Building a casino infrastructure on a blockchain is, in many ways, the future of the online gambling domain. Even traditional online casinos have plenty of reasons to consider allowing payments and withdrawals using cryptocurrencies, but more and more ventures are taking up the process of building an entire casino using the blockchain technology. Currently, there is a somewhat of a contest between different crypto networks related to the best solution for this purpose. EOS, for example, is already an established means of doing the same, while some argue that bitcoin cash is currently the ultimate solution for this purpose. Recently, an additional cryptocurrency was added to the discussion and it is the second (or third, depending on the metric) biggest crypto token currently on the market – ETH and its ethereum network. Here are some of the key benefits and downsides of using ethereum for an online casino or some other online betting platform.
Benefit – Speed of the Distributed Ledger
In any circumstance, the users of a casino want to see their transactions coming through as fast as possible. This includes both deposits and withdrawals. Currently, BTC transactions are not overly fast and sometimes, they can take up to a day to finish (even though the median value is between 10 and 20 minutes). ETH transaction, on average, takes 12 seconds to be fully validated by the ledger, so that is a clear advantage for ethereum.
Benefit – Strong Privacy Protection
Ethereum goes to great lengths to keep their users’ privacy at the highest possible level. This is shown in the fact that the transaction log and any other element of a digital wallet’s history of use are completely confidential. Most cryptocurrencies provide the same approach, but ETH does it on a level that is comparable only to Zcash.
Issue – Transaction Fees
Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency for online betting mainly because of its low (and fixed) transaction costs, which make any transfer very affordable. This is especially evident when these are compared with regular banking and credit card fees. Ethereum does not function on the same principle. Instead, its transaction fee is scalable to accommodate for the so-called “gas” expenses. Because of that, a larger transaction will pay a larger fee and many are instantly turned off by this factor.
Issue – Token Accessibility
There is no digital currency exchange that does not provide bitcoin to its users. Currency, ethereum is on a similar footing, but still nowhere near the popularity of BTC. The same goes for the overall accessibility of this cryptocurrency. This equates to the fact that fewer people have ETH and it is (slightly) harder to attain it than bitcoin. This also makes the focus group for an online casino smaller, which in turn makes any investment in such a venture less likely compared to going for bitcoin.
The picture is a mixed one when it comes to making casinos on the basis of the ethereum network. However, there is still one ultimate benefit of the blockchain – the fact that it is widely used for building dapps, or applications built directly on the ethereum network. Among these, there are numerous betting or trading platforms that showed it is more than possible to make services on the back of the same blockchain. This means that there will be casinos opening up on the same network, regardless of the potential issues – simply put, the wealth of experience that already exists and lack of major security incidents make ethereum the logical choice.
