuneJack Casino
  • CasinoFair
  • Betcoin.ag Casino
  • BetChain Casino
  • CryptoWild Casino
  • Bitcoin Penguin Casino
  • KingBit Casino
  • SportsAndCasino
  • Oshi Casino

As you’ll see, these are often heavily marketed as being Bitcoin ready. That’s good, but please don’t forget our safety and quality checks when you’re looking at sites like this.

You should also look for good welcome offers, perhaps in Bitcoin and should be aware of any fees and exchange rates for Bitcoin, or for the conversion of Bitcoin into the fiat currencies that casinos usually use for their pricing mechanisms.

Increasingly, Bitcoin casinos aren’t going to only exist as specialist operations but as options on more conventional mainstream casino sites and payment processors. There doesn’t seem likely to be any end to the onwards march of Bitcoin through the world’s finance systems.

We’ve seen that already in this guide with the growth of Bitcoin for Skrill. You can use that deposit method at one of the world’s biggest and best-known online casino sites, 888 Casino, and you can also withdraw to Bitcoin for Skrill. If and when PayPal moves completely into the Bitcoin world, it’s going to be open to more and more people.

This guide is a starting point for using Bitcoin safely at online casinos. If you’d like to dig into Bitcoin in more depth, and particularly if you want to trade in cryptocurrencies, then you should do much more research.

This is an exciting and growing area and it’s one that we will almost certainly have to return to keep you updated. Make sure you play Bitcoin casino games safely and legally!

The History of Bitcoin

Bitcoin first existed as a paper and a web address, registered on 18th August 2008, and linking to the paper on “Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.

It became more real the next year with the production of the first coins and the conduct of the first transactions.

Bitcoin uses Blockchain to deliver value and security.

This is complex mathematics, even perhaps philosophy, and we won’t go into it in depth – or at all really – here. It’s a fascinating subject that you might want to study yourself.

By 2011, Bitcoin was in regular use online, although largely in the non- and semi-legal terrain of the dark web and the infamous Silk Road black market. This illicit tint has rather stuck around Bitcoin. It is now much more legitimate and it is certainly safe to use. However, the fact that it some of the mathematics of its set up help to make it potentially untraceable makes Bitcoin and other cryptos (crypto all-but means “secret”) to people who want to keep what they’re doing secret – whether what they’re doing is legitimate or worthwhile is up to you to decide.

Bitcoin had a real-world value by this point. It could be traded with other currencies. This has made Bitcoin the plaything of currency traders, and this has meant that its value can change rapidly and unpredictably.

(Almost everything we say about Bitcoin in this article can be applied to other cryptocurrencies – often called altcoins – to a greater or lesser degree.)

In 2012 the Bitcoin Foundation was founded, helping to legitimise the currency. In 2013 the currency came under the auspices of FinCEN, the US Financial Crime Enforcement Network, bringing it for the first time into the existing financial regulation systems. (A system that didn’t stop the world economy from crashing on the basis of insane trading of packaged bad debts, but there you have it.)

Much of the rest of the history of Bitcoin is of market swings. There have been some outrageous hacking thefts of Bitcoin. And The People’s Republic of China remains immune to the charms of Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies are very heavily regulated if not outright banned in China.

How does Bitcoin Work

That’s a brief view of how Bitcoin came to be, and much of that is not of much use to the average casino user.

How Bitcoin actually functions for customers of Bitcoin (and maybe of casinos) is more useful.

To use Bitcoin you need to have some money in a standard currency in order to buy your Bitcoin. You do this via exchanges, and your Bitcoin is stored in a wallet, either in a separate downloaded software wallet (one of the most famous pieces of Bitcoin history is of a man in the UK who accidentally threw away a computer on which his Bitcoin was stored) or an online wallet.

We’re going to look at online or hosted wallets here. Downloaded wallets are available in mobile and desktop versions. You can also buy hardware wallets.

We’re very keen on security at this site as you’ll know if you read many of our articles. Please add a line in your head as you read all of this advice that says, “make security your first priority.)

How to Open a Bitcoin Wallet for Online Gambling

A hosted Bitcoin wallet is very like online wallets in other currencies. PayPal is the most famous, and to the end-user, it looks and feels very much like a traditional bank account taken online. The same is true of Bitcoin wallets.

As a Bitcoin wallet is going to be storing some potentially very valuable code you need to be sure it is a trustworthy and legitimate business. Please do that!

You’ll use this wallet just as you might use Skrill or PayPal.

Find a site you like and trust, using online reviews rather than advertising or affiliate sites, and go about setting up an account. You’ll need the usual information, but it is unlikely that you’ll need to provide copies of documents or other ID.

How to Deposit Money into a Bitcoin Wallet for Online Gambling

Once you’ve set up your wallet you want it to be bulging with money. As you’re changing your money from a conventional off-line currency, say Euros, into Bitcoin, the wallet on this occasion will be acting as bureau de change as well as a bank.

The value of Bitcoin is variable, and it can vary quite dramatically and quite quickly – though now it has become much more like a regular currency it has started to behave more like one and the curve is flattening. If you have the time and resources to follow these fluctuations you might be able to save yourself some money when you exchange. You could easily, see things going in the other direction too.

Buying your Bitcoin will feel very like depositing money into your online bank account or a regular electronic wallet.

How to Open an Account to Use Bitcoin at an Online Casino

Then you need to get your Bitcoin into an online casino account.

How this happens will depend on where you are and what online casino regulators in your country allow.

Some jurisdictions are stricter than others. To keep yourself safe you should make sure you’re always playing within the rules where you live. If you step outside them you will lose the security and protection that they provide.

Look for a casino that allows you to deposit Bitcoins and sign up. Use the cashier system to select Bitcoin as an option and cash up your account.

How are Your Deposits Converted?

Bitcoin changes in value quite quickly. All currencies do, but Bitcoin has a particularly lively market. This instability is becoming less pronounced over time, but one of the ways of dealing with this is for the casino site to convert your Bitcoin immediately into a more conventional currency.

This does rather get rid of one of the advantages of Bitcoin, which is that it is relatively low-cost to use online, as it is an entirely digital currency.

Bitcoin Casino Withdrawals

Once you’ve played your games and hopefully built up a good amount of cash in your account you can withdraw your money.

If you’re playing at a casino that operated in Bitcoin then you can simply head to the cashier and process a payment back into your Bitcoin wallet.

You may need to go through a middleman though, in the form of a payment processor or e-wallets like PayPal or Skrill.

Accepting Bitcoin or Accepting Bitcoin via a Middleman

Bitcoin can be used both indirectly and directly at Casino sites.

If you find a site that directly accepts Bitcoin from your Bitcoin wallet that’s great.

You may also find yourself offered the opportunity to cash up your account with Bitcoin from a Bitcoin payment processor.

There are a growing number of these, who work with websites to process payments from Bitcoin to their sites, usually in the local currency.

They include:

  • CoinPayments,
  • BitPay,
  • CoinBase Commerce,
  • CoinGate,
  • Blockchain Info,
  • Spectrocoin, and
  • GoURL.

Most of these processors accept a range of alt-coins or cryptocurrencies and will charge a small fee – which can be paid by the casino site or taken out of your funds – to the service user.

This is the middleman from the casino’s end.

You may also use a middleman (we apologise for this sexist shorthand, an intermediary might be a better word) service yourself.

PayPal and Bitcoin

A big boost came to the cryptocurrency community – and there is such a thing, some people have political and philosophical reasons for liking cryptocurrencies – when PayPal was said to be preparing to announce in 2020 that it would start supporting transactions in Bitcoin.

Venmo and Cash App are other bit payment processing companies who accept or process Bitcoin transactions.

PayPal has already allowed withdrawals to PayPal accounts from some Bitcoin exchanges, most notably, Coinbase, which we listed above, but this potential announcement of Bitcoin trading on PayPal would make PayPal essentially a crypto wallet of a sort in its own right.

This would be a massive boost for Bitcoin users, and would also make using Bitcoin at online casino sites much easier.

PayPal is a big company that cares a lot about its reputation. This has been evident in its dealings with the gambling world. PayPal was the world’s biggest handler of online gambling payments when they dropped out of the market completely while the US was reforming its laws around online gambling.

You can already use one well-known payment processor with Bitcoin, and it’s one that stepped into the PayPal gap in the gambling market to great effect.

Skrill and Bitcoin

Skrill is one of the biggest payment processors in the gambling world When PayPal ducked out of the gambling world there was a big gap in the market. And Skrill was one of the companies who profited from that gap.

Skrill has an interesting corporate history that’s a great illustration of how markets like this work (hint, not really to the benefit of the end-user so much as to the benefit of the people who own the businesses). The upshot of a story that started with Moneybookers is that Skrill is now part of a company called Paysafe Group along with Neteller and Paysafecard.

Paysafe Group is based in the UK (on the Isle of Man), and is listed on the London Stock Exchange and regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, putting it very high in the legitimacy stakes.

And now you can use Bitcoin with Skrill. This is probably the way you are most likely to see Bitcoin at UK casino sites for example.

This is how you can use Bitcoin with your Skrill account.

You will need a Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash wallet. And you’ll need some Bitcoin in your wallet.

You can then deposit into your Skrill account from Bitcoin.

Simply select Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash from the deposit menu, put in the amount of Bitcoin you want to deposit in your Skrill account and then follow the instructions that will take you to the BitPay site where you’ll need to log in and check the details of the payment invoice to complete the transaction.

There are restrictions on how you can use money from Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash via your Skrill account.

  • You won’t be able to use these funds to withdraw to some bank accounts and in some currencies.
  • You won’t be able to withdraw to a debit card.
  • It’s not possible to withdraw to a mobile wallet.
  • You won’t be able to use the cash to fund a Skrill account with a Skrill Card.

This all uses the BitPay system, and there are restrictions on which wallets you can use with that service, though it is open to a large number of currencies and supports Bitcoin Wallets, Bitcoin Cash Wallets, Etherium Wallets, and Hardware Wallets that use the Bitcoin Payment Protocols.

Deposits into Skrill wallets via these methods normally takes just 15 minutes. There is a 1% fee on Bitcoin deposits into Skrill at the moment.

You can then use your Bitcoin by Skrill account as you would a usual e-wallet to cash up your casino account. Many casinos also allow you to withdraw to your Bitcoin by Skrill account.

Check more casino banking methods: