The online casino industry is constantly adopting new technologies. First, it got rid of downloadable games in favor of instant-play slots and poker. Next, it adopted mobile gaming alongside mobile payments.
When Bitcoin became a thing in 2009, a few online casinos embraced BTC payments. At the time, there was not enough demand for crypto casinos. Over time, cryptocurrencies became so popular that gambling sites now accept tons of these currencies.
Below is a list of the most popular cryptocurrencies for online gambling and the reasons why.
#1: Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the granddaddy of all cryptocurrencies. It’s the first digital coin many people buy and it’s the most widely accepted crypto in the world. Naturally, every online casino wants to accept this new form of payment.
Surprisingly, experienced crypto investors don’t use BTC for gambling payments. Let’s start with its high miner’s fees. For the uninitiated, every transaction taking place in the BTC blockchain needs verification.
The people who verify these transactions—BTC miners—earn small fees for their service. Unfortunately, mining fees in Bitcoin are pretty high, at least compared to altcoins. As a result, it’s cheaper to pay for casino payments through other coins besides Bitcoin.
#2: Ethereum
Ethereum isn’t just the second most popular cryptocurrency in the world. It’s also the building block of so many applications, from payment apps to online games like roulette and slots. Because of its massive capabilities, Ethereum is rapidly growing, increasing its adoption among casinos and investors left, right and center.
In the casino space, you can deposit and withdraw money through the ETH coin or one of the coins built on its platform—SAND, Enjin Dai, Aragon and USDT, to name a few. Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum is significantly faster than Bitcoin.
The Ethereum blockchain processes transactions in five minutes. Bitcoin completes payments in 20 to 60 minutes. Another reason gamblers use Ethereum is due to its lower fees. Sure, there are growing complaints about Ethereum’s increased gas fees.
Still, it’s cheaper to make payments through Ethereum compared to Bitcoin. And as a result, loads of casinos give players the option to use ETH for payments.
#3: USD Tether
USD Tether (USDT) is the biggest stable coin in the world. It’s built on the Tron network although there’s also a version built on the Ethereum blockchain. Tron’s TRC20 USDT is more popular due to its lower fees and faster payments.
Being a cryptocurrency priced like the US dollar, it’s not a surprise many casino lovers this coin. They don’t need to worry about the volatility of altcoins or the dollar equivalent of their cryptos. USDT shows you how much crypto you hold in US dollars.
USDT is an excellent payment coin for people that respect the stability of the US dollar. It’s also great as a medium of exchange—you can buy most cryptocurrencies using USDT at leading crypto exchanges like Binance, Huobi and Kraken.
#4: Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash sounds a lot like Bitcoin. And that’s because it’s a hard fork of the original Bitcoin. As you probably know, a hard fork occurs when someone codes a new blockchain out of another, in this case Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash creators created this cryptocurrency to provide faster and cheaper transactions. Interestingly, some people also forked Bitcoin Cash later on to create Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC.
BCH forks aside, Bitcoin Cash is popular among casinos for the sheer fact it works like Bitcoin but it’s cheaper and faster. Some casinos let you make deposits through Bitcoin Cash but convert your coins to Bitcoin before you can play casino games.
That’s particularly true for casinos that offer Bitcoin slots like Satoshi’s Secrets and Gold Bricks. For regular slots, say the Jammin Jars slot, you can use any altcoin or fiat currencies like the US dollar, British pound sterling or the euro.
#5: Ripple (XRP)
Ripple is best known as the cryptocurrency for banks. It helps eliminate intermediaries while banks are sending millions of dollars around the world. The result is huge savings. And get this—Ripple payments take 3-4 seconds, much faster than the 1-3 days for traditional bank transfer.
Another benefit of Ripple is scalability. Unlike Bitcoin, Ripple doesn’t slow down transactions when there’s a surge in demand. Its network handles up to 1500 transactions per second. And if there’s more demand, Ripple’s speed can rise to 50,000 payments per second.
By comparison, Bitcoin handles seven transactions per second. This its biggest flaw. It’s not scalable. Ethereum plans to improve its scalability from 20 transactions to 10,000 transactions per second with the launch of Ethereum 2.0.
Still, it won’t come anywhere close to Ripple’s capabilities. With that in mind, Ripple is an excellent cryptocurrency for making casino deposits. It’s incredibly cheap. Yet you can send and receive millions of dollars in fractions of a second.
#6: Doge Coin
One of the biggest coins of 2021 is turning heads in the casino industry. Initially, merchants ignored the coin because it has no real use case. Then it exploded in popularity thanks to celebrity endorsements by Elon Musk and Snoop Dogg.
Now, some casinos support Doge payments for the fun of it. As we stated, some operators swap your altcoins to Bitcoin after you make your payments. That’s the most common scenario for doge now you won’t find slots and table games in-built to support the currency.
#7: Litecoin
Launched in 2011, Litecoin is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies in the world. It’s a fork of Bitcoin created to provide quicker payments. Being a pioneer, Litecoin regularly ranks amongst the top most coins by market capitalization.
It’s also a popular coin on leading trading websites and casino sites. However, it’s fast losing its popularity to newer, faster and cheaper cryptocurrencies. People still buy the coin for speculation. And some use it to make payments on casino sites.
But ever since Litecoin founder Charlie Lee sold all his Litecoin in 2017, the cryptocurrency’s popularity has decline greatly.
