Over the past couple of years, the popularity of crypto casinos has skyrocketed. There are many reasons behind this: crypto casinos have bigger rewards, they generally give users more privacy, and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many physical casinos to close.
When it comes to crypto casinos, it is hardly surprising that Bitcoin casinos are the most popular option. With a $650 billion market cap (essentially, the total value of all the coins available in the market), Bitcoin is currently the most popular crypto currency. But Bitcoin isn’t the only option, and as the industry continues to become more crowded, people are looking to alternatives.
Litecoin (LTC) is one of these alternatives. With a market cap of $10 billion, Litecoin was created in 2011 by ex-Google engineer, Charlie Lee. It was actually a fork of the original Bitcoin blockchain that was created as a Bitcoin spinoff, or a “lite” version. While Bitcoin is often referred to as “digital gold”, Litecoin has become known as “digital silver”.
If you’re considering signing up to a crypto casino to start gambling, here are some reasons why you might want to choose a Litecoin casino:
Because Litecoin is one of the most popular altcoins available to buy on the market, it can be bought and traded at all major crypto exchanges. You can buy it directly,
Fiat transactions are extremely slow. Once you’ve won something, it can take several days to receive a single transaction. Cryptocurrency transfers are much faster, and you can expect to receive your winnings in minutes instead of days. Litecoin is particularly fast. It takes about 2.5 minutes for the Litecoin network to generate a block or process a transaction. This is four times as fast as Bitcoin, which takes about 10 minutes. For this reason, it is far more common to use Litecoin than Bitcoin for daily payments and microtransactions.
Bitcoin’s hard cap — or rather, the most Bitcoin that there will ever be in supply — is 21 million. As it stands, around 18.5 million bitcoins have already been mined, which means that only 3 million more can ever be created. Litecoin, on the other hand, has a hard cap of 84 million. There are currently over 66 million litecoins in circulation. As Litecoin is considered less “scarce” than Bitcoin, the price is significantly lower. In addition, because there is less media attention on Litecoin than Bitcoin, the price tends to fluctuate less.
In early 2017, the price of 1 LTC was hovering around $5. Fast forward to today, and its value is just over $110. The price continues to fluctuate, but there’s always a chance that the value of your Litecoin winnings could increase further if you leave your winnings in your wallet.
This is one of the big benefits to using cryptocurrencies. Many gambling websites will not require you to enter any personally identifiable information — all you’ll need is a unique wallet address to store your winnings. This also provides you with greater security in case the website is hacked (hackers routinely target gambling websites) — as long as you remember to transfer your winnings to a separate wallet!
If you often find yourself second-guessing the fairness of casino games, you can check by using the provably fair algorithm. Unlike regular casinos that use random number generators that can’t be verified by others and require players to trust the casino, provably fair keeps generates the results and then stores them in a hash on a public ledger that can be verified by players. This does not require the involvement of third-parties, and does not rely on the casino acting honestly.
Lots of Litecoin casinos offer huge bonuses to players to encourage more people to sign up and use the cryptocurrency. Most casinos will also allow you to test your skills before actually spending any money.
Despite the benefits, it is important to remember the risks of gambling with cryptocurrencies. The price of crypto assets is rarely stable, and although this can often work in your favor, it also has the ability to wipe a large chunk off your winnings at any time. Although Litecoin is not quite as volatile as Bitcoin, the prices are often quite closely linked, given that Litecoin is a mainstream cryptocurrency with many similarities to Bitcoin.
You should only ever play with what you can afford to lose, and don’t forget to check the laws in your country to make sure that using virtual currencies in online casinos is within the law.
