What an Upcoming Bitcoin Fork Means for Players

A few years ago, when bitcoin exploded in popularity, people saw it as a viable option for deposits and withdrawals for online gambling. These days, there are several popular bitcoin casinos that offer a wide range of games to players from all over the world. A potential hard fork in the bitcoin blockchain could be coming up, and that has a lot of players wondering just what they should do. Here we'll explain exactly how you can handle it smoothly and without incident.

What Does a Hard Fork Mean?

A hard fork for bitcoin means that all existing bitcoin is split into two groups, one of which has an updated protocol. Whether this means increased safety or security, or if it just means better accessibility, is actually somewhat irrelevant. The bottom line for players is that there will be a "regular" bitcoin and a "new" bitcoin when this type of thing happens.

For players with existing bitcoin on a wallet, it will be split up according to its position on the blockchain between the two resulting currencies, and you'll be able to use your same wallet as always to send both. However, if you have bitcoin on an exchange, then it's recommended that you pull it back to your wallet or exchange it for a fiat currency before the fork because they will probably freeze withdrawals for a couple of days before and after the event.

How This Can Affect Bitcoin Gambling?

Hard forks of this type are necessary for crypto-currencies like bitcoin to evolve, and the industry is equipped to handle them. For players who enjoy online slots and other games with bitcoin, it won't really change much, and you can pretty much go on about your business and play how you normally would.

In terms of how this will affect bitcoin gambling as a whole, while no one can guess the exact consequences of this type of thing, the bottom line is that it's very unlikely to cause any type of serious issue. Casinos and other sites that offer the crypto-currency may have to slightly adjust some of the things they do with how they operate, but effects for the players are likely to be minimal.

Sources

Jamie Redman, This Happens to Your Coins During a Bitcoin Hard Fork and Possible Blockchain Split news.bitcoin.com, March 20, 2017

By Jesse Eddleman