Online gambling has become one of the most popular Internet entertainment forms globally. It is an industry that grows at an annual rate of 6.2%, en route to hitting a projected market volume of $136 billion in the next five years via an estimated worldwide gambler base of 281 million. The sphere got founded in 1994, thanks to Antigua’s Free Trade and Processing Act, as this island nation was the first to recognize the potential of the World Wide Web regarding games of chance and how it could revolutionize this landscape by granting people the ability to bet from anywhere at any time.
Fifteen years after a country allowed companies to offer Internet gambling services, the digital realm saw another milestone that dramatically affected this arena. That was the emergence of Bitcoin. The world’s initial virtual currency popped up in 2009, and two years later, the first exchange appeared online, letting people trade fiat for digital coins. Quickly after this event, SatoshiDice, in April 2012, became the first operational crypto casino. In 2014, amidst a range of various simple sites providing straightforward provably fair gaming entertainment, Curacao’s Antillephone decided to regulate crypto-accepting platforms, opening the door for Bitcoin slots and RNG tables.
Nowadays, the number of gambling hubs online allowing coin-based wagering on sports and casino-style products is immense. It seems like, every week, new ones are debuting, and more and more famed brands are keeping up with this trend, adopting cryptos and accepting that the industry’s environment is changing. Below, we detail how cryptocurrencies have enhanced playing games of chance online.
Why Did Crypto Gambling Become Popular?
It is vital to note that the current crypto casinos substantially differ from the original ones. The latter hubs were a novelty that materialized in the first half of the 2010s and captured the attention of a niche pool of gamblers. These were tech-savvy individuals who wanted to bet online anonymously, something that blockchain technology allowed them. At the start of the online casino industry, people could only wager on offered options using credit/debit cards and through bank transfers. In the early-2000s, e-wallets took center stage. But they still did not supply enough separation between a user’s bank account and his chosen operator to keep his gaming activity a secret.
Bitcoin permitted this because of its decentralized ledger system, where only wallet addresses exist. No names. So, privacy was a massive selling point for crypto gambling, as were lower transaction costs, global acceptance (no geo-restrictions), no regulatory oversight, and crypto casino instant withdrawal approvals. During the inception years, the cost of all this was the availability of only rudimentary games, such as dice, crash (Bustabit), mines, Plinko, and Limbo. All of these incorporated elementary rules and action, with some of their appeal also resting on the option for gamblers to verify the randomness of round outcomes manually. Hence, their name – provably fair games.
Modern crypto casinos house a wide array of gaming genres as a consequence of them getting licensed by credible regulators, which gives these sites the option to work with renowned product suppliers. Still, many select to carry simple provably fair titles even now, given that these are making a comeback, and as a way to remind gamblers that this sphere has not forgotten its roots.
How Cryptocurrencies Changed Online Casino Promotions
For the longest time, deposit matches and free spins were the backbone of casino sites, the lure that many game-of-chance lovers to register with online gambling hubs. As the years went by, it seemed like operators were content to offer these two promo types as their main promotional offers. Along with loyalty programs, of course. That is, until cryptos showed up. In recent times, the number of gamblers navigating over to the coin gaming sphere has been astounding, and this is happening for not just the reasons discussed above.
Crypto casinos now feature promotions not available at traditional fiat websites. They kicked things off on the promo front by introducing faucets or giving users small amounts of cryptos for completing basic tasks at different intervals. These funds helped players test out novel games with no deposit needed. Then came Chat Rain, a promotional feature that awards community participation, encouraging on-site interaction.
Post-2020, staking has become very in vogue. That entails gamblers staking/locking their coins within the casino’s ecosystem in return for rewards in the form of dividends. The amount given usually depends on the sum staked and its staking period. This trend gave way to yield farming and liquidity pools, where hub gamblers aid in providing liquidity, earning a share of the platform’s transaction fees in return. Much of this stems from casinos creating their tokens, digital assets that can get traded at notable exchanges like any other famous cryptocurrency.
The Rise & Development of Metaverse Gambling
Metaverses have been around for much longer than the general public knows. Most associate these virtual shared spaces with Facebook’s/Meta’s announcement in 2021. Yet, one can say that the online multimedia platform Second Life, launched in 2003, encompassed many aspects of what we define as a metaverse. Something that those who have never been active in Second Life are unaware of – is that this open-world-type game boasts several virtual casinos, such as the Helios Lounge. That is something that many modern metaverses have also implemented. The most noteworthy example is Decentraland, which made headlines with its Ice Poker venue and Tominoya Casino.
The Sandbox metaverse and CryptoVoxel have followed Decentraland’s footsteps, offering immersive gambling entertainment within their virtual worlds. The continuous advancements in VR tech will probably take the remote gambling experience to new levels inside these digital realms, where people can not only gamble but operate their casinos, establishments which they can sell as non-fungible tokens to the highest bidders. Even legendary video game company – Atari has entered this space by building its Decentraland casino on a twenty-parcel estate in the platform’s Vegas district and debuting its Atari X token as the basis for this entity’s blockchain ecosystem.
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