Published: 7 August, 2024

Evaluating the current state of crypto and its changing nature

Beth Turner speaks with Bets.io Head of Affiliates Vlad Utikalov at iGB Live in Amsterdam, discussing the nature of crypto and responsible gaming among anonymous players

Bets.io is a crypto casino and sportsbook. Why do [some] players prefer to bet with crypto as opposed to fiat?

There is a difference between crypto and fiat players. We tend to get a more adult audience, probably 30+, 40+. They have money, they behave differently – they are not looking for a quick bonus, they rarely use bonuses at all. Imagine a person with a career who wants to spend some time betting and has some savings in crypto.

Bets.io offers several cryptocurrencies to bet with. How many do you offer and are there any that are particularly popular?

We support several directly, plus you can exchange any cryptocurrency you have. Bitcoin is king right now. The second one is all USDT (Tether) currencies and Litecoin is the third. But Bitcoin is killing it ... We are seeing 80% of our stakes in Bitcoin.

That makes sense. Bitcoin is still the number one cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, so it makes sense that people are using it to bet as well. In terms of crypto players, how do they differ from typical fiat bettors?

The biggest difference is they tend to stay anonymous, completely. Know-your-customer (KYC) has to be only passports or only phone numbers since they don’t want to show their cards. They bet with crypto on purpose, they know what they are doing and we are here to accommodate them. Again, we don’t have many young people. We don’t have exclusions, we don’t ban many. Our audience is mostly 30+ and we are happy with that.

In the Payments Focus issue of Gambling Insider magazine, we asked other crypto casinos about proprietary in-house tokens and what they think about them. Where do you stand in terms of proprietary in-house tokens?

Within the next two months, we’re going to have our own coin and we’re going to have our NFT collection too, so we are heavily investing in it. We are developing it right now. I think late September is the issue date, so by October we should have our own coin. Of course, we’re going to use it heavily. While playing at Bets.io, you’ll get heavy cash backs in our coin.

We will have a small amount for sale and for giveaways at the very beginning. But generally, it will be our internal coin for our casino players, not for everybody.

It allows you to give your players different advantages?

It’s our coin. We invested in it. We want it to be profitable and we are ready to invest in marketing and give away coins to the audiences marketing for us.

As you know, many cryptocurrencies come and fall. When it comes to integrating cryptocurrencies onto your platform, how do you decide which ones to put on there?

We allow players to exchange any cryptocurrency into more popular ones. But really, it’s all money. So within the platform, you choose to see Euros or your local currency, to be aware of how much you’re spending, how much you are wasting or winning. We don’t push to bet in Bitcoin. We always allow players to transfer the amount to local currencies, we are gambling responsibly. Because one Bitcoin seems like a lot and €100 ($109) seems like a little. So we are trying to keep them within a range, so they know what they are losing or winning.

We have several exchange methods right now, so any new crypto you can acquire you will be able to deposit.

It allows players to keep in control of their money by knowing exactly what it is they are playing with?

That’s why we show a local balance in Euros or US Dollars or a local currency. Because that’s how people bet. Crypto is just a currency, just a way of payment. It’s too early for people, for our audience, to calculate Bitcoins into Euros in their head and it changes all the time.

We want to make our players happy. We had a few complaints when we were doing balances in Bitcoin or Litecoin, so we stopped it. Now we display local currency for everybody.