Splash Your Bitcoins

With the cryptocurrency being all over the media since a few months, it is no surprise to learn that it'd been endorsed by the tech savvy poker community a long time ago.

I must say I've been into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for a while now. I've used it for online games (Linden dollars, ever heard about that?), or for more urgent and meaningful reasons. It proved the eprfect tool while raising funds for NGOs in troubled countries and sending funds to some IT freelancers in developping areas while avoiding Western Union ruinous fees. I've bought Bitcoins at a 2$ rate, sold some at 120$, and the (very) few ones I've been able to keep since are cherished and well preserved. So would I use these for playing poker online? Well...

After Black Friday, there were few alternatives left for US players to join online cash games. Bitcoins (now known as BTC) then raised a few eyebrows - and little interest at first - in the poker community with innovative features allowing easy and fast deposits and cashouts, but were shortly fully adopted by a growing part of the community.

It is an urban legend that BTC are fully anonymous - it’s a bit more complicated not to be traceable on the web - but this modern tale proved to be very attractive for many poker players around the world in search (for whatever reasons) of privacy, and also allowed a few US players not to have to move to cope with the canadian Winter.

Since then, BTC value has been hurled through the roof by a goldrush-like craze during 2013, making it almost a gamble in itself to keep your bankroll in this currency - a thing poker players can take easily. And it proved to be a winning one for early entrants: an e-wallet with about 100BTC (about 1300$) early January could have offered a six digit sum if cashed out late November. Since then volatility and lawmakers (especially in China) have tamed down a bit the hopes of many investors, but the regular use of the currency hasn’t been slowing at all.

Satoschi Poker and Seals With Clubs are the two main operators of the moment with several hundred players live online. Expect downsides with software glitches and bugs being too often reported, plus poor customer support and clumsy cashout management. Mind, not a very different experience from the other small online cardrooms. Though no FBI raid and shutdown are to be expected anytime soon, things remain fragile.

Many BTC poker sites have come and go along the years, some of them being scams or having been hacked. At the time this article was written, Seals With Clubs website was down and its user database hacked a few weeks earlier, a classic on commercial website accepting bitcoins. Satochi seems to be the one standing best the test of time and hackers exploits, but for how long. Best advice is to stick to the most well-known operators and listen to the community.

As an online player, there are for now no known risks others than being scammed by playing with Bitcoins, as most countries still have no legal framework on the matter and no proper tax regulation as well. BTC commercial use is still an adventure, so to join in and help can be as much fun as winning a few bucks more at poker.

So: would I risk my beloved Bitcoins on offshore poker operators websites? Probably not. Would I choose to cashout my winnings on a regular online poker room were the option be offered? Definitely (though I would even prefer physical gold, but it's another story). That is the next big step for the BTC community in order to convert newcomers in the safest and most straightforward mode.

Resources: PokerNews Guide To Bitcoin, Pt1, Pt2, Pt3