Cryptocurrency Casinos (And Betting Crypto on the World Cup)

Can you bet cryptocurrency on the Football World Cup? Yes, you can. Should you? Maybe.

Cryptocurrency Casinos – A New Landscape Taking Shape

There are tons of online casinos and online casino top lists out there. You seem them on google all the time. This is because casinos and casino affiliate companies spend ridiculous amounts of money on SEO and backlinks, which makes their respective sites incredibly powerful in Google’s ranking systems.

However, there haven’t been any list of casinos accepting cryptocurrencies – cryptocurrency casinos – with information on bonuses, games available, user ratings etc. As of now, more than three thousand cryptocurrency options are used in the currently operational online casinos, which are currently spread all over the world (source: Foxbonus.com).

Gambling Licenses – What and How?

If you walk into any casino on the Las Vegas Strip, you can rest assured that such casino has a gambling license. However, if you’re out scavenging the world wide web and stumble upon a random online casino, you can’t be that certain. It is even more common among cryptocurrency casinos than among other online casinos that licenses are missing. This is simply because when you run a regular online casino and players deposit fiat currency, you need a merchant bank account to handle the deposited fiat currency. In order for an online casino to be permitted to have a merchant bank account with a bank, such bank will need to see a gambling license.

When the players deposit cryptocurrency instead, the need for a bank is eliminated and – in turn – the need for a gambling license for “cash handling reasons” is also eliminated (such need might remain though due to other laws or regulations in the relevant jurisdiction).

Countries Issuing Gambling Licenses

The following picture shows the countries from which the vast majority of the licensed casinos around the world have their respective gambling licenses:

Have any of you been to the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands: Alderney (part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey) or the First Nations reserve of the Mohawks of Kahnawá:ke on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, or “Kahnawake” for short? Yeah, me neither…

Out of the 47 cryptocurrency casinos listed by Cryptowisser, 25 have a gambling license and 22 do not. Out of the 25 cryptocurrency casinos that do have gambling licenses, 22 (!) are issued by Curaçao, 2 issued by Costa Rica (BitDice.me and Bitroulette.org) and 1 is issued by Montenegro (cloudbet.com). Curaçao’s dominance is – as you can see – total.

There are three primary reasons for Curaçao’s dominance: low tax, smooth license application procedure and non-complex gambling regulation, and low license fees.

Low tax

Tax is 2% of net profits. No further comments are necessary on this point.

Smooth license application procedure and non-complex gambling regulation

The licensing procedure in Curaçao is incredibly quick and cheap. The process takes approximately three weeks, provided that you have all your paper work in order when applying. Also, the regulation governing gambling in Curaçao is quite simple. The Curaçao authorities only require one license for whathever type of gambling operation you want to conduct. In contrast, many other countries’ authorities require a lot of different licenses for different types of gaming.

Low license fees

The fees for getting and maintaining the license are also very low. You need to pay a set-up fee of approx. USD 34,000 and then – during the first two years of operation – a monthly fee of around USD 6,000. After such 2 year-period, the operator of the online casino can negotiate the fees with the Curaçao government.

Why should you even care about gambling licenses?

You just want to win some money, right? Well, the biggest difference between online casinos with licenses and online casinos without is that the online casinos with licenses are subject to regular reviews by the supervisory authority (normally the Gambling Authority of the jurisdiction issuing the license).

If the relevant authority finds something inaccurate, such as:

• inadequate security measures in place to protect the customers’ funds,
• gaming software not being set up in a provably fair manner (an extreme example would be slot machines that never give any pay-outs), or
• customer withdrawals being denied,

then the relevant authority can revoke the online casino’s license.

To summarize, when you start gambling at a cryptocurrency casino without a license, you are also gambling that it is a fair and square casino. The majority of cryptocurrency casinos out there are good guys, but there are also a couple of bad ones out there.

Bonuses

Another thing to consider when choosing a cryptocurrency casino to play at is such casino’s bonus. Does it offer any “welcome bonus” or “first deposit bonus”? There is a rich plethora of different bonuses available. It might be a monetary balance or just an opportunity to play certain of the casino’s games for free.

Normally, you receive a percentage of your deposit up to a certain max limit. A usual bonus system is 100% up to a certain limit, e.g. 1 BTC. Accordingly, if you deposit 1 BTC to a cryptocurrency casino, you will have 2 BTC to play for. If you instead deposit 10 BTC to the same casino, you will only have 11 BTC to play for. This is because the doubling only applies to 1 BTC of your deposit, and not the remaining 9 BTC.

You should try to find the bonus type that suits you best. If you’re a really big baller, CloudBet’s 100% bonus up to 5 BTC might make you happy. If you’ve just started building your fortune, maybe Futuriti Casino’s 200% up to EUR 1,000 suits you better.

The different casino’s respective bonus offerings and max limits are also listed at Cryptowisser’s cryptocurrency casino list.

World Cup Winner Odds

Now to some really interesting information – Football (or soccer, for you Americans) World Cup Winner odds!

These are the odds (obtained on 13 June, at 11:30 CET) at the cryptocurrency casinos taking bets on the winner of the World Cup (CasinoCo and mBitcasino do not offer betting on the winner but do offer betting on, inter alia, specific matches).

The best odds are the ones in green.

If you want to play on another team than the ones listed below, you can. At least some (but not all), of the below cryptocurrency casinos offer that option as well.

 

I don’t know about you guys. But in my mind, 58.846x on England or 107.549x on Colombia doesn’t sound like a bad bet! The guys setting the odds at OneHash have clearly been asleep at the wheel…

If you would rather play on Brazil as the winner, Bitcasino.io, CloudBet and ZigZag777 all offer the same odds (5.00) and if Portugal would somehow be your preferred choice, the best odds can be found at ZigZag777 (27.00).

Concluding Thoughts

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology is revolutionizing so many different industries across the globe. The gambling industry is no exception. I expect to see more and more cryptocurrency casinos popping up to cater to the cryptocurrency gamblers over the coming months and years and if you’re interested and want to keep track of the development – I highly recommend you to regularly visit Cryptowisser’s cryptocurrency casino list.

Also, when following the games of the World Cup this summer, why not bet a few cryptos on your favourite team? You’re in a better position to do so now when having read this article than you’ve ever been before…

Good luck!

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P.S. To learn a few more items to have in mind when choosing among cryptocurrency casinos, read this blog post written by Julia Beyers.