Investing in cryptocurrencies may have been called gambling by some—but if you're holding crypto and you're looking to wager on real games of chance, there are plenty of options for gambling with your hard-earned Bitcoin. Welcome to the crypto casino.
Unsurprisingly, there are loads of ways to gamble online with crypto, and it's not difficult to see why. Crypto affords users a level of anonymity they wouldn't have with fiat money deposited from banks or credit cards, and depending on the platform, the casino may not be affected by gambling restrictions in certain locations. It's a seemingly ideal use case for decentralized technology and anonymous currency, and many gambling sites have sprung up to meet the demand.
Looking to gamble with Bitcoin, ether, EOS, or another top cryptocurrency? Here's a look at how you can do just that, along with some of the unique elements and restrictions that come along with it.
Decrypt is not advocating or vouching for the quality of any of the dapps or online casinos mentioned here—we are simply highlighting popular options.
Decentralized gambling
There's a rising number of decentralized gambling apps that take place directly on the blockchain as dapps. You can find a handy listing of the most popular ones at DappRadar. Many of the most popular gambling dapps are based on TRON (TRX), as its 2,000 transactions-per-second turnover rate allows services like these to thrive.
As of writing, the most popular gambling dapps include WINk, which also supports DICE (TRC20) and BTT (TRC10) in addition to TRX. WINk, billed as "world’s first trustless, permission-less, and high-performance e-gaming platform on the TRON network," has a volume of more than $14 million in a seven-day period, with more than two million transactions and 5,000+ users. It offers games based on its DICE coin, as well as live slots, table games, and more.
Another popular option is RocketGame, which supports TRX and ROCKET (TRC20) and has a variety of player versus player (PvP) games. RocketGame shows a volume of $1.8 million over the last week, with about 3,500 users and more than 450,000 transactions.
Online crypto casinos
There are also many crypto casinos that are not decentralized apps than run off of a blockchain, but rather are traditional web platforms that let you deposit and withdraw cryptocurrency to play. Given the more standard approach, these sites can potentially offer a much larger selection of games and can also accept a wider array of coins.
For example, FortuneJack is a popular crypto-gambling site with hundreds of different games—dice, slots, blackjack, poker, roulette, and many more. It also supports nine different coins, letting you deposit and withdraw the following cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Zcash, TRON, Dash, Bitcoin Cash, and Monero.
Other options along this line include BetChain, which similarly has a huge stash of games and both accepts and pays out in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Tether. BetChain also accepts and pays out in Euros and other fiat currencies too. DuckDice, another site, only offers a single dice game—but in addition to Bitcoin, it accepts more than 300 altcoins via partner CoinSwitch, which converts them to Bitcoin during the process.
Things to know about crypto casinos
Many crypto casinos promise "Provably Fair" games. What does that mean? Well, the more reputable crypto casinos have implemented technology that allows you to verify that the game isn't simply cheating you out of wins. You are given a server hash, server seed, and client seed, which you can put into a verifying script to affirm the game's legitimacy.
Some crypto casinos also feature a Bitcoin or other crypto coin faucet, which gives you a very, very small chunk of free currency to play with on a semi-regular basis. This may be supported by ads, special offers, surveys, and other things you might not want to mess with—but it'll give you a little bit of coin to start gambling with if you don't want to empty your own wallet.
Finally, be aware that regional restrictions still come into play with many online gambling sites. For example, some sites were completely blocked off to this US-based writer, while others put the onus on players to be aware of their local gambling laws. If you're new to online gambling, then you should look up what's legal and what's not in your country or state.