Besides the games themselves, probably the principal mainstay of a crypto casino’s framework is the choice of cryptocurrency utilised by crypto casino participants themselves… in fairness, the clue is probably in the name!
In this article in our current series of ‘deep dive’ examinations surrounding crypto casinos and topics associated with them, we will zoom in on some of the most popular cryptocurrencies accepted at crypto casinos and favoured by crypto casino participants, and then also cover a little of their history and development, as well as the native environments upon which they run.
Crypto Casino Cryptocurrencies… sorting the wheat from the chaff
As a matter of pure interest, it might be useful for us to first delve into the wider cryptocurrency universe and literally sort out the wheat from the chaff.
Everyone will, no doubt, have heard of some of the most well-recognized cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), USDT (Tether), Solana (SOL), XRP and Litecoin. It will, then likely come as no surprise (spoiler alert!!!) that these are also some of the most popular and most commonly used cryptocurrencies across very many crypto casinos.
But although we have identified just six of the most utilized cryptocurrencies across a majority of crypto casinos, have you ever wondered exactly how many crypto currencies actually exist?
Well the answer might just surprise you: Although no exact figure can be determined as estimates vary, the total is certainly in the tens-of-thousands; likely, thirty thousand to fifty thousand plus; other top-end estimates put the total as high as fifty-million!
But in the spirit of actually sorting the wheat from the chaff as promised, we must mention that of the potential millions of cryptocurrencies extant, only around seventeen to twenty thousand are actively tracked by the major crypto data aggregators and even less are actively listed to be traded by the major cryptocurrency exchanges.
With this in mind, it would be natural to ask why have so many cryptocurrencies been created? Well, the answer is essentially twofold:
- Because of the open-source nature of blockchains, developers simply have very little trouble in building or replicating new coins on existing blockchains at will.
- Because there are many legitimate use cases for the development of new cryptocurrency coins, such as:
- The creation of ‘utility tokens’ which have very specific uses within a blockchain ecosystem, such as the ability to pay for transactions within that ecosystem, to act as a digital key for said ecosystem to access specific services, or to enable participation in governance. Some examples of this type of utility cryptocurrency token are; BAT (Basic Attention Token), utilized within the Brave Browser to reward its users for services performed; FIL (Filecoin) used to pay Filecoin network users for storing or retrieving data and Aave (AAVE), used within the Aave Protocol for, rewarding, essentially, liquidity provision.
- To act solely as a technical bridge or stable intermediary between cryptocurrency networks. An example would be USDT.z. This is a stable coin which sits on the Tezos blockchain; it is pegged one-to-one with the US Dollar (hence ‘stable’) and is used as a medium of exchange to facilitate the transfer of stable assets between different blockchain platforms, thus enabling interoperability and usability.
- Because developers, investors and speculators wish to develop meme coins for possible future benefit i.e. future uptake by the crypto community and future capital appreciation. Meme coins, unlike other coins, are not created as technical bridges, nor to act as a pure cryptocurrencies; they are generally inspired by popular online jokes, memes, viral trends or pop-culture and are popularized by influencers, endorsements or sheer speculation. They invariably have zero intrinsic value, no set pathway towards future valuations and are highly volatile and speculative. Examples include Dogecoin, SHIB, Pepe and Floki.
However, although the true total number of cryptocurrencies is probably unimaginably large and although, of these, only the seventeen to twenty thousand previously alluded to are actively tracked by crypto data aggregators, a very sobering fact is that over half of all cryptocurrencies ever created have failed.
Crypto Casino Currencies… their true worth
So, having examined the cryptocurrency universe and its makeup, as well as having isolated the most used coins on crypto casinos, some questions immediately spring to mind: Why are some cryptocurrencies worth nothing or virtually nothing, whilst some, like the ones most used by crypto casino participants have inherent worth? What gives these ‘valuable’ crypto casino currencies their worth? Let us take a look.
Essentially, the currencies used on crypto casinos function as money, so let us start with a look at the main characteristics of what constitutes money:
- Money must be durable: it must withstand and be unaltered by wear-and-tear.
- Money must be portable and be easily transportable and passed from person-to-person.
- Money must be divisible: it needs to be able to be divided into fractional units to accommodate multiple values of transactions; as for example, a pound can be divided into penny denominations e.g. 50p, 20p, 10p etc.
- Money must be uniform and exactly the same e.g. every pound coin is exactly the same as every other pound coin.
- Money must be acceptable i.e. it must have the critical mass of wide acceptance as a medium of payment.
- Money must have scarcity or a limited supply in order to prevent loss of value by inflation…OK…so most FIAT currencies actual fail here, but let’s move swiftly on!
- Money must be stable, avoiding wild swings in value i.e. be a reliable store of value.
So as we can see, the main cryptos used in crypto casinos do actually fulfill the above roles, explaining why crypto casinos use them and why they have value to the casinos and their users . It is also worth mentioning here that although not a core characteristic of ‘money’, a major motivating factor of using crypto over fiat in crypto casinos is the complete anonymity afforded by their use. Pure peer-to-peer cash transactions can also offer this, however, any online FIAT transaction is absolutely NOT anonymous. Crypto casinos offer pure peer-to-peer anonymous transactions with absolutely zero personal information ever requested nor held.
As a final point on this subject, it is worth mentioning that some of the crypto casino main currencies have additional worth besides their ‘qualification as money’. Some are also ‘Stable Coins’ i.e. they are backed one-to-one by real-world assets such as Dollars, Government Bonds and even Gold. Others, have inherent value as the native blockchain currency of large networks, enabling the network to function and transactions to be made. In analogy; the rails which enable a train to travel along the railway network.
Top Crypto Casino Currencies…a deep dive
With the preliminaries now covered, it is high time that we finally take a look at the top crypto casino currencies themselves and learned a little more about them.
Bitcoin
Perhaps the most well-known and the very first cryptocurrency, it is not surprising that this would be a prime choice for use in crypto casinos.
First developed in 2009 as a reaction to the global banking crisis of the previous year, Bitcoin has gained worldwide acceptance and has moved from techno-geek project, to tokens collected by eccentrics, loners, Incels and preppers, to a top-tier mainstream digital financial asset held by national governments, central banks, corporations and hedge funds. As of writing, the value of one Bitcoin currently stands at $91,000.00. Bitcoin is the native coin of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Ether (ETH)
First conceived in 2013, the Ethereum network launched two years later in 2015 via an $18 million crowdfunding campaign. Ether (ETH) is the native coin of the Ethereum network and is also the currency which provides the ‘gas fees’ or fuel for the network; essentially the fees charged for transactions, covering the inherent network and operating costs.
The Ethereum network was conceived as an open-source platform for building decentralized applications, de-centralized finance and even hosting non-fungible tokens (NFT’s), but a huge component of the utility of the network was enabling the creation and execution of smart contracts; digital contracts that automatically self-execute as soon as all pre-specified conditions and parameters have been met on the Ethereum Blockchain. A good example of a smart contract would be the automatic winnings pay-out within a crypto casino.
USDT (Tether)
Unlike many cryptocurrency coins, USDT which was first created around 2013, was specifically created as a Stable Coin and was designed to maintain a stable one-to-one value against the US Dollar. This was achieved by backing each USDT with an physical Dollar, however, as there is no complete transparency of reserves, it has been suggested that backing also is also partially comprised of US Treasury Bills and other financial instruments. This aside, USDT has been one of the most stable cryptocurrency coins and has always maintained its dollar peg ensuring that one USDT is always worth exactly one dollar.
Due to its inherent stability, this has made USDT a popular peer-to-peer transactional medium in diverse markets such as international oil trading, sugar trading and other hard commodity markets. Often, private Bitcoin sales are settled in USDT, thus ensuring complete anonymity of non-FIAT asset holdings. USDT sits on various networks such as the Ethereum (where the coin is designated ERC20), TRON (where the coin is designated TRC20), Solana, BNP Smart Chain (where the coin is designated BEP20) and others. This stable coin is readily accepted at every crypto casino and as peer-to-peer payment worldwide.
Solana (SOL)
Officially launched in 2020, the Solana network was created in order to address some of the issues apparent on other major networks at the time; offering high speed throughput and low transactional fees, Solana has now become a popular and growing ecosystem.
SOL, Solana’s native token is widely utilized both on network; providing transaction fee settlements and securing the blockchain and is also accepted for its inherent value by crypto casinos and in other transactional scenarios. Although not a stable coin itself, the Solana network is a major platform for hosting many stable coins, with major players such as Visa, PayPal and Western Union establishing stablecoin use cases on the Solana network.
XRP
Following on from the initial concept and start of development of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) in 2011, XRP, the native coin of the XRPL launched the following year. Developed by a group of three engineers, who, excited by the creation of Bitcoin, nonetheless set out to create a coin approximating the Bitcoin model, but without some of the shortcomings which they perceived therein.
The XRP ledger is specifically designed to offer fast, worldwide transfers of money between banks and other financial institutions; the XRP coin itself, acting as a bridge currency to facilitate this; low transaction fees are another major attraction for users.
The coin itself, experienced rapid growth and in under three years post-creation it had already secured its first banking partner. By 2018 XRP was already acknowledged as a top cryptocurrency, earning significant endorsements. It is to be noted that upon inception, the founders of the XRPL ledger, gifted eighty billion XRP coins to the company, which has been held in escrow since then. As the total amount of XRP has been capped at one hundred billion coins, one can see that this action rendered the cryptocurrency is integrally deflationary, however, as XRP is not actually a stable coin it can subject to market variations.
Litecoin
Litecoin has often been compared as analogous to the relationship between gold and silver; in this case, Bitcoin representing the gold and Litecoin the silver.
Litecoin was conceived as literally a ‘lite’ version of Bitcoin, with the original Bitcoin source code being duplicated and independently modified and developed upon; a literal forking of the Bitcoin code. The advantages accrued therefrom, include speedier transactions, lower transaction fees and due to its differing mining algorithm, an increased level of decentralization. Litecoin is the native coin upon its own Litecoin Blockchain. There has been major uptake of Litecoin, with corporate entities such as; PayPal, Bit Pay, Coinbase, Shopify, Nord VPN as well as various asset managers, all active participants.
Crypto Casino Currencies round-up
So, having taken a somewhat lengthy, but by no means exhaustive look at popular cryptocurrencies accepted for play at crypto casinos, one might be left wondering which specific coin might be best to use or is best accepted by crypto casinos themselves. Well, as to the acceptance by crypto casinos themselves, it is simply a matter of infrastructure as much as much as cryptocurrency preference. All crypto casinos invariably wish to maximize their customer base and could therefore, be assumed to wish to accept a multitude of different cryptocurrency options. However, the wider the net, in terms of acceptance, the more complex the infrastructural and payment gateway setup…and hence, the greater the costs. That said, all of the coins listed within this article are generally well accepted by a majority of crypto casinos.
As to which specific crypto we would recommend for crypto casino use; sadly, as we cannot be seen to give any form of financial advice, however, some general principals would apply.
- If you are already invested in cryptocurrencies, it is likely that you may already have opted for one of the coins listed herein. In this case, your choice will likely be readily accepted at a majority of crypto casinos.
- Likewise, if you are already involved in active trading involving cryptos, you will already have selected your ideal medium and this will invariably also be accepted by most crypto casinos.
- If you have not as yet become involved with, nor purchased any crypto at all and feel that you wish to, you must first do your own further research into the coins themselves, their characteristics, their volatility and their ultimate place, purpose and suitability in your personal portfolio. If in any doubt you must always seek the advice of a qualified financial professional. That apart, and as previously outlined; any of the cryptocurrencies covered here, will be acceptable to a majority of crypto casinos if your purpose for acquisition is primarily for engaging with the crypto casinos.
Well, this then concludes our look into crypto casinos and the associated cryptocurrencies generally acceptable to them. In subsequent articles, we will continue to delve into the topic of crypto casinos, crypto currencies and various associated topics. In the meantime, good luck at the crypto casinos.
No part of this article constitutes financial advice, nor a solicitation nor endorsement to gamble, nor play at crypto casinos, nor invest in any cryptocurrency. Anybody considering participation into any of the subjects covered herein, should first seek qualified financial advice.