Gambling has existed for thousands of years in one form or the other and has always changed with the times. Now that we live in the Internet age, many people turn to online platforms to gamble and play betting games with a myriad of service providers to choose from. Now, we also have several options in terms of the currencies we gamble with.
The two biggest options are traditional fiat currencies like Canadian Dollars and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This can pose a challenge for Canadian betting enthusiasts who might struggle to decide between the two. However, a quick look at existing Canadian gambling laws shows a number of benefits to be had from using cryptocurrency.
Canadian Gambling Laws
One thing to note about Canada is that gambling laws are not the same across the board. Instead, each province has its own laws that residents have to follow and some are more liberal about gambling than others.
For example, Alberta has an abundance of physical casinos, but there is a $250 daily limit on sports betting. Lotteries are popular in British Colombia but sports betting is not allowed on single-bet markets. Ontario is much more liberal in giving licenses to online casinos and horse racing, but sports betting has many restrictions.
As you can see, while gambling is not illegal in Canada, access to gambling services can be a bit tricky, depending on what province you live in. But all these laws we’ve mentioned mainly deal with physical betting operations (aside from Ontario’s growing iGaming market). Online casinos are a whole other story across Canada as a whole.
You see, many provinces like Alberta, British Colombia, Manitoba, and Quebec have only one or a small handful of gambling sites that are licensed to operate. Others like New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia do not license online gambling sites at all. There is a stark contrast between government acceptance of physical gambling and online gambling.
While many of the provinces mentioned allow physical gambling operations and some even have popular lotteries, online gambling has struggled to gain legal ground within Canada. This is especially noticeable when you compare Canada to other parts of the world like the U.S. and Europe. And, sadly, those who bear the brunt of this legal framework are the consumers themselves.
How These Might Limit Customers
These days, a majority of people who enjoy gambling prefer to do so from the comfort of their homes. While physical casinos still exist, more and more people are going online for access to better deals, a wider variety of games, and so on.
As you can imagine, getting your hands on all of these will be difficult if you live in a province that doesn’t give licenses to online casinos. Even if your specific province has one or two licensed online casinos, you have very few options to choose from. One of the biggest draws of online gambling is being able to shop around for the best deal. You can’t really do this if there is only one gambling site in your province.
Canada having such stringent restrictions on online casinos means that people living there will have to turn elsewhere to have their needs met. The good news is that these provinces allow residents to access gambling sites that are based outside of Canada as a whole. This gives some sort of relief to citizens and helps to fill what has become a big gap. And even among third-party gambling sites based outside of Canada, consumers can get more benefits from opting to use cryptocurrency as opposed to fiat currency.
How Cryptocurrency Can Help
In the last decade, we’ve seen a plethora of online casinos and gambling sites start dealing with cryptocurrency as they’ve become more popular. Now, people can use cryptocurrency to place bets and play casino games. The use of cryptocurrency for online gambling comes with many benefits like easy withdrawal, more control over funds, and much more.
For online gambling fans who live in Canada, there is the added benefit of being able to get around online gambling restrictions within their country. You see, while there are few licensed online casinos in Canada that allow transactions in fiat, there are many that are licensed in other countries that do in crypto.
As we’ve stated, the boom in cryptocurrency use means that many online casinos around the world are accepting them. This is especially true if you want to use the major tokens like Bitcoin; in fact, here are all the sites allowing BTC, which is a far greater list than the number government-approved online casinos in certain provinces. Existing Canadian regulations don’t prohibit residents from using online casinos from outside of their provinces or country, so there is no limit to which ones they can use.
This also eliminates a lot of the current problems when it comes to choice. If you live in Manitoba, for example, you’re not limited to the single online gambling site approved by the government. And in most cases, signing up to these sites only requires proof of ID to get started. Additionally, users are not as restricted as they would be if they wanted to use fiat currency.
This is because when you use fiat currency at a non-Canadian online casino, you might have to have to convert your own funds to another currency e.g. CAD to GBP or USD. The issue with that is that depending on the payment processor and your own bank, the exchange rate might not be the same across the board or favorable for you. But cryptocurrencies, because they are not attached to a specific country, tend to retain their value no matter where they are used. Simply put, your 100 CAD might not be worth the same depending on your payment processor and online casino, but 1 BTC is the same everywhere.
Conclusion
While both have their benefits, it is a bit more challenging to gamble in Canada using fiat currency. First, there are so few licensed operators in the country that Canadians have little variety. If they try to gamble on sites outside of the country, there might be currency exchange challenges. But with cryptocurrency, all these can be eliminated. There is a wide variety of gambling sites to choose from and gambling with crypto comes with a horde of benefits.
So, thanks to the innovation of cryptocurrency, Canadians can enjoy gambling services from all over the world with ease.
