Today, the impressive world of online casinos continues to reach new financial heights and popularity. With memberships at an all-time high and growing, the iGaming scene continues to expand. While traditional online casinos continue to draw the headlines, their continued success continues to inspire a new breed of social casinos to come online.
However, often overlooked but certainly still appreciated are crypto casinos. In fact, crypto casinos were around well before the rise of traditional online casinos. This guide compares the phenomenon of crypto and real money casinos to help you make the best choice for joining.
How Crypto Casinos Operate
Crypto casinos, like the rest of the crypto universe, operate on blockchain technology. With blockchain technology, crypto and, most importantly, Bitcoin casinos benefit from working on decentralized networks. Decentralized networks bypass traditional regulatory agencies or institutions to regulate and encrypt their own crypto data.
As a result, developers and gamers flock to crypto wallets, which conduct crypto transactions for their daily and business needs, including online casinos. Through smart contracts, crypto casino members can further maintain their autonomy by making deposits that are processed much faster than traditional online casinos.
Most online casinos rely primarily on credit cards, most specifically Visa and MasterCard. While Visa and MasterCard are highly reputable and secure, sometimes they are rejected for accepting online casino charges and payments. This quirk continues to be one of the main differences between the two standards for online casino play.
Because crypto casinos use alt-currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, it didn’t take long for disgruntled real money online casino players to switch over to crypto casinos.
Traditional Online Casino Payments
In recent years, traditional online casinos have caught up to crypto casinos in popularity and payment usage. It’s common for traditional online casinos to accept multiple cryptocurrencies to lure crypto casino players into the fold. These traditional online casinos might offer exclusive promotions like cryptocurrency boosters to encourage members to use cryptocurrency.
Besides the cashier, the biggest way crypto options contribute to standard online casinos is by introducing fast and instant payouts.
Today, the top American online casinos feature fast payouts, but crypto helped usher this in. Because blockchain is decentralized, it eliminates the need to go through the bank, giving winners access to their winnings, sometimes within the hour. Also, traditional online casinos began accepting e-wallets, first Neteller and Skrill.
E-wallets were taken instantly with mainstream online casino members because they provided an extra layer of protection when submitting their financial information. Because e-wallets store information like bank accounts and credit cards, they continue to be a hit for these casinos. When Neteller left the North American market, these same traditional online casinos picked up the ball by finally accepting PayPal into the payment mix.
With hundreds of millions of users worldwide, PayPal is a fixture for cashiers in traditional online casinos and new social casinos.
Crypto Casinos Payments
While it is common to find credit card payments in cryptocurrencies, pure blockchain casinos tend to only support crypto payments. As a result, a blockchain casino can literally house over a dozen cryptocurrencies. Depending on the caliber of the crypto wallet, crypto casino players can seamlessly go through all the different options in total anonymity.
Traditional Online Casino Registration vs. Crypto Casinos
No matter which platform you choose, the first step is to join it. Before the rise of legal American online casinos, many Americans flocked to offshore crypto casinos because they could remain anonymous when creating their accounts.
Signing up at crypto casinos often didn’t require extensive personal information like a residential address and a partial social security number. Instead, having a username and a unique password was all it took to create an account. No first and last names are needed. With a much simpler registration system, Americans flocked and became addicted to the ease of these sites without having to worry about hackers getting their personal information.
Compared to traditional online casinos, the registration process is a bit more complicated. Often, new members have to spend several minutes filling out the form, including all the personal information and the last four digits of their social security numbers.
To ensure their license mandates, regular online casinos often use multi-factor authentication before verifying new accounts. It is common for new members to submit proof of identification, such as a current driver’s identification or passport, followed up with a selfie. Even after doing that, the last hurdle to verify authenticity is usually a secure PIN from the online casino sent by text message.
The Differences in Games
In these areas, crypto and traditional online casinos often share the games. Online casino players usually rely on fan-favorite developers like NetEnt, IGT, and Pragmatic Play to make their games available on both platforms. However, while exclusive games are popular at real money and new sweepstakes casinos, they can thank crypto casinos for adding that wrinkle.
Using blockchain technology, pure Bitcoin casinos began developing original slot and table games and specialty games like Plinko and Dice. The impact was immediate among its members. The original crypto games became so popular that many top-tier crypto casinos departed from the traditional third-party software model to focus exclusively on their unique casino game concepts.
Differences in Regulations
While joining a regular online casino involves extra steps, many traditional players prefer them over crypto. Licensed American online casinos make players feel safe because they are assured of online protection, honest game results, timely customer support, and payment.
Crypto casinos, on the other hand, might not be as well regulated, which can be off-putting for members to join. While traditional online casinos use certified random number generators to verify fair game results, crypto casinos use provably fair. Provably fair allows members to view the results for themselves instantly and privately through blockchain technology.
