In the international sense, online poker has been doing well for nearly two decades now. In the States of America, it has been impacted by the “Black Friday” actions of 2011, but there is still a stalwart legion who attempt to play on sites that will still accept U. S. players. One of those rooms has recently made the move to start accepting what is called “cryptocurrency,” making some ask if those cryptocurrencies are the future of online poker.
America’s Cardroom recently announced that they were going to begin accepting Bitcoin, arguably the most well-known cryptocurrency around today. America’s Cardroom joins a small but growing list of sites that accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Most people would know the names of online poker rooms like Bovada and Ignition, but there are other sites that have been operating that exclusively use Bitcoin as their currency of choice. SwC Poker (formerly Seals with Clubs) and Betcoin, online casino VegasCasino and BitStarz (not associated with PokerStars) and sports book CloudBet and JetWin all cite Bitcoin as their chosen way of doing business.
So just what is bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a digital payment system that has absolutely no backing by banks or governments. It is the creation of a programmer/programming group under the name Satoshi Nakamoto who, in 2009, saw a need for such a product. There are no banks or governments that back the currency, but there is a public “ledger” that tracks the trading and selling of Bitcoin called the “blockchain.” Bitcoin can be highly volatile, with the price rising and falling frequently and with wide swings, but it cannot be debated that they have proven popular with a segment of the Internet World.
Investment in Bitcoin has seen the price of a single Bitcoin (BTC) rapidly increase since it was introduced. In 2013, the high price of a single Bitcoin was $198 and, within a year, the price had increased tenfold to $1151. Following that increase, however, there was a precipitous plunge. As recently as August 2015, the price of Bitcoin had dropped to $213. The past two years, however, have seen a massive increase in not only the price of Bitcoin but its usage around the world.
Since 2015 and that $213-mark, Bitcoin has rocketed into the stratosphere. On August 31 of this year, Bitcoin peaked at its all-time high of $4912, something that would have been unheard of to its creators six years previous. The month of September has seen the overall price of Bitcoin drop a bit – it settled in at $4194 at the end of this week – but it still is nearly twenty times higher than it was just two years ago.
One thing that might be said for Bitcoin is that it isn’t going anywhere. There are some that are speculating that it could reach even higher levels in the next 10 years, perhaps even an unheard of $100,000 per coin. The downside is that it could collapse at any moment should some scandal occur – and because it isn’t ensured by a bank or a government, you’d be out whatever money you invested in the cryptocurrency.
There are other pitfalls that Bitcoin might face in the future. There are taints of impropriety – the usage of Bitcoin on the “dark Web” in particular – that make some a bit tentative to step into the realm. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) filed charges against an entire Bitcoin marketplace called Silk Road in 2013. In just two years, Silk Road was able to earn $1.2 billion through its Bitcoin operations, dealing mostly in illegal drugs and other black market merchandise. In 2015 the founder of Silk Road, Ross Ulbright, was sentenced to life in prison for seven counts of money laundering and drug trafficking that should have only netted him 20 years in jail.
Is Bitcoin the future of online gaming and poker? If it is to be, then there will have to be some changes. If they can shed their “black” image as a tool of criminals, then it is possible that more businesses will accept the cryptocurrency. If they can earn solid backing from an economic power (country or business) and gain further recognition as a legitimate cryptocurrency, that would also be helpful. For now, those in the gaming world should step lightly with Bitcoin or the other cryptocurrencies that are coming out.
