Will crypto be the future of online gambling?

Anyone who’s been in the gambling industry for some time now will agree that innovation seems to be the order of the day in this sector. Especially after the first online casino launched in 1994, it became possible to offer very innovative products that keep players returning. But something that gamblers in yesteryears may never have foreseen is the rise of an intriguing technology, crypto, that would completely revolutionize the sector.

Logically, that assumption seems a little weird – it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to expect crypto to penetrate this sector since most people widely disparaged digital currencies as they were growing up. However, as time has passed, many developers and providers are turning to this technology to improve their competitiveness. And if you are wondering whether this could be the new future, you are just in a good place to find out.

The need for privacy and security

In most cases, you will always be required to provide some personal information before you can participate. This vast amount of personal and financial data collected by online casinos makes them a prime target for cybercriminals. 

But with games like Hilo Crypto, the need to provide such data is eliminated, minimizing the possibilities of exposure. This game offers players an opportunity to guess whether the next card will be higher or lower than the current one with multiple crypto gaming options to improve the gameplay.

By the way, do you actually know that account takeover fraud in the overall gaming industry costs companies more than $1 billion yearly? This is without mentioning a recent study which noted a 64% increase in iGaming fraud YoY. As if that is not enough, Wifi Talents noted that only 45% of operators encrypt moving and resting customer data. More than 60% had insufficient security measures to protect customer data.

How can crypto help?

Now that close to two-thirds (65%) of gamblers are concerned about the safety of their personal and financial information, adopting technologies like crypto can really add to your competitiveness. Remember, we said crypto games and platforms don’t require players to share sensitive information. Instead, you can just use your pseudonymous crypto wallet address to transact, and you are good to go.

Even though the wallet ID and amount transacted are stored on the blockchain for transparency, your identity will still remain hidden. And the best part is that crypto is decentralized, which improves the anonymity of transactions, as there is no central authority that could link them to a person’s identity. The decentralized framework also reduces the risk of single-point failures known to be associated with traditional online casinos.

That means if one entity is attacked, the others can still continue operating without interruption. In traditional casinos, if a central database was attacked, all transaction records were susceptible to being altered.

Perhaps you have heard about smart contracts and a multi-signature wallet. Let us say that you played a game and you are ready to withdraw some funds. Imagine that the funds get automatically credited without any human intervention. That is what smart contracts are all about – blockchain-based contracts that self-execute once predefined conditions are fulfilled.

Since they are built on blockchain, they cannot be altered, offering extra security. Multi-signature wallets, on the other hand, use multiple keys to authorize transactions so that if one is compromised, your funds will still be protected.

Improving customer experience

Never forget that the experiences users have on your platform really determine whether they will return. In fact, Ninetailed noted that more than a third of customers (32%) walk away from brands they love after only one negative experience. However, on the positive, about 72% of shoppers will tell at least six friends about great experiences they had with a brand.

So, it is not a surprise to see gambling industries take advantage of every available strategy to improve customer experience. For example, crypto payments ensure players can transact nearly instantly, a feature that many modern players seek. This perfectly agrees with a report by PYMNTs, which found that about 78% of customers preferred receiving and sending funds via instant payments.

No one wants their gameplay delayed because of a pending payment that took time to be processed just because they used traditional payment methods. But thankfully, crypto’s fast speeds ensure such limitations are broken. And the good news is that if very many players participate on your platform, there are still technologies that can support enormous transactions.

Solana, for instance, is known for its robust capacity, which supports up to 65,000 transactions per second. This can help minimize things like delays, which, to a great extent, always discourage gamers from returning.

These crypto benefits available to gambling operators are the reason why the crypto-gambling sector is growing rapidly. Can you imagine that, according to recent statistics, daily crypto gambling accounted for about $3m of crypto? Plus, some other researchers valued this industry at $250 million, with the expectations that it could grow seriously in the next few years.

Digital currencies, just like everything that makes a difference for the modern gambler, offer instant payments, anonymity and secrecy. And maybe as operators become more customer-centric, most of them might welcome these currencies. But since all these are mere speculations, you will probably have to stay in touch with the industry to see where it’s heading in the days ahead.