Online casinos are big business. Research company H2 Gambling Capital estimated it at 35.7 billion dollars in annual turnover in 2018, and it is growing almost 10% per year since that year.
Right now, bitcoin as a payment method in Canadian online casino used only by 2-3% of players. The most famous online casino sites that accept bitcoins only are not at the top positions among other iGaming clubs. However, it is clear that there is a huge potential for the development of cryptocurrency in the iGaming industry – after all, Bitcoin seemed to be specially created for online gambling. If users and providers use appropriate precautions, it is very difficult for the state to block transactions with the use of blockchain technology. If you live in an area in Canada (or any other country) where gambling is heavily regulated or expressly prohibited, you can easily play in online casinos using bitcoin to fund your account.
The struggle of people for the right to play online gambling against governments that are trying to limit everything has been going on for a long time. In many countries, the government constantly tightens the rules for online casinos, poker clubs, and any kind of sports betting companies.
However, the desire of people for gambling cannot be defeated. When the free and open Internet appeared in the early 90s, online casino games immediately appeared. Gambling (as well as the porn industry) was a pioneer in introducing all-new online technologies, like video broadcasts and gambling games on old mobile devices. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and online gambling is already under heavy regulatory pressure.
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Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks have shown that nationwide IP blocking and domain name barring do not always work as well as the authorities would like. The decentralized nature of bitcoin allows you to place bets that will exist in a distributed blockchain without any denial of work risks associated with a central domain or server.
Fairness and transparency of the blockchain technology in Canadian online casinos
Since all transactions will be visible on the blockchain and available for verification, Bitcoin provides maximum financial transparency. But this does not mean that gambling using Bitcoin will always be 100% honest. For example, random number generators used in Bitcoin casinos may be “tweaked” by the owners of casino platforms. This problem can be solved using open RNG sequences provided by trusted third parties.
Of course, there is always the risk that the casino owner can simply take the money and run away at any time. Judging by the discussion on this topic on bitcointalk, it seems that avid players will only trust completely transparent systems that are based on the blockchain itself, where all transactions take place on the p2p principle, and the site owner is not able to access the money.
This is difficult to implement since the site operator must collect the fee. However, the new transparent and trustworthy solutions are already in development and based on the Counterparty extension. Even though such solutions seem to be ideal for gambling (for example, sports betting, which is also a rapidly developing market), it is not easy to integrate them into real-time casino games, but new developments are going very fast.