Ever since I started gambling online, depositing and withdrawing has been a massive pain in the ass. I've had to apply for numerous credit cards over the years because my old ones kept getting declined. I've lost track of the number of times checks have bounced when I tried to cash them and I've lost substantial amounts of money when poker rooms shut-down. Now that I've been using bitcoin for a couple of months, I can't understand why any US-based poker player or sports fan would bother using anytime else. Apart from the inconvenience, you also get hit with crazy fees every time you use a Mastercard or Visa. Online gamblers in the United States need to wise up and join the BTC revolution!
You have to take into account that many recreational players at online poker rooms are 50+ and not very tech savvy. Many of those guys will never make the switch to crypto-currencies. The good news is there is a whole new generation of gamblers growing up who are completely comfortable with buying and using bitcoin so I expected it to become increasingly popular in the United States over the coming years.
for bitcoin to fully go mainstream i think people will need to be paid a portion of their wages in bitcoin. is there anyway to get paid in bitcoin now if you work for a large company in the united states or europe?
Yes, there is a payroll company called BitWage that allows you to receive part or all of your wages in bitcoin. According to their website, workers in Google, Airbnb, Uber and Facebook are already using BitWage to receive some of their wages in BTC.
I've heard stories of little old ladies showing up at BTM machines to buy bitcoin because of ransomware. If ransomware keeps spreading it is going to drive bitcoin adoption faster than the silk road every did.
If you visit any of the online gambling forums like CardsChat or TwoPlusTwo you'll see dozens of bitcoin related threads. This time last year you would have found maybe 1 or 2 so the transition is definitely underway.
I think you are right. If you make the analogy of the internet, I think bitcoin is now in the dial up internet phase where it is quiet hard to use and mainly for the tech savvy. In another 7 or 8 years we will be in the always on, high-speed internet phase with easy to use bitcoin devices.
Adoption is increasing but it's still too difficult to buy bitcoin for many. When they sell bitcoin like phone credit in every 7-Eleven store, then we till see a huge increase in bitcoin sports betting.
Once Lightening Network wallets appear that will allow for free and instant transactions, that's when we will see a huge rise in bitcoin gambling transactions. Right now the unpredictable waiting times put a lot of people off.
I was really hoping that the first Lightning Wallets would be available before the start of the NLF season this year. If sports punters were able to transact instantly and for free then it would really drive adoption throughout the American football season.
I think a huge number of sports bettors and poker players in the United States are now using a variety of cryptocurrencies to deposit and withdraw. Bookmaker.eu recently revealed that over 80% of their customers use cryptocurrency to withdraw and over 60% use it to deposit. I guess more people use crypto for payouts because Visa and MasterCard work OK for deposits. Bookmaker.eu said that they expect crypto's like Bitcoin, Bcash, Dash, Ethereum and Litecoin to account for almost 100% of payouts by the end of 2018. That would be an incredible achievement.
gambling with cryptocurrencies has really taken off in australia over the past few months now that poker and casino has been made illegal. i know load of blokes in their 50's and 60's who have bitcoin wallets on their phones, it's crazy.
Prohibition and stupid laws are the best way to demonstrate to someone the importance of bitcoin. Your transaction simply can't be stopped and it doesn't care about any governments laws.
I'm not an expert on the U.S. tax system but it's my understating that making a profit when you sell bitcoin is a taxable event, like with any capital gains. Maybe some gamblers think that is too much work to file gains with the IRS.
I've been playing around with the Lightning Network BlueWallet and Wallet of Satoshi and I got to say that the UX is much better with Lightning payments. Everything is settled in about 2 seconds. Once CashApp add Lightning Network to their app and all 7 million of their users have access then I think we will see a lot more people using bitcoin for all types of reasons, including gambling.
adoption comes in waves, the next bull market that is just starting will likely bring in millions of more bitcoin speculators who will in turn start using bitcoin for online gambling.