In the world of prepaid online gambling, legacy tech has more or less peaked.
Prepaid Visa and prepaid Mastercard options work about as well as they’re going to, with the UIGEA rearing its ugly head about one time in 20 or so on average. For most players, that’s marginally tolerable, and success rates are unlikely to ever get appreciably better.
Meanwhile, until more legit online casinos, online sportsbooks, and online poker rooms get on board with Bovada-style vouchers and/or third-party services akin to MatchPay, P2P apps like PayPal, Venmo, and others will continue to be options only for the select few.
The same, of course, goes for Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other eWallet instant-pay services.
Indeed, the real future of prepaid gambling over the Internet has been clear for some time now: cryptocurrency.
Every reputable site supports Bitcoin betting deposits and payouts, while most sites also support Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.
Over the last few years, many sites have added even more altcoins to their deposit and withdrawal options.
The selections are different with every vendor, but they tend to include major crypto coins like Solana, Cardano, Dogecoin, Ripple, Stellar, Chainlink, Tether, and USD Coin.
However, over the last couple of months, the best sites have been expanding their crypto bet funding menus like crazy.
Bovada, Café Casino, and Slots LV – which only started accepting accepting ETH in mid-2021 – now also support Tether online gambling. This is the first time any of these top-rated gambling sites have offered support for a stablecoin crypto asset.
At the same time, BetOnline – which offers a prepaid online poker room and sports betting menu in addition to its standard casino fare – has embraced crypto with a vigor only rivaled by BookMaker.
In the last couple of weeks, BetOnline – along with sister site SportsBetting AG – has rolled out support for all the following altcoin banking options:
- Avalanche (AVAX)
- Binance Coin (BNB)
- Polygon (MATIC)
- Shiba Inu (SHIB)
- ApeCoin (APE)
*We’ll be reviewing each one of these altcoins in the coming weeks here at PPG, discussing both their unique benefits as prepaid online gambling options and their overall potentials as legitimate cryptocurrency investments.
The addition of these coins to the official roster brings the BetOnline family’s crypto portfolio up to 17 different coins – and we get the feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
To that end, we’re quite curious about which coin(s) are going to be accepted next at BetOnline.
But especially at Bovada.
(Our money is on Cardano at -150 and Solana at +125. Because if there were betting odds, that’s about where they’d be.)
Now, all that said, we’ve also seen a few sites scale back their crypto banking menus a bit.
Most notably, CasinoMax and its sister sites (Roaring 21, Cherry Jackpot, etc.) have removed Ethereum support from their cryptocurrency deposit and withdrawal options.
And honestly, that makes some sense.
Right now, Ethereum is the most expensive and resource intensive crypto platform on the market. Mining Ethereum has become less and less profitable for individuals and even small scale data centers, and Ethereum transfers can take over 24 hours to verify when network congestion is particularly heavy.
Since the top-reviewed gambling sites pride themselves in being the best-playing and fastest-paying online casinos, sportsbooks, and poker rooms, Ethereum – in some ways – plays against those reputations.
When Bitcoin payouts arrive in 2-3 hours and Litecoin payouts arrive in under 60 minutes, 1-2 days for a crypto payout – especially a crypto payout that costs more in gas fees than any other crypto payout – just isn’t going to be that well received.
Plus, of course, Ethereum is currently preparing to undergo a major transition to Ethereum 2.0.
Once that happens, there’s no question that Ethereum online gambling options will once again be available for both deposits and withdrawals at CasinoMax, et al.
But the current uncertainty about how the Ethereum transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is going to impact ETH prices in the near term could be yet another reason why several of the top sites have bailed on the platform for now.
Regardless, it’s obvious that as crypto support expands at our favorite gambling sites, fiat’s days are probably numbered.
We’re not saying that Bovada or Café Casino or BetOnline or CasinoMax or SlotsPlus or Las Vegas USA (Or any other major sites) are going to abandon the US dollar and credit/debit/bank transfers any time soon, but we’re not not saying that, either.
Because, to be honest, they really probably should.
But even if those older methods hang around indefinitely collecting dust, you’re a gambler, aren’t you? Betting on the dollar has never worked out in the long run, betting on crypto almost universally has, and we feel like crypto’s probably right up your alley.
At least, if you want to turn that alley into a million-dollar beachfront property.