What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a distributed crypto-currency that was created by Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin has received mainstream media attention over the past few months as more and more people and commercial operations adopt it as a form of currency. Bitcoin is anonymous for the most part, it provides a no chargeback option, and is a peer-to-peer technology through a network of ewallets that are securely encrypted.

Bitcoin Traction

About two years ago a Bitcoin was valued at $2.20 USD, this year has been a milestone year as Bitcoin first hit $100 on April 1st (many thought it was an April Fools Day joke) then continued to skyrocket to $1127 a Bitcoin in November. On May 22, 2010 a pizza was purchased with 10k bitcoins. This shows just how much the price of Bitcoin has appreciated in just 2 years.



One of the causes of the recent upsurge is due to Bitcoin being used as the currency for the Silk Road drug marketplace on the anonymous TOR network. The Silk Road was busted up by the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI resulting in the site being seized along with the all the Bitcoins stored on the site by it’s thousands of customers. The founder and administrator of the Silk Road, Ross William Ulbricht, was charged with numerous crimes including drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering. Once the site was taken down, over $30 million worth of Bitcoins were seized by the FBI including all customer Bitcoins stored on the Silk Road website (not in the customers private wallets). While it may be counter-intuitive, the legitimacy of Bitcoin has actually strengthened since the Silk Road was taken down.

China also has bought into this currency allowing Bitcoin to be used for tuition for a major university to utility bills. Baidu, China’s top search engine began acceptance of Bitcoin which has also fueled the increase in value.

A recent hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives has brought Bitcoin more attention and help cement it as a legitimate form of currency. This continued the Bitcoin surge as trading volume increased to where it is today.

How does Bitcoin fit in Online Poker and iGaming?

While the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) slowed down the market inside of the U.S. when the law came in effect in 2009. The law itself does not state that playing poker online is illegal. The purpose of the law’s focus was on the financial transactions between internet gambling sites and U.S. banks, requiring the banks to restrict the movement of funds relating to online gambling. Many online poker sites like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker continued to expand their operations in spite of the UIGEA and continued to serve the U.S. market.

Then Black Friday hit – the nuclear bombshell on the online poker industry. This is when any gray area, officially became a black and white situation. Online poker players either; (1) Moved out of U.S. to continue grinding at the large poker sites like Poker Stars, (2) Stayed and switched to live games (3) Continued playing on sites that had much smaller player pools, such as the Merge network, Yatahay, and other small rooms or… (4) simply quit playing poker.

Bitcoin, the virtual peer-to-peer currency came on the scene in 2009. About a year and half in, SealsWithClubs bitcoin poker room was launched. The site gained traction in 2012 where they hit their 100 player pool around August of 2012 during a DonkDown radio freeroll. The typical Bitcoin poker room doesn’t require any verification documents. The minimum information from a player (which is even optional) is an email address. The only way to play on the site is to purchase chips with Bitcoin. Chips are played and stored in a cashier (similar to any other site). When time to withdraw those chips, players are paid via bitcoin to their unique wallet address. The wallet address is setup by the player at their own discretion. There are many different options for Bitcoin wallets and you can create as many unique addresses as you want, numerous online transmission Bitcoin options are available.

Not having to perform any transactions to a bank or other third-party processors is the big benefit of Bitcoin poker. There are no significant fees or time delays for deposits or cashouts of your funds. Due to the minimal cost of using Bitcoin on poker sites, the operators save millions in processing fees, and significant savings is passed on to the player base.

The other big advantage of Bitcoin in iGaming is speedy deposits and withdrawals. It is as easy as sending an email back and forth and it’s encrypted, secured, there no chargebacks, and complete within a few hours or less. All transfers can be sent to a wallet and can be confirmed through the BlockChain. For a poker operator, the risk and cost is substantially mitigated and using Bitcoin allows the players to make their own decision on what they want to do with their coins.

As bitcoin becomes more mainstream across the world, it becomes more attractive for iGaming portals to expand their options to players allowing for Bitcoin being an alternative to payouts and deposits in the system.

Online Poker Rooms that are Bitcoin only

SealsWithClubs – The largest Bitcoin poker site. It features a solid community. Interesting tools are located inside this software that no other poker room I know of has. It provides a chatroom that interacts with certain interfaces that allow for staking and information gathering and a Web of Trust.

SatoshiPoker – It is a room using enterra room. Recently the room just received a RNG (Random Number Generator) for card shuffling and is a nice option for micro grinders. Plenty of freerolls and tournament style games in the room.

PocketrocketsCasino – First of its kind that offers Open Face Chinese poker for bitcoin (real money). It is HTML5 which allows for PC’s and Macs including Ipad/Iphone and Android tablets and phones. Variants of OFC are available, FantasyLand and Pineapple.

GridPoker – This is a client based poker site that offers a flexibility to requesting action in the chat room. They have a points based poker system similar to Poker Stars. Fluid and beautiful interface allows for a great game with all different variations of poker including RAZZ, 3-7 Triple Draw and of course Open Face Chinese including FantasyLand.

Steve “weeeeee” White

Coming from the horse capitol of the world and the home of the University of Kentucky Wildcats, Lexington, Kentucky I became interested in bitcoin as a way of playing poker and using virtual currency. My poker experience began in 2011 and then after Black Friday, I had a brief stint of online Poker. Poker is still a passion of mine as well as Bitcoin currency. The two converged and I started my site, http://www.grindabit.com which is a tight knit community of Bitcoin users and poker players alike. I can be found there at any time or email at [email protected]