The Gambling Industry Needs To Adopt Blockchain Technology, Not Bitcoin!

Bitcoin is amazing in both its history and its range of functions. But these functions are limited. 

Problems begin to creep in when one tries to expand Bitcoin too far beyond its scope, or more specifically when trying to forcefully adapt it to suit complex specific use-cases like casino or sportsbook solutions. In short, it is great for payment processing attached to online casinos but adding more gambling functions to the blockchain itself just isn’t realistic. It seems even Satoshi himself ended up with this realization very early on, by scrapping the plans for Bitcoin poker.

Even though Bitcoin can be a good option for processing payments, block space can be highly prized and making smaller payments is generally cheaper on alternate solutions. With that said, there is plenty of logic involved in block sizing and if you are unfamiliar with Bitcoin’s block size debates and history then we highly recommend reading up on it as it is a very interesting issue and has a lot of important history attached to it.

When trying to design something as specific and complex as a full-featured decentralized gambling solution, even building atop much more broad and flexible solutions like Ethereum has serious issues. Basic issues like network congestion and/or high fees can cause problems, along with the base layer also being a major limiting factor in a variety of situations.

Customizing a blockchain specifically to suit the needs of the next generation of gambling products is the most practical and realistic way to go about it. It certainly takes more effort and resources to follow this method, but when weighing all of the potential pros and cons it easily comes out ahead.. The initial difficulty eventually gives way to much more potential features and functions and the network can be further fine-tuned as needed. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right!

Sportsbooks are essentially a ledger at their very core, making blockchain a natural fit as the underlying system for such a product. Casino games can greatly benefit from being provably fair on-chain and gain many ease-of-use improvements. Poker also stands to benefit greatly from the increased security and access to a global player pool.

The GAMBL whitepaper is a great place to dig into the actual functions involved and to get a clear idea of how blockchain technology is set to change the game!