Crypto casinos have been around for a few years now and are rapidly gaining the trust of privacy-concerned gamblers. But, they’re not exactly the ideal solution, mainly because of market volatility. The value of the biggest cryptocurrencies has massive fluctuations, which means gamblers can never know what they’re dealing with. Even if they win more crypto than they have gambled, the total fiat value of their digital assets might be negative.
Stablecoins have entered the chat! Stablecoin casinos are the new kid on the online gambling block and 2023 is likely to be their breakthrough year. They haven’t been around for as long as their conventional crypto gambling counterparts, but are bound to be interesting to privacy-concerned gamblers.
What are stablecoins? What are their most popular specimens and what key benefits can you expect from stablecoin casinos? Well, all that and more await you in the remainder of this piece!
Since you’re here, you probably know a thing or two about digital assets like cryptocurrencies and NFTs. With that assumption, here’s the simplest stablecoin definition:
Stablecoin is a type of digital asset AKA cryptocurrency that is pegged to the value of a fiat asset like a real-world currency or gold.
According to the method of maintaining value, there are several different types of stablecoins:
The whole purpose of stablecoins is to provide a safer alternative to highly-volatile cryptocurrencies. As such, stablecoins provide a better way to store value and issue transactions, which is why we’re starting to see them better represented on crypto gambling platforms and stable coin casinos.
They are used for a wide variety of additional payments. However, we’re strictly talking about their use on crypto gambling platforms, so we’ll be focusing on those aspects from now on.
Before going any further, we need to share some light on the most popular specimens. These days, the most popular stablecoins are as follows:
If you’re interested in stablecoin casinos, these five stablecoins are the most common deposit options you’ll find out there. Keep in mind that these aren’t only meant for deposits – you can make withdrawals using stablecoins as well.
Since we’re seeing more and more online gambling platforms explore their options with stablecoins, a question has emerged – why? Why are stablecoin casinos popping up left and right? Could they push conventional cryptocurrencies out of the gambling industry? If yes, why? What are the key benefits of using stablecoins for online gambling?
We managed to find a total of five key benefits that stablecoin casinos have over their crypto gambling counterparts. Why don’t we start off with the most notable one?!
This is by far the biggest benefit that stablecoin casinos have over their cryptocurrency-based counterparts. If you already have your mind set on gambling with digital assets instead of conventional payment methods, stablecoins are your best bet (pun intended).
The reasoning here is super simple – the value of stablecoins doesn’t fluctuate. 1 USDT is always going to be exactly $1 USD. Yes. slight oscillations of +/-0.01 may occur from time to time, but that’s nothing compared to the fluctuations of big cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin, which are often used for gambling.
Here’s a table depicting just how much these two cryptocurrencies were oscillating in 2022:
Bitcoin Value | Ethereum Value | |
March 31st 2022 | $47,062.15 | $3,385.29 |
June 30th 2022 | $20,108.31 | $1,099.35 |
September 30th 2022 | $19,573.43 | $1,335.65 |
December 31st 2022 | $16,603.67 | $1,199.36 |
What about stablecoins like USDT (Tether) and USDC (USD Coin)? Well, their nominal value hasn’t changed whole year long. They started off at $1 and remained at that exact value throughout the entirety of 2022.
Yes, haters will say that Tether’s value dropped to $0.9959 back in May, which was because of the Terra Luna de-pegging, but it got right back up to $1 and has remained stable ever since.
That said, if your primary concern regarding stablecoin casinos is volatility, you have nothing to worry about… as long as you use stablecoins, that is. If you switch back to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, may lady luck help you!
Anonymity is at the very core of digital currencies. Stablecoins are no different – you don’t need to enter any personal information to authorize stablecoin transactions. All stablecoin transactions are transparent and easily trackable, but that doesn’t jeopardize your personal information.
However, keep in mind that some stablecoin casinos require you to confirm your identity after registration or before your first withdrawal. That said, even if you use exclusively stablecoins and nothing but stablecoins, your casino will still have your personal information. This is not the case with all online casinos, though, but it’s still something to keep in mind… especially if you’re a privacy-concerned gambler.
Not only are stablecoin transactions anonymous, but they also offer an extra security layer over conventional payment methods like bank transfers and various e-wallets. These transactions are recorded on a public ledger which makes them completely transparent and individually verifiable. The transactions can easily be tracked, but they’re also anonymous which means you’re not sacrificing privacy for security.
As is the case with every other digital security system, the human factor is the most common fault. Human error is where the hackers find their exploits. That said, always make sure you use long, unique passwords consisting of letters, caps, numbers, and special characters. Never take your digital security for granted!
One of the key benefits of using stablecoins on online casinos is instant transactions. That’s right – instant! Even though transactions done on the blockchain usually take a while, casinos tend to release the funds into gamblers’ accounts as soon as they authorize the transactions.
That’s because nothing can go wrong. Casinos are not risking anything by immediately releasing funds for crypto transactions. You see, gamblers cannot cancel or reverse transactions done on the blockchain. Once they authorize it, it’s only a matter of time before the funds appear in the casino’s wallet.
Let’s not forget about the importance of stablecoin’s decentralized nature. In essence, digital assets are decentralized, meaning they are not controlled by any single authority. In layman’s terms, this means that stablecoins (and cryptocurrencies) are not controlled by any bank or government.
If you have funds in your digital wallet, no authority can take it away from you. That’s obviously not the case with conventional banking methods, where the government and third parties can block access to your funds for all sorts of reasons.
As with everything else in life, stablecoins do have their downsides. Not everything is rainbows and butterflies. But, as you’ll soon find out, the benefits of stablecoin casinos greatly outweigh the negatives.
Even though the sole purpose of stablecoins is to be “stable”, there’s always a risk of de-pegging. The perfect example of this is the unsuccessful Terra Luna story and the UST (TerraUSD) stablecoin which lost its USD peg back in May last year.
To this day, the de-pegging of UST is the only example of a big stablecoin losing its value. But, just because we’ve had only one thus far doesn’t mean it theoretically can’t happen again. There’s always some risk involved when dealing with digital assets like cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. But, if you know what you’re dealing with as well as the risks involved, you’ll be able to react in a timely manner without endangering your finances.
The second notable downside of stablecoins lies in the lack of proper regulation. This is nothing new – international gambling regulators have been pointing toward this issue for several years now. But, despite the fact they know it’s an issue, they cannot do much to stop it.
Instating a prohibition on crypto gambling is not going to magically make it disappear. That’s probably the reason why international gambling authorities are so hesitant to instate proper regulations in the first place.
They are still debating on how to lower the risks while also preventing the whole crypto gambling sphere from going out of control. We’re likely going to see concrete regulations put in place in the next couple of years. For now, the entirety of the crypto and stablecoin casino industry is in the gray area of online gambling. If that’s okay with you, the only real downside is the above-mentioned risk of potential value fluctuations.
In short, the key benefit of gambling on stablecoin casinos is the fact that stablecoins possess the best of both worlds – conventional and digital banking.
Stablecoins’ biggest virtue lies in their price stability. They represent digital assets with a fixed (read stable) value that’s not likely to have massive fluctuations. This effectively annihilates the biggest issue with using conventional cryptocurrencies (such as BTC and ETH), market volatility.
That, combined with the fact that stablecoins offer fast and cheap transactions, anonymity, and added security benefits, makes them the ideal choice for tech-savvy gamblers in 2023!