Practicing Crypto-Patience with Players
If one was to virtually walk into any iGaming house a few years ago and ask about cryptocurrencies, only a handful of players would understand the question. An alien financial concept in its infancy at the moment, the blockchain technology has meanwhile spread worldwide in a mobile, agile, and worthwhile manner of connected societies and interactive gambling. One game, however, still requires a bit of a crypto seduction, if you will — online bingo. Why is it so? Will it happen, and if so, when can we expect to see it?
Of course, all the traits and the pros and cons of cryptocurrencies are nowadays well known.
Whether they wear the jersey of Ethereum, Ripple, EOS, XRP, Litecoin, ZCash, or many others — including the obvious leader of the crypto pack, Bitcoin — virtual currencies and their decentralized network offer myriad of advantages to users: anonymity, efficiency, security, availability, controlled supply eliminating unexpected developments, minimal fees, potentials of scaling and improving.
To no surprise, blockchain is nowadays adopted by Fortune 500 companies and endorsed by IMF, not to mention a high level of adoption in iGaming industry.
Impressive benefits also point toward the drawbacks such as lack of regulation, irreversibility, peculiar requirements of assets protection, and above all, cryptocurrencies being prone to sophisticated expert cyber-attacks.
While the presence of big corporate boys and international regulatory institutions will surely suppress the vulnerability in time, it appears that a rather specific mix of cryptocurrency characteristics is what stands on its way when it comes to online bingo.
The Game with Special Players
As the number of internet information points out, the volume of regulated online casinos that accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is bigger than ever.
Notwithstanding other reasons, their applied benefits in iGaming are too enticing to be surpassed by players — the possibility of fast and direct transactions, free and reliable storage of funds, zero possibility for counterfeiting, automated transactions, and options of quick conversion into fiat currency.
But, current online bingo players are like no other.
What separates the majority of them is — they are mainly senior citizens, indulging their pastime in the manners of conservative and casual social gamblers.
To them, playing the game is a recreational, entertaining, and social habit exercised a couple of days per month. They tend to look at gambling as fun that should not cost too much; it’s not about gains but about a great experience.
Above all, like any other senior citizen, these players change their habits rarely and even harder. To have them adopt cryptocurrencies is on par to see them becoming avid users of Android phones — they just need the phone to call their kids, grandchildren, and friends.
Thus, when news like the one showcasing almost $1.1 billion in cryptocurrencies being stolen during the first half of 2018 surface, our elders — ones we shall one day be too — just shrug their shoulders, reminding themselves one more time about advantages of good old fashion banking, credit cards, and hard cash.
To inhabit online bingo with Bitcoin players, keen and passionate at that, therefore, might be more the question of evolutionary development than a revolutionary one.
Children of the Evolution
Bingo statistics probably illustrate this notion in the best possible manner.
According to H2 Gambling Capital, in 2018, the worldwide volume of bingo is $10.48 billion of which $1.9 billion is generated online; the ratio between land-based and online utilization is a bit more than 18%. Eight years ago, in 2010, the same ratio was 11 percent.
With a steady increase of one percent per year on average, it might be reasonable to assume that in ten years online bingo will globally participate with one-third of overall gaming revenues.
Simple biology might play its part here.
The generation X and millennials, currently leading the way in Bitcoin usage, will simply get older and fill the ranks of senior citizens. While it may appear they will proceed with their gambling habits and favorite games in that age, it is also quite possible they will adhere to a bit slower and quieter life, indulging in bingo, for instance.
To have generations quite versed with the usage of online technology reaching a certain age might be what online bingo needs to exercise its evolutionary transit to the next stage of adoption of Bitcoin.
The revolutionary one, another option at disposal, will more likely depend on more innovative and proactive approach by operators and affiliates when it comes to targeting online bingo players and providing them with numerous Bitcoin advantages in a proper way. Surely, there is always space for improvement and adaptation of high-end methodologies fully in line with gambling policies of national regulatory bodies.
Although…
How do you engage an online audience that’s just not in virtual space, nor it intends to currently be?
By outwaiting them.
By setting proven iGaming frameworks providing for secure and responsible online bingo ecosystem in place, ready to be deployed once the players well aware of Bitcoin advantages arrive.
After all, what is ten or twenty years of waiting to bingo, the game in existence for more than five centuries?
Image by Tomppa Koponen from Pixabay