Cryptocurrency is a new concept, and because of that, a lot of businesses are slow to fully embrace it. The practical uses beyond exchanging crypto for your national currency are slim on the ground right now.
And yet, Bitcoin processed more transactions than PayPal (News - Alert) in 2021. That says a lot. Why is that? What are the advantages of using this new digital currency? Should more businesses adopt it? Read on for all of the details and possibly some answers.
What’s crypto?
Cryptocurrency is a digital peer-to-peer currency, entirely made and traded online. It has been heralded as the way of the future, with its technology that makes for automatically verifying any transactions. Users who are “Bitcoin mining” will solve a long mathematical puzzle, which is an unverified transaction. If they solve it, the transaction is verified and they introduce more Bitcoin to the currency, causing their investment to grow. This allows for crypto to be its own authorization on transactions.
Cryptocurrency’s biggest advancement is that it is more secure, due to the “decentralized” nature of the currency allowing it to bypass any third parties like banks. Its decentralized status makes it impossible to hack into. The best online casinos in New Jersey and beyond are using cryptocurrency to process their deposits and withdrawals because it has superior security to traditional methods.
What payment methods are available?
A lot of online casinos accept a variety of payment methods, including credit and debit cards and PayPal and other money transfer apps.
As mentioned above, crypto is a decentralized currency, creating the main difference between crypto and credit and debit cards. This means that there is no authority verifying transactions, and in fact, crypto is an authority and verification process in itself.
Credit and debit cards, as well as transfer apps, have the pro of going through a third-party authorization process, but the con of suffering transactions fees when using a credit card and taking longer to be verified.
For the customer, traditional methods of paying are more beneficial. They can borrow money, gain protection against fraud, reward points and more, which crypto doesn’t allow for.
PayPal and other transfer apps also are centralized and therefore are likely to ask for fees for the use of their services, including cross-border transactions. Plus, PayPal is very easy to hack into, allowing users to take over your account and access your bank details.
So, what’s the big deal?
The uptake in Bitcoin transactions is undoubtedly due to the gambling industry. There are very few businesses that have embraced using crypto as a currency in everyday life, beyond the gambling industry. Plus, the online casino sites offering crypto as an option often limit it to Bitcoin, as it is the most trusted.
But, with the option to pay with national currency always readily available, it’s interesting to point out that Bitcoin processed more transactions than the most popular money transfer app.
However, it should be noted that a big part of this comparison was made with the value of Bitcoin taken into account. Bitcoin has a much higher value than the US dollar, which when compared came out to 62% more transactions from Bitcoin. But it was still far behind MasterCard (News - Alert) and Visa who remain the industry leaders here.
It cannot be ignored, though, that the gambling industry has therefore shown that there is a demand for customers to be allowed to use their crypto earnings to make payments. At the moment, as the crypto industry grows, the gambling industry only has to compete with other casinos for customer’s crypto, but as the currency is integrated into society, they will then have to compete with a number of other businesses all vying for crypto, just like traditional currencies before it.
There is a demand there, so maybe businesses should get in on the act. They are two different currencies after all. When one runs out you can rely on the other.
However, this study proves that there is still a need for traditional regulated finance. Gambling is an industry that can have customers distrusting merchants, even when everything is up to code. Crypto doesn’t allow for the reversing of transactions, so a customer might like the idea of using it until they are faced with a dispute.
