Wallets, Blockchains & Bridges

Wallets are necessary if you are to keep custody of your crypto. To keep your crypto with an exchange is not advisable and the same goes for keeping it at crypto casinos. At least not any big amounts. Not your keys, not your crypto.

Also, do not use your main wallet for your gambling (your main wallet should be a Cold Wallet or at least a hardware wallet – Google or Bing this if you do not know what these are). Setup a wallet/address dedicated for your gambling. That way you can easily keep track of your bankroll.

What is a wallet?

You often hear (on telegram or elsewhere): Help! I can’t see the tokens in my wallet!? First of all: No cryptocurrency is INSIDE a wallet, ever.

A wallet is an interface to the blockchain. It manages your keypair: your public key and corresponding private key. If you know both that is proof that you own the tokens on an address (which for instance on Ethereum is based on the last 20 bytes of the public key).

Tokens and coins are on the blockchain, not inside or kept on anything. Keypairs are kept on or in a wallet, whatever you want to call it.

Wallets also have built in functions to make interaction with blockchains easier. Like sending funds, approving contracts, and signing transactions.

What is a "Seed Phrase"?

A Seed Phrase is a mnemonic representation of your public and private key. With these 12 to 24 words (in correct order) you can restore access to your crypto address (or several addresses) without having to remember a two long strings (your private and public key) of randomly looking characters.

If someone gets their hands on your seed phrase they can access your crypto. There are two rules to seed phrases:

1. Never share your seed phrase. EVER.
2. Do not store your seed phrase digitally. Do not save your seed phrase on a cloud service, in an email to yourself or elsewhere. You never know what kind of security a 3rd party has in place, and security breaches happens all the time.

Depositing crypto to a casino is done by initiating a transfer from your wallet, or straight from an exchange. For that you need a deposit address. Look for a deposit or wallet button on the gambling site you are depositing to. Click it and something like the below will pop up.

With wallet on computer or on casino from phone:

1. Chose your desired network (we will demonstrate with ETH)
2. Copy the Deposit Address
3. Open up your wallet of choice
4. Find the send function
5. Paste the address into the field
6. Confirm and sign

If you are using a mobile wallet. Simply open it up. Initiate a send and tap the camera option in the address bar. Scan the QR code and confirm the transaction.

At BC GAME casino, used above to demonstrate, we even have the option to click the MetaMask (fox icon) or WalletConnect button. Follow the onscreen instructions and the site will fill pass on the relevant info to your wallet. Confirm and sign.

Looking at crypto casino bonuses it becomes quite clear that gambling sites are trying to attract Bitcoins (BTC). Bitcoin casino bonuses are magnitudes bigger than what the same casino will offer for say, DOGE or even Ether. So, if you have a decent bankroll, BTC will be your best option.

With "decent" we are talking at least a couple of thousand USDT worth. If you are a poorer Bitcoin maximalist, the lightning network is the way to go. Unfortunately there are not that many Lightning Network casino sites. But they do exist.

If you are not a whole coiner (own a full bitcoin) you are likely better off gambling with anything else. Mainly due to transaction fees. If you are looking to get into crypto for the sake of gambling, Onramping to BTC is not advisable unless you are looking to part with at least a couple thousand USDT. Fees will quickly eat you up if, especially if you are new to crypto casinos and move funds around to find something you like. A cheaper network is preferred.

Looking at the first generation L1s (bitcoin killers - LOL) Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Doge Coin (DOGE), Tron (TRX), and Ripple (XRP), are all widely supported. BitcoinCash (BCH), Binance Chain (BNB) and Cardano (ADA) also belong to this category.

Without a CEX (centralised exchange) swapping between L1s (non EVM ones at least) is next to impossible so you will be best off gambling with whatever it is you possess.

Related to the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible blockchains (or networks/chains whatever you prefer to call them) we have stablecoins. Tether (USDT) on Ethereum dominates in terms of support and is accepted almost everywhere. Many crypto gambling sites also support USDT on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Tron Network. And lately even Polygon.

Pay attention when making deposits. Not all crypto casino sites will use the same address for ETH/BSC/Polygon which you might be used to for personal use.

USDT is a great choice for gambling. It is supported on many chains and it being "stable" is also a plus. USDT casino bonuses also abound, altough they are not as large as BTC bonuses.

Circle’s USDC has some traction but seems to have lost some momentum after it lost its peg in the beginning of 2023. BUSD and DAI have even less support.

There are several top 100 (in terms of market cap) tokens that are not widely supported at crypto casinos. For some reason popular chains like Polkadot (DOT), Near (NEAR), Fantom (FTM), Avalanche (AVAX), Algorand (ALGO), Cosmos (ATOM), Aptos (APT), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Monero (XMR) and the likes are not to any significant extent supported. Why? Good question, and we do not have a good answer.

There are some exceptions, Solana (SOL) is seeing some adoption. The same with MATIC (likely due to the success of Polygon) but also on other chains.