Bitcoin Betting sites

What is Bitcoin and why is popular at online bookmakers?

If you’re reading this, you probably belong to one of two camps – people who are extremely familiar with Bitcoin and looking for some places to gamble with their mined currency, or people who only know the name Bitcoin and want to learn what all the fuss is about. If you belong to the former, then this section won’t teach you much you already know, but if you’re in the latter, stick around! Let’s briefly explore just what Bitcoin is and why so many betting sites accept it.

Bitcoin is, in essence, digital currency. It exists entirely on the Internet, and isn’t tied to any one country. Traditional currency is typically controlled by an institution (for example, the American dollar and the US Treasury), a centralized organ that very carefully monitors the supply and value of the currency. These organs are responsible for making sure that the specific currency they’re in charge for doesn’t skyrocket in value or lose too much of it, and they do that by, for instance, printing more or less bills depending on the level of inflation.

Bitcoin, however, does not have such organ. Instead, its value lies entirely in what people are willing to pay for it, which in turn has led from 10,000 bitcoin being enough for two pizzas to just one bitcoin costing over €60,000. Its value has risen because people are simply willing to pay more for it, and there’s no institution to regulate that price. Okay, that’s not the full picture – the fact of the matter is that the amount of Bitcoin that can exist in the world is very limited. If someone burned a bunch of dollars like the Joker from “The Dark Knight”, the Treasury can just print more, but once all Bitcoin have been mined, that’s that – and the vast majority of them already have been. As such, supply has decreased, demand has skyrocketed, and thus, so has the value of bitcoin.

But what is this “mining”, anyway? Well, bitcoin obviously doesn’t operate on the honor system – you can’t just say you have 50 bitcoin and make it so. You need a system to ensure everyone is playing fair, something that can monitor all transactions and make sure that each bitcoin out there is in its proper place. But you can’t just make a server somewhere to monitor that without centralizing the currency, so instead, a ton of individual users have each contributed some amount of processing power to a sort of shared server known as the ‘blockchain’ which is responsible for monitoring all transactions. That way, no one user is in charge of Bitcoin as a currency – and furthermore, by dedicating resources to the blockchain, you’ll be rewarded with some Bitcoin of your own. This process is known as ‘mining’, and it’s how new bitcoin come to be (though the process of mining has become slower and slower as time goes on due to the limited amount of coins yet to be mined).

Phew! That probably made your head hurt, huh? No need to sweat the details – all you need to remember is that Bitcoin is a currency that only exists on the internet, no one can manipulate or control, and yet everyone can monitor to ensure fair play. This makes it incredibly appealing for online gambling, as it means you can place a deposit anywhere in the world with no country or authority having the power to block the transaction.

Football betting

Whether you’re betting with cash, bitcoin, or beer caps, chances are you’re doing that betting on football! It’s the world’s most popular sport by a decent margin, so it’s really no wonder why so many people who have chosen to place bets with crypto have gravitated towards it! While practically all betting sites will let you wager on the big football leagues (for example, Champions’ League, Bundesliga, or Premier League), what makes football betting cool is that you can also wager on a bunch of smaller games from around the world!

Tennis betting

Most people are quite happy with betting on football, but some prefer a more intimate experience – and the one-on-one tennis matches may just be precisely what they’re looking for! The good thing about tennis is that you never need to wait too long for another major international championship to happen, whether that’s the ATF, WTA, the varions national Open leagues, or, what else, Wimbledon! As you can imagine, being able to place wagers on any of these tournaments using bitcoin is just as simple and straightforward as it is when betitng with any other payment method!

Esports betting

Given the fact that bitcoin is an e-currency, it only stands to reason that we should mention betting on e-sports! In all seriousness, although these two things are mostly unrelated to each other, the fact remains that they’ve followed a very similar trajectory: existing mostly as niches that very few betting sites entertained as anything more than a novelty, until they suddenly exploded and became extremely common at bookies around the globe! Right now, it’s downright trivial to use bitcoin in order to wager on matches for Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Overwatch, or much more niche games like WarCraft 3 or Injustice 2!

American football betting

When we said earlier that football is the most popular sport in the world, that came with a tiny caveat – it never quite managed to take over the US the way it has Europe, South America, and Africa. Not to worry, though! Americans have their own football, and one that they love just as much as your average European enjoys their own sport! Every year, nearly 2/3 of the US population sits down to watch the Superbowl, and, as you can imagine, that comes hand in hand with a whole lot of sports betting! Bitcoin has always been crazy popular in the US, so it really shouldn’t shock anybody that a decent number of NFL wagers are placed precisely this way.

Bitcoin taxes

Making a bitcoin transaction from one wallet to another should be free – there is no cut that a company is taking (like they would with Visa or PayPal for instance) because no company is behind bitcoin, it’s all decentralized. As such, the overwhelming majority of online bookmakers will not charge you a cent in fees when you withdraw in bitcoin, and the ones who will try are probably out to scam you.
With that said, that doesn’t mean you won’t be paying any fees at all. Ultimately, bitcoin is an online currency, and if you wish to use it in the physical world, you’ll first need to sell it. This means that, after you have already withdrawn your bitcoin winnings, you’ll need to use a third party service to sell them into your native currency. That process can be pricey, and can cost between 5% and 10% of your sum – but alas, it’s unavoidable if you wish to actually make use of those winnings.

Bitcoin global coverage

Bitcoin is available globally. No, we don’t mean “it’s available in most countries except a few” – if people live somewhere, anywhere, then they can pay with bitcoin! That’s the big benefit of a decentralized currency that isn’t tied to any one nation, government, or reserve. Anyone can use it for anything they like.

It’s important to point out that just because bitcoin is accepted from anywhere doesn’t mean that any bookmaker will accept you as a player as long as you deposit with it. Ultimately, all betting sites have a list of countries they accept players from, and if you don’t live in one of them, you simply won’t play there. What we’re referring to are situations where, for example, players from Germany and from Nigeria are both accepted at an online bookmaker, but the former can deposit with Revolut and the latter can’t due to territory restrictions. In this case, both players will be able to deposit with bitcoin without the aforementioned restrictions.

New bookmakers accepting Bitcoin

We’ve given you plenty of examples of bookmakers that accept bitcoin throughout this article, but ultimately, all of these bookies already exist as of the time of writing this article. How about all the sites that will launch after it already goes live? We can’t just keep coming back and adding them by hand, that wouldn’t be practical! But no worries, we don’t have to – because below you’ll find an automated table that will automatically display the latest bookmakers that accept bitcoin!

Bottom line

At the end of the day, bitcoin can be extremely valuable for two reasons. First and foremost, there’s privacy. All bitcoin transactions are public, but no wallets have any names associated with them – which means that nobody can associate your own bitcoin spending with your real self. Obviously we don’t encourage you to hide your gambling for nefarious reasons (such as trying to get around restrictions due to gambling addiction), but at the same time, you deserve the right to privacy in this era of constant online surveillance, and bitcoin is a great way to get that.
The second reason is that bitcoin is globally available. Not every country will support Neosurf, Skrill, or eZeeWallet, but if the particular bookmaker supports bitcoin, chances are they will support it around the world. So, by making a bitcoin wallet, you can rest easy knowing that any online bookie which accepts bitcoin (and operates in your jurisdiction) will take your money, and that can be very reassuring when researching your next site!