Is Bitcoin Gambling Safe?
Is Bitcoin Gambling Safe?
Safety has been paramount in online gambling for a long time, and with the inception of bitcoin, the safety measures and tools have completely transformed.
It might be very overwhelming if you’re just starting gambling, but this article is here to simplify things.
The History of Gambling Safety
Humanity has loved betting for millennia — we have evidence that goes as far back as ancient Egypt of societies partaking in betting activities and developing betting games. This has continued through the ages and betting has taken prominent places in many cultures.
Before the internet was invented, gambling, sports betting, and lotteries were quite popular in Western Europe and the Americas, with a multitude of legal casinos in many regions.This popularity only continued when the first online casinos became available. This meant that people from regions that did not take well to gambling had sudden access to online casinos, and their popularity surged.
But, as we all know, when there’s a place where a lot of real money is to be made, bad actors will take advantage of it. A lot of spammy, fake casino websites propped up online trying to take advantage of the uninitiated gamblers and make a quick buck scamming them, violating their privacy and overcharging them – and sometimes even refusing payouts.
This had a lasting impact on the development of online casinos. The industry came up with a multitude of ways to signal their legitimacy and created organizations that would certify a legitimate online casino. But that didn’t stop all the abuse, and the fact that users need to enter their credit cards or PayPal accounts to gamble often created serious risk for them. All of this culminated in the widespread adoption of bitcoin and the creation of bitcoin casinos, which substantially transformed the gambling scene online.
Bitcoin casinos are more secure than casinos that use conventional online payments. You can easily use bitcoin as a form of payment, make a deposit, and make sure you are doing so with complete privacy.
Bitcoin Betting is One of the Safest Ways to Gamble
The introduction of bitcoin wasn’t only a big event in the world of finances, but it also had widespread ramifications to online shopping, money exchange, and much more. It made many new things possible – illegal and secretive things at first, but bitcoin soon made its way into the mainstream. Its robust exchange system, its anonymity, and its strong encryption was a perfect addition to the world of betting and has made bitcoin online betting one of the best and safest.
- Better, more robust privacy protection: Bitcoin is really hard to track and monitor, and this means your anonymity and privacy will be more guaranteed when gambling with BTC. This isn’t true for other payment options, however. If you’re going to gamble with a credit card, the credit card company, the government, etc. can all monitor you and the way you spend your money and this should cause any reasonable person a momentary pause.
- It protects you from different laws and regulations: although none of us want to break laws and regulations, it is really difficult and time-consuming to learn about all of them and ensure you comply at all times. Thanks to the fact that your BTC wallet can’t be traced, you’ll need to worry less about these things.
Bitcoin Gambling Opens Up a World of New Opportunities
Bitcoin gambling opens up a world of new opportunities for you and the gambling companies. Not only will it make your usage of these sites safer for you, but it is a way of protecting the companies as well. There is less liability and risk involved for the companies when they’re dealing with bitcoin.
As such, there are many kinds of business models and gambling websites that have propped up that were not possible before bitcoin was introduced.
Extra Steps You Can Take to Better Protect Your Privacy
Installing a VPN
Although the gambling websites, the government, and your ISP, won’t be able to get any kind of personal information from your bitcoin wallet and payments, they’ll be able to still see your browsing details: third parties will be able to see which kind of websites you’re visiting if you don’t hide your data. The betting website will know your IP address and possibly your location, too.
These are all reasons why you should be using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to encrypt and protect your browsing data. This way, you’ll completely mask your online presence and provide an additional layer of protection to yourself.
Using a Separate Bitcoin Wallet for Betting
Although it is really difficult, virtually impossible, for companies to overcharge you, hack you, etc. if you’re using bitcoin, you still can’t rule out human error. It isn’t impossible to make human mistakes and confirm a payment that’s too much without double checking it, thus being overcharged.
That’s why creating a separate bitcoin wallet for your gambling has some merit. This especially helps with gambling addiction, preventing you from gambling too much money in one sitting on an impulse.
Familiarizing Yourself with Laws and Regulations Surrounding Betting
Even if you’re using bitcoin, you’re not completely immune to laws and regulations surrounding betting, and if you take some time to learn about them, it’ll bode well for your betting future.
For example: personal laws and regulations impacting you – these are the most important as you don’t want to knowingly break laws that might put you in trouble. You might expect some fines or even worse.
Gambling Authority – make sure that the casino you’re gambling in is licenced by a gambling authority. These are scattered all over the world in places like Canada, Malta, Isle of Man or Curacao. They give the casinos a licence and make sure they are regulated, fair and don’t scam people.
Anonymous in BTC Casinos?
A lot of people who look into using bitcoin for their gambling highly value their privacy, which includes not giving away any personal details. That being said, does that mean that the casinos won’t ask for any personal information or that they won’t get any information about you implicitly?
These are all key questions you need to ask yourself before you sign up for a casino website purporting to support bitcoin. In this section, we’ll go over the different types of information casinos might require you to provide, the information they get without you actually giving it to them, and reasons why they require it.
Casinos That are Built Around Anonymity
After the invention and introduction of bitcoin to the public in 2009-2011, people slowly picked up on the advantage of it’s strong encryption and robust security features. It wasn’t too much later when a massive number of companies were built around providing services to customers built around bitcoin and anonymity.
Bitcoin casinos represent some of the first businesses that used this technology. We’ve seen bitcoin casinos increase and proliferate more and more over the years, and nowadays, there are tens of thousands of casinos around the world that provide an excellent selection of games that are built around bitcoin.
These casinos try to maximize privacy. They don’t ask for personal details. They allow you to create accounts easily. And lastly, they allow you to gamble and enjoy casino games without much additional overhead.
This provides you with excellent protection, privacy, and safety. Although, due to the fact the businesses can’t collect almost any data on you, it is hard to provide some services and benefits. For example, some casino companies with loyalty programs might provide you with a holiday vacation — it will be almost impossible with this kind of casino.
Nevertheless, if privacy and security are your two most important issues, and you are willing to forgo some royalty programs and features, you should use one of these casinos. Otherwise, you should read on and learn more about the other kind of casino website.
Casinos That Provide BTC Payment
There are many casinos that have been established over the last 30 years that offer way more payment options than bitcoin. These casinos provide bitcoin as an alternative payment option due to how widespread it is, but they haven’t built their entire business around it.
In these cases, the websites aren’t created specifically to cater to people who want maximum privacy and don’t want to give out any details about themselves. This means when you sign up to the websites, you can expect a much more thorough process that might very well ask for your full name and address. Although this isn’t universal, it is how a lot of them operate.
This doesn’t mean you should ignore these websites. They are more diverse in nature, more secure, and offer more gambling games — this is mainly due to these websites operating for years and not being specific to bitcoin fans, which gives them a wider appeal. They also offer more services and features that bitcoin-only gambling websites don’t: legal protection, telephone customer support, loyalty programs and the like.
If you still want to use the protection provided by bitcoin and only deposit and withdraw in BTC, but you also like all these extra features and less-than-maximal privacy isn’t your top priority, you’ll greatly enjoy these types of casinos. You definitely need to check them out!
Data That Casinos Get Without You Explicitly Sharing It
You have to remember that whatever type of casino you choose, there is some data that gets transmitted without you explicitly agreeing to it:
- Location: your location is visible to the websites you visit due to your IP. This means that the websites you’re visiting know where you are visiting from, down to the city. This can be a deal-breaker for some people.
- Which websites you’re visiting: your internet service provider will need to share your information with the government in multiple scenarios, and this means the government will know which websites you’re using. Although there isn’t a particularly high chance of this, it isn’t totally impossible and causes some people anxiety.
- Which browser you’re using: the specifications of your browser is known to the websites you visit, and if you’re using an outdated browser, you might be vulnerable to having your private data exposed.
To fix the first and second problems, you can use a VPN to mask your browsing data and create an additional layer of safety for yourself. This, coupled with using bitcoin casinos means safety and privacy. If you want to be secure, this is definitely the way to go.