Stablecoins Enter Bitcoin Casinos with Tether

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Since Bitcoin first opened the doors for cryptocurrency payments in online casinos, many other alternative coins have found their way into some of the best BTC operators online. However, while it’s not surprising to see cryptos like Ethereum, Ripple, or Tron getting accepted by casino sites, what issurprising is to see stablecoins enter the market. But not anymore, it seems, as during the past months the demand for Tether has increased so much that it even reached the crypto-gambling world that was once dominated only by Bitcoin.

Stability in Cryptocurrency Online Gambling?

Tether, often called the “first stablecoin”, was created back in 2015 and it slowly grew from being a novelty concept to becoming immensely popular among cryptocurrency investors. The main reason for Tether’s popularity was the initial claim of the coin’s creators that every Tether coin (USDT) is backed up by one US dollar in reserves. By pegging the USDT price to the US dollar, Tether’s creators could offer a “stablecoin” to investors that wasn’t prone to the same price swings as other cryptocurrencies were, especially Bitcoin.

Thus, thekey selling point of Tether is that it allows users to keep cryptocurrency funds that are always “tethered” to the US dollar, giving them the stability they need. It was exactly this idea of security that helped Tether skyrocket and grew its market cap from $4 million in 2017 to $2.2 billion in 2019. In fact, the coin became so popular that investors even started using it to buy Bitcoin. At the start of 2018, Tether was responsible for approximately 10% of Bitcoin’s trading volume while during the summer that year it even accounted for 80% of the volume at one point.

With the coin becoming increasingly popular, it was only a matter of time before doors were opened for it by some of the biggest Bitcoin casinos online. One of the first operators to start accepting Tether was BitStarz Casino which announced in February this year that USDT coins can be used on slots and table games from several of its software providers. And since a few days ago, BetChain Casino also hopped on the Tether train, revealing that it has fully integrated the coin into its online platform.

A “Controversial” Coin

Search Wikipedia for Tether and the first adjective you’ll see describing the cryptocurrency is “controversial”. Over the course of its run, there were numerous accusations that Tether coins were created out of “thin air”, with some critics even claiming that there was no proof of existing USD reserves which were supposed to back the cryptocurrency.

As a senior contributor at Forbes spotted, Tether Limited changed the claims on its websites several times, making their statements no longer credible. Initially saying that every coin was “always backed 1-to-1” by fiat currencies like USD dollars, Tether’s site now explains that the coins are “always backed by our reserves”, some of which include receivables from third-party loans, other assets, and cash equivalents. Yet, none of these changes affected the trading volumes of the coin. On the contrary, Tether’s volume has increased from around $3 billion at the end of last year to a current $19 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

April 3, 2019: • No Comments

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