Almost every disruptive innovation encounters a fork in the road, which is almost exclusively “How can we bring this to the masses?” – a fair question for any business or any creative idea.
Exponential growth stems from having as many eyes viewing a product or service as possible, and even with the immense innovation that cryptocurrency and blockchain have brought to the fintech world over the last 15 years, there’s still a glaring example of where it can be used as an obvious use case.
Sure, unless you’re living in El Salvador, where Bitcoin is legal tender and you can use it everywhere, then this question is redundant. However, if you’re living in other countries where crypto is a tradable asset or something you can invest in, there aren’t as many visible industries or services where you can scan your Bitcoin and make a purchase.
The Rise Of Crypto-Specific Platforms
One of the clearest signals that the crypto gambling market is in the ascendancy is the rise of gambling platforms that only deal with cryptocurrency payments. While many platforms have included Bitcoin payments and other cryptocurrencies as part of their wider options, the popularity of Bitcoin as a gambling option has led to the emergence of specific platforms looking to capitalize on this growing market.
The gambling options at these providers, such as Thunderpick, mirror the same markets you’ll find at a more traditional online platform, but you can use Bitcoin to place a bet. Given the speed at which the global iGaming market continues to grow, providers are looking for an increasingly smaller number of ways to cash in on this growing market.
This is why providers like Thunderpick have positioned themselves within this niche, looking to capitalize on what could be a market that yields the best return within the industry over the next decade or two.
Factors Fueling The Audience Growth
While it’s all good to have a platform that allows people to use their crypto for practical use cases like betting, it doesn’t mean much if the broader rhetoric within the industry is hostile. Some experts believed the Bitcoin halving in early 2024 would’ve fueled this exponential growth to all-time highs.
It did have a positive influence and, coupled with Bitcoin ETFs, did send the price briefly to all-time highs back in March 2024. It’s labored since, and while other external factors haven’t filled investors with confidence, many believe that the halving and ETF would give it enough juice to send it to six figures.
While this isn’t a linear prediction, and a $100,000 Bitcoin price is definitely not out of the equation, crypto casinos benefit when the price increases because more people are investing and using the asset. A higher price means more interest, a higher place in the news cycle, and a higher market cap. It might not translate directly into casino gaming, but a broader positive attitude helps.
Other Use Cases
Blockchain is a game-changing technological innovation that secures transactions and removes any need for a third party to get involved. In short, it removes the need for a bank to secure the payment in the middle. The cryptography and immutable nature of the blockchain ensure that all transactions are verified. With minimal fees involved, one of its most advanced use cases is sending money overseas.
Using cryptocurrency for remittance is becoming an increasingly popular way for crypto traders and investors to send their assets overseas without incurring fees or time delays, which is much more common within traditional banking sectors.
Final Say
It’s probably a stretch to say that casino gaming is the most obvious mass-adaptive use case for crypto. Even if we combined casino gaming with sports betting and considered it the broader iGaming market, it probably still wouldn’t qualify as the most obvious use case.
The primary use case for cryptocurrency is investing—it’s proven countless times over the last decade that it attracts the highest volume. Now, with multiple products in traditional finance catering to cryptocurrency and digital assets, this position is further strengthened at the top of the industry.
Some of the money and investment that has flowed into Bitcoin via ETFs this year has been staggering. While the market might have cooled off in the second half of 2024, the multi-billion dollar daily activity we see on centralized and decentralized exchanges is still the most obvious use case for the asset.
Perhaps this could change over the next decade if crypto-gambling companies begin to make serious moves into the soon-to-be trillion-dollar iGaming market, but again, we’d be combining casino gaming and sports gaming; it’s difficult to see any scenario where casino gaming eclipses the volume and interest in the wider trading world. If crypto has taught us anything over the years, though, it’s that nothing is truly off the table.
Read Also: Blockchain and Crypto Make Online Gambling More Accessible and Fair Than Ever Before