It’s been a bumpy ride in the crypto space since we last checked in, but the good news is this: If you want to buy crypto to bet with crypto (or bet on crypto), it’s still a good time to do it. The bear market is still doing its thing.
However, a curious thing has happened outside the direct crypto market in recent weeks, and it’s one that could have some ramifications on your future in the online gambling world.
At least, it could have some ramifications on how you fund your activities in that online gambling world.
At DepositMethods.com, we’ve been extremely selective about the sites we support, especially right now. The lists of venues we’ve included in our online gambling reviews are pretty short.
Now, we could have made these lists longer, because – to be absolutely clear – sites like Bovada, Slots.LV, Cafe Casino, BetOnline, and MyBookie aren’t the only legit online casinos, sportsbooks, and poker rooms out there. There are others. These are our favorites and that is unlikely to change, but there are others.
But as things have unfolded in the crypto market this year, we’re actually glad we held off on recommending those other operations right off the hop. Because one major family of gambling websites recently ditched a whopping 80% of their crypto betting options!
Since crypto is the primary deposit and withdrawal method we recommend, crypto support is one of the biggest considerations when we put a given site through its paces.
No matter how good a site may be, if it doesn’t have a decent selection of popular crypto coins in its bet funding menu, we can’t really recommend them.
Case in point: The sites in question that just dumped their crypto banking suites are actually really solid gambling sites. They have games made by reputable, audited RNG casino software companies, they offer hundreds of online slots and table games, they have live-dealer casinos, and they have excellent reputations.
They just…don’t support crypto right now.
Well, to be fair, they do support crypto right now, but only one: Bitcoin. They weren’t willing to drop Bitcoin support, as BTC is the number-one banking option in the entire industry, and it’s not even close.
Anyway, here’s what happened:
The sites in question (which shall remain nameless in their terrible shame!) used to have small but respectable crypto menus. They accepted Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Dogecoin.
That’s not the biggest selection, but it was big enough. All the coins listed were and remain popular and widely used.
But then, a few months ago, Ethereum support was quietly removed from these sites. One day to the next, it was just gone.
Of course, that made – and still makes – some sense.
Ethereum is about to undergo a massive network upgrade to Ethereum 2.0, transitioning from an expensive and bloated Proof-of-Work (PoW) platform to a lean, inexpensive, and speedy Proof-of-Stake (PoS) platform. Effectively, the next generation of Ethereum is going to compete apples-to-apples with more modern coins like Cardano, Solana, and so on.
Because this transition will have unknown and potentially unstable outcomes re the ETH price in the short term, it’s sensible that ETH gambling support would be scrapped for now.
What we didn’t expect was for these sites to remove all their other crypto selections, too.
But they did. And they did it all at once.
Not a month after ditching Ethereum, these online casinos also dumped support for Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Dogecoin.
Don’t get us wrong; BCH, LTC, and DOGE aren’t our favorite crypto gambling options. Not by a long shot. But they were used and they were popular.
That said – to be 100% clear – we don’t expect these omissions to be permanent. We strongly believe these sites will bring back support for the above coins in due time. Further, we expect them to actually expand their crypto selections to fall more in line with the cryptocurrency menus at the sites we review here.
After all, even in this bear market, crypto is still gaining in public market share and mindshare. Long term, crypto isn’t going anywhere but up.
But even more than that – and in what’s perhaps the main takeaway here – we also don’t expect the sites we recommend to pull a stunt like this.
To date, we’ve never seen our favorite brands just randomly drop a crypto coin after deciding to roll out support for said coin. Banking stability is crucial for consumer trust, and the entire point of using crypto as a bet funding vehicle is that the menu remains stable.
Sure, the best sites may temporarily suspend support for a single asset based on market conditions.
For example, MyBookie stopped supporting XRP earlier this year due to the ongoing protracted SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs, but that actually makes sense. US-based exchanges don’t currently support Ripple trading or Ripple cashouts.
So until that suit is resolved (which should be any day now), XRP support will be lacking. But as soon as the verdict comes in, come what may (which is most probably going to be a hefty fine and nothing more), XRP support will be back.
Outside of these kinds of extenuating circumstances, you should expect the sites recommended here to continue to support all the coins they support today.
And you should also expect that list to be added to in the months and years to come.
