A New Era in Cryptocurrencies is Upon Us

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Sunday, November 26th, 2017 | Written by Stephen Smith

If you have been a part of the internet gambling scene for more than a few years, you will probably remember how things used to be before the industry became more organized and regulated. With order having been achieved, the era of cryptocurrencies is now upon us, returning the online landscape to uncharted terrain once more.

Cryptocurrency Era

By their nature, cryptocurrencies have a number of different advantages over traditional methods of funding for both players and operators alike. These include limited fees, no chargebacks and quick transactions that don’t require all of the processes that modern payment solutions do.

Furthermore, blockchain technology provides a degree of transparency that enables customers to take advantage of products and services offered by online sites in a brand new and ultimately secure way. Of course, there have been stories of cryptocurrency theft, as well as other sorts of criminal activity, but just like the online gambling industry’s early days, there are always going to be some hiccups along the way when you connect a lot of money to technology that is only just developing. In fact, cryptocurrencies are designed to focus on protecting consumers against these sorts of instances, but of course those type of stories that do not often make the headlines.

Smooth Operation

Withdrawal and deposit methods, chargebacks, and fees still attract criticism within the regulated online gambling industry, even though the space is mature and developed. With cryptocurrencies, however, every transaction made is recorded onto the blockchain, where it remains, thus providing a level of reassurance to both the operators and their customers.

Once combined with nearly instantaneous transactions, this means that after a transaction has been initiated on blockchain, it becomes viewable by all parties involved, along with an easily traceable data trail. In cryptocurrency, transparency is a word you are going to hear a lot, and for good reason. Every transaction on a public blockchain is able to be seen by anyone who knows what to look for.

Provably Fair

If you’re familiar with recent cryptocurrency terminology related to online gambling, you have likely heard the phrase “provably fair”. While the gambling sector has made great progress with the public in terms of the perceived fairness of its games, customers are still required to take a leap of faith every time they play online. This in turn can result in customers being put off from playing on internet gambling websites.

A model deemed provably fair, however, provides an extra level of guarantee that everything on the site is above board, and as explained by John Caldwell in an article published on Onlinepoker Report:

“In a ‘provably fair’ model, you can set part of a seed (a string of text) before you bet to be presented with a hash (another string of text) that can only be created with your seed and a seed provided by the operator to result in the hash. This is slightly oversimplified, but basically: Seed A + Seed B = hash.”

This basically means that you can see if a gaming platform has tried to change a gambling outcome, as it will become apparent in the strings of text that you have inputed. Therefore, the fairness of all games can ultimately be checked.

While a variety of concerns still exist surrounding cryptocurrencies, many of them are similar to the sorts of things which are mentioned when any new industry starts up. The truth of the matter, though, is that cryptocurrencies represent a solid way to conduct business, and are here to stay.

Virtue Poker

One online poker room based on blockchain technology which has been making the gambling headlines recently is Virtue Poker, which is still in its developmental stage, but still succeeded in quickly selling off all its digital tokens in its ICO (initial coin offering) a few days after release.

Already the site has taken on a number of high profile poker pros to represent the brand, including Brian Rast and Dan Colman, with Phil Ivey also having joined the roster this month. Commenting upon his appointment, the 10-times WSOP bracelet winner stated:

“I’m looking forward to serving as a strategic adviser to the Virtue Poker team. I believe their new peer-to-peer solution built using blockchain technology can add significant value to the online poker experience.”