Bitcoin poker sites are now available for players around the world, including players in the United States. Five years ago, the thought of an online poker site accepting a next generation currency like Bitcoin would have been unimaginable, but today it’s being regarded by some online poker players as essential if they want to continue playing the game of poker online.
For those who are unfamiliar with what Bitcoin is and how you can use it to fund your online poker accounts so that you have an online poker bankroll to play online poker, the following information will shed more light on the topic.
What is Bitcoin?
Well, Bitcoin is a digital currency that has gained tremendously in popularity, especially over the past year or so. It has become a serious alternative to traditional online poker sites for US poker players who have witnessed site after site exit the US market due to factors which were out of their control and completely unexpected at the time, sometimes leaving players high and dry.
A growing number of online poker players have become frustrated with the online poker situation in the US. If the passing of the UIGEA, which made it more difficult to deposit into online poker sites, didn’t put a nail in the coffin, then Black Friday, which took place during April 2011, certainly did. It increasingly became a risky proposition to play poker online, and the idea of potentially making a huge score taking down a MTT, and not being super confident as to whether you will actually see the money, is quite unnerving to say the least.
However, unlike regular poker sites, Bitcoin poker sites are very different beasts in terms of how money is transferred to and from player’s accounts. In the past year alone, there has been several new Bitcoin poker operators launch sites. In addition to the main player in SealsWithClubs, other sites that accept bitcoin only include Satoshi Poker and BitsPoker.
A lot of diehard recreational online poker players that didn’t relocate to other parts of the world to continue playing on their favorite poker sites have flocked to Bitcoin poker sites, and for good reason, this virtual currency offers quite a few advantages over fiat currencies like the US Dollar.
One of the biggest ones being anonymity. You don’t actually reveal your identity to the poker site when creating an account. You get to play totally in an anonymous way, without having to provide confidential information to reveal your true identity like is necessary when playing at regular online poker sites, as a security measure to prevent fraudulent transactions.
Playing at bitcoin poker sites allows you to deposit and withdraw funds virtually instantly. Yes you heard that right, it’s basically instantaneous, and the funds in your online poker account will hit your Bitcoin wallet straight away, upon confirmation of the withdrawal. And best of all there are no fees or they’re very minimal to transfer funds to and from the poker site. Considering all the problems associated with cashing out on some US poker sites, this is definitely one of the big drawcards of Bitcoin poker.
All you have to do is set up a Bitcoin wallet which is totally free and then purchase some bitcoins or mine for bitcoins, which sounds quite complicated, but isn’t really, although explaining it isn’t really the aim of this article. Buying bitcoins is fairly straightforward and can be done by opening an account with a Bitcoin exchange. Once you have transferred bitcoins to your Bitcoin wallet, the moving move to the Bitcoin poker sites you play at is very easy.
With bitcoin poker sites still getting off the ground, it will still take some time before there will be enough traffic to support 24/7 action in both tournaments and cash games, but with more and more people willing to give Bitcoin poker a try, it will only be a matter of time before this happens.
And although bitcoin is a virtual currency it has real value in that it can be exchange for a normal currency, based on the bitcoin price in US dollars. Due to the wildly fluctuating value of bitcoin it is a bit of a gamble to buy bitcoins because by the time you want to go exchange your bitcoins for cash it could be worth considerably less, but there is potential upside too, when the gamble pays off. With so many investors willing to gamble on bitcoin, clearly many people think it has a future as a virtual currency that competes with traditional currencies to send and receive money online.