PayPal Takes A Gamble, Goes All In On Bitcoin

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paypal sign in front of gold bitcoin tokens

At the best legal online casinos, the hits just keep on coming!

Recently, Bovada Casino – the most popular online gambling site in America for players aged 18 and up – announced their support of the revolutionary MatchPay betting deposit service that allows members to make account-to-account transfers funded by popular P2P services like PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and Zelle.

After that, Bovada followed up the news by unveiling their Premium Bitcoin-Exclusive membership for those who wish to use the world’s most popular cryptocurrency to fund their online gambling activities.

Between these two developments, the offshore gambling industry, led as usual by Bovada, continued to pull ahead of US domestic options – especially when you consider that most players aged 18-20 can’t even enjoy proper casino gambling in the United States.

Basically, these forward-thinking moves prove more than ever that international casino sites operating legally outside of US jurisdiction are just plain better than their domestic counterparts.

And it’s not just because they accept members at 18 years of age, but it’s because they actually offer all their members – of any age – meaningful casino deposit options that aren’t offered anywhere else.

This week, of course, the best legal offshore casinos got another major shot in the arm – perhaps the biggest one yet.

Why?

Because PayPal has officially announced that they will be allowing their members to purchase cryptocurrencies directly within the PayPal app itself!

There are several reasons that this is a big deal, though there is a caveat (see below).

First and foremost, you must remember that domestic USA casinos, sportsbooks, poker rooms, and racetracks do not accept crypto, while overseas gambling sites do.

But until PayPal’s groundbreaking move to eventually become a bona fide crypto exchange, there were a few big hurdles to actually acquiring Bitcoin and altcoins on the exchanges, which often represented a lengthy and convoluted first step before gambling accounts could be funded.

As a result, many potential gamblers were turned off by this process, electing to refrain from joining legitimate online 18+ casinos. Still others were intimidated by it, opting to deposit via less valuable means.

But soon, everyone will be able to get the best Bitcoin casino bonuses and other crypto bonuses and perks more easily than ever before, because all they’ll need is a PayPal account to acquire the cryptocurrencies in question.

And given that over 350 million people worldwide already use PayPal regularly, this will open the door to a whole new generation that is ready to embrace both cryptocurrencies in general and online betting in particular.

Another revolutionary aspect of this move is that PayPal’s new crypto initiative means that – unless things change in the future – online gamblers will be able to deposit directly into their legal offshore casino accounts using PayPal.

When PayPal is used for traditional banking transactions, this is actually impossible due to the federal UIGEA gambling law, as the banking restriction prevents such transfers.

But cryptocurrencies are unregulated and decentralized, which means that once you have them, you can send them anywhere – domestically or internationally – without any red tape to stand between you and your recipient.

That’s where the “eventually” above comes in, because at launch, PayPal is not actually allowing its customers to move their crypto out of their accounts.

This makes no sense long-term, but we suspect it is an effort to limit the immediate adoption of the PayPal buy-in so as not to flood Bitcoin miners and cause a dramatic fluctuation in the Bitcoin price (and the values of other supported coins).

Thus, you should be ready to buy BTC et al. via PayPal, but you should hold off on actually doing so for a few weeks until PayPal removes this restriction. 

That said, even when you can send your crypto from your PayPal account, it remains conceivable that due to PayPal’s massive status in the banking sector, the service will attempt to monitor or block certain outgoing crypto transactions, though such a standard would be technologically difficult to implement or police given the nature of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Still, should PayPal somehow restrict its users from using their PayPal apps to directly send crypto-based 18 and over casino deposits to international operators, it won’t actually mean much.

In that case, all anyone has to do is move their Bitcoin or altcoins off of PayPal (once PayPal supports this) by sending them to an external crypto exchange or cryptocurrency wallet.

From there, deposits can be made to online betting sites as normal. This means that all of the following deposit options will soon be very much on the table:

To recap, for 18 and over gamblers looking for the best, smoothest online gaming experience, offshore 18+ casino sites now offer such a multitude of benefits – including potential direct PayPal crypto support – that it doesn’t make sense to wait for domestic options to catch up.

Nor, for that matter, does it make sense for 18+ bettors to wait until they’re 21 or older just to gamble at local casinos and sportsbooks that offer less bang for their buck. Those student loans are already bad enough, right?

And that’s the main point: No matter what deposit methods you want to use, you don’t have to wait.

As long as you gamble with a reputable online casino that is legally licensed and regulated overseas, you can gamble right now at just 18 years of age.

So what are you waiting for?