Best Crypto Casinos (2024)
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Nowadays, more and more online gambling houses advertise themselves as Crypto casinos. They are nothing new, as crypto being brought into the mainstream means a lot of casinos started accepting it as a payment method. In fact, we know of some casinos launched over five years ago which did! And yet, we would struggle to call them Crypto casinos.
However, it is undeniable that there are more Crypto casinos around these days. It is important to understand what they are, as well as what unique up- and downsides they have. There are some truly innovative services that you can find with these casinos, and you don't need to be a devout crypto enthusiast to play there. However, they also have some unique risks to playing with them, which you need to watch out for. Here is everything you need to know about this emergent type of casino:
What are Crypto casinos?
Cryptocurrencies, or crypto, are digital assets which can be used for payments. For the sake of our article, it is not necessary to know much more than that! Crypto casinos can be defined as online betting houses, which accept these means of deposit, but we believe there is a bit more to them than that.
Usually, when you see a crypto casino, you will also note that it has a specific amount of focus on the digital assets. The most common example of that is casinos which only accept cryptocurrency transactions. There are usually no FIAT payment methods with these houses.
Another sign of a crypto casino is the account currency. This is the base currency of your account, to which funds are converted once you've deposited them. Usually, with conventional houses, these are in FIAT currencies like the EUR or the USD. With digital asset gambling houses, the account currency can instead be one of the cryptocurrencies which you can cash in to.
This is important, because when there is a mismatch between what you deposit in and what the base currency of the account is, that means you need to pay a conversion fee. With regular casinos, even if they accept BTC or ETH as payment methods, you need to cover these fees. because their accounts are in FIAT currencies.
We have also seen several Crypto casinos which offer more than one wallet for their players, in turn allowing them to cash in with several different assets at once, without needing to worry about fees.
Last but not least, most of these digital asset houses offer excusive and unique features, which players can get access to. These are all crypto-related, and we'd like to discuss them in a special section of the article. There are just too many of these features to mention!
So, to sum up what we will mean when we talk about a Crypto casinos is the following: It is a place to bet online, which accepts either only, or predominately, cryptocurrencies. It is also a house which has its account currency in one or several tokens. Finally, some of these can also be places to get exclusive perks! With this definition in mind, here are the advantages of these houses:
Pros of playing with Crypto casinos
Lower deposit requirements on average: Nowadays, casinos have a diverse amount of minimum deposit requirements. These vary, based on the country where you are playing, the payment method you are using, and even the policies of the house you are dealing with themselves. However, the amount you need to cash in can be summed up to usually be around $10 to $20. Crypto casinos can offer drastically lower minimum deposits. For example, some of them take as little as a single DOGE toke, which is worth around $0.06 at the time of writing. Even with more expensive assets like BTC or ETH, Crypto casinos take such small fractions that they are much lower than $10!
Might not require KYC verification: KYC verification refers to the process you would normally be required to pass with casinos. It is important for them to know who you are, so they can help combat money-laundering and other financial crime. Casinos verify your identity by making you take a picture of a However, these verification policies can also be annoying to deal with! You might need to wait for prolonged amount of time to be able to cash out or play. It is also no secret that there are certain casinos which use the need to perform these kinds of checks to delay withdrawals. Also, these checks carry the risk of the information you've submitted being leaked. So, we can definitely see why someone might want to avoid them, and that is something Crypto casinos can offer you.
Payouts can be faster than some FIAT payments: It is difficult to assess how long it takes casinos to process FIAT payments. Some of them are done within a couple of hours, and some of them need days. However, the payments then need to be handled by the third party payment provider, which might delay them even further. Usually, these delays are very noticeable when bank transfers are concerned. They can take up to two weeks to fully clear, and that is another reason why some players prefer to cash out via crypto. After the casino has cleared your withdrawal, you just need to kick back and wait for the blockchain system for the token you are using to verify it. This system does the job of the third party payment provider, and how fast it does it is also difficult to say. It usually takes minutes, at most hours, instead of whole days, however!
That said, there are some disadvantages which players might need to deal with as well. Here is what they can be:
Cons of playing with Crypto casinos
There are miner fees to cover: As we said before, crypto transactions are facilitated by a blockchain, which does the job of a conventional payment provider. This blockchain is powered by so-called crypto miners, who are individuals keeping it up and running. They have fees for processing your payments. And while these fees are not dissimilar to what conventional payment providers might charge you, they can be higher than them. It is possible to deposit to casinos with e-wallets like Skrill for no charge, but any kind of transaction on a blockchain has a miner fee. Also, it is easy to go to the website of Skrill to see what fees you will owe for what. It is way more difficult to know how much miner fees cost.
Digital assets are incredibly volatile: This is a downside which has to do with cryptocurrencies in general, and not so much the casinos which accept them! They fluctuate wildly in price, sometimes rising and falling by 10% of more within a single day. Now, while your money is in play within the casino, that is not actually an issue. You will be able to use your funds to play your favorite games. However, once it gets time to cash out, you can find out one of three things. Firstly, it is possible the value of the tokens has raised, which means you will be able to convert it to more FIAT. Second, it can have stayed relatively the same. With crypto, this is the rarest possibility of the three! The third thing which might happen is for the price of the asset to have tanked. This is the risk you are taking when playing with Crypto casinos. Regardless of how safe these houses can be, it is impossible for them to protect you from this volatility.
Crypto casinos are sometimes unregulated: Regulation is crucial to casinos nowadays. We will examine it in more detail in the next section, but for now, it suffices to say that some Crypto casinos cannot provide players with a series of important guarantees, since they are not licensed. It is very rare, but also possible, for crypto houses to be fraudulent. The majority of casinos with a focus on digital assets are unregulated, which means picking a good one can be a bit more difficult than it is to find a good conventional casino.
Crypto Casinos and regulation
As we just mentioned, the topic of regulation is very important. There are many different bodies around the world which deal with egaming. However, the most popular places for casino operators to get licensed in are the UK, Malta and Curacao. A license certifies that a casino is legitimate, and that it follows the regulatory requirements imposed by the body it has been granted said license by.
These requirements translate to protections for players. For example, how can you be sure that a game you are playing is not biased? Well, if the casino is licensed within the three jurisdictions we mentioned, it is required to pass audits which certify that. There are also some negative aspects to regulation, too, however. The UK is quite strict in how it handles online gambling, and so, it is difficult for casino operators licensed there to offer big bonuses, or incentives for their players like Loyalty programs and so on.
Now, crypto casinos are mostly unlicensed. This means they can be fraudulent, but that is not usually the case. However, they cannot provide you with any sort of guarantee that they are following some sensible regulatory policies, like storing your information safely. It is possible for that to be leaked, or obtained by hackers if you are playing with a crypto casino.
That said, we have also seen a trend towards crypto casinos obtaining regulation in Curacao. This is the most popular of the three destinations we mentioned, and there are four regulatory bodies which issue casino licenses there. Two of them, Gaming Curacao and the CIL are quite friendly to crypto casinos. This means it is possible to find a crypto casino which has a license, and we recommend you try and do that, in order to benefit from the security measures we mentioned!
How to cash in to a crypto casino?
As we said before, cashing in with a crypto casino usually requires a smaller minimum deposit on average. However, you still need to have crypto to be able to get in on the betting action with the houses! If you don't have any, you can set up a crypto wallet fairly fast. Then you need to buy whatever token you wish to deposit in. Please stick to one of the bigger crypto exchanges while doing so! A lot of the smaller ones are fraudulent!
Once you have acquired the crypto you wish to deposit, you simply need to head over to the website of the casino, make an account and navigate to its payments page. It is there where you will find the address you need to send your tokens to. It is important to write that address correctly, as failing to do so means you will simply lose your money. That is another risk of crypto deposits.
When you have done that, the transaction should get cleared within a couple of minutes at most and you can start playing!
Do Crypto Casinos really pay out?
Crypto casinos are not any more likely to try and defraud you than regular ones. It is fairly simple to withdraw from most of them, regulated or not. In fact, the minimum withdrawal amount from them is also usually lower than you would find with most FIAT houses.
There are also higher maximums you can cash out weekly and monthly. However, you need to take into account that some of the houses you might be playing in will require you to turn over your deposits a certain amount of times. Usually, this is between 1x and 3x, and is a part of the anti-money laundering policies of casinos. This requirement is common for all kinds of houses, regardless of their used payment methods.
Failing to clear the wagering requirement means that you are going to either have your withdrawal request denied, or will have to pay a fee, between 10% and 20% of the value of the transaction for it to clear. Once again, this is a fairly standard policy with any online gambling house these days.
Crypto games and Crypto casinos
Crypto games refers to casino games which can be played with digital assets. It will come as no surprise that the best place to find such titles is crypto casinos. They accept wagers directly in crypto tokens, which means how much you can play is not actually impacted by the volatility of the assets. This is why you don't need to worry about volatility until it is time to cash out.
As for what the games are, they include many Slots, different card games, Roulettes and, of course, Crash Games. From spinning your favorite reels, to playing high-ante hands on a Poker table, to taking part in an exciting and fast-paced Crash game, there is tons of choice when it comes to what you can play. More and more major developers are turning their eye towards crypto games nowadays, and there are more and more of them as a result of the increased amount of crypto casinos. This means there will be more and more such games to take part in!
The unique features of Crypto casinos
Aside from only offering access to gaming, crypto casinos are known for their special features too. These are incredibly varied, but can really elevate the experience of the player to the next level. Here are some of the most memorable among these specials we have seen while covering crypto casinos:
- There have been a couple of casinos with access to their own Lotteries. These are tied to the BTC blockchain, and as soon as it mines a certain amount of blocks, the players get a payout. What's more, every bet you place added a small percentage to the lottery. So, the prize pool from the lottery is filled faster the more people wager. That was an interesting way for the casino to give back!
- Casinos have been issuing their in-house currency for centuries – just take a look at the poker chips you can get in conventional, physical betting houses! Crypto casinos are no different, but their in-house currencies are special tokens which the players can use to buy in to exclusive bonuses, or trade for other currencies at fixed rate. Some of these tokens can even be cashed out to FIAT currencies!
- There is also usually an importance of the social aspects of gambling. Most crypto casinos have a Live chat, which can be used by their players to communicate as they gamble. They can share wins, losses, tips and tricks or just talk. There are also sometimes bonuses tied to the chat – a casino agent will drop a special code there, which entitles a certain amount of people using it to get a small bonus. Overall, we'd say playing alongside other people is way more fun. We always love to see this kind of chat feature.
Conclusion
Crypto casinos are definitely here to stay. However, they are a bit niche, as not everyone know how to cash in with crypto. And with how complicated it can be to obtain these assets, not everyone wishes to use them.
Nevertheless, if you are a crypto enthusiast, you can enjoy hours of fun within some of these casinos, and be no less safe than any player at a conventional house. Always make sure you research the casino you wish to play with, though, to at least make sure it is licensed, or that it is held in good standing in the crypto community. We personally prefer licensed casinos, but you can find reliable unregulated ones too, as long as you are careful!