What is a Bitcoin Wagering Requirement?

What is a Wagering Requirement?

Yes, it’s true. Even in a world is liberal and free as one that allows peer to peer payment systems built on blockchains to put the power back into the hands of the individual gambler, there are still strings attached if you want to double up.

Since every casino and sportsbook (regardless of the currency being used) will maintain a house edge to make a profit (meaning they ultimately need gamblers to lose money), it’s important to take advantage of the bonuses offered by Bitcoin casinos and sportsbooks and that means meeting these bonus requirements is essential to helping gamblers get a boost in their earliest playing days as members of a new site. Welcome bonuses after all are a way to hook in new players and make them loyal customers for life, or at least for a long time.

It’s time to explore Bitcoin and wagering requirements in detail and how they affect your ability to cash in on bonuses that oftentimes provide as much as 100% on top of the first deposit and sometimes more.
In taking this bonus laden journey, it’s also important to understand that welcome bonuses are just the tip of the iceberg, and that the wagering requirements for other types of bonuses often differ depending on the type of promotion being offered.

Why do Casino Bonuses Have Wagering Requirements?

The basic definition of a Bitcoin wagering requirement is that it’s a condition attached to any bonus paid out by a Bitcoin casino or sportsbook. The most popular wagering requirements stipulate that players must wager a certain number of times their bankroll in order to receive the full value of any potential welcome bonus.

Outside of welcome bonuses, this kind of wagering requirement can also apply to specific games. This means that an astute gambler who knows where to look or perhaps might be willing to try playing a casino or table game they have never played before might just be able to find more opportunities to add to their bankroll through yet another bonus.

Again, it’s important to keep in mind that these bonuses are designed to hook people. Giving you a welcome bonus is the best way for a Bitcoin casino to make it a good first impression if you will. Offering subsequent bonuses on specific table games is the next best thing. It’s also an opportunity for casinos to perhaps make use of or create value in the partnerships they forge with software companies and application developers who design these games and want their target audience to be exposed to the latest versions of their slots and table games.

In this way, those subsequent bonuses that reward playing specific tables or games act as a win, win, win for both the casino operator, the player, and the casino game developers who are in the business of helping operators build out their platforms and trying to find unique and creative ways to suck in more gamblers that would otherwise be wagering with the competition.

Calculating a Bonus Wagering Requirement

Reading an explanation of Bitcoin bonus wagering requirements is fantastic for gamblers who are still new to Bitcoin or might be new to online casinos in general. But as the saying goes, men lie, women lie but the numbers don’t. Let’s get into a real-life example of how the most common bankroll-accelerating bonuses are calculated by operators and how that benefits you, the well-meaning, profit-seeking gambler.

Pretend for a moment that you’re a true Bitcoin high roller. You invested early, before everyone and their grandmother jumped on board at the end of 2017 and the price spiked to $25,000 for one Bitcoin. You weren’t in it so early that you know who Satoshi Nakamoto is (he’s the inventor of Bitcoin), but just early enough so that you can throw 1.5 BTC on your gambling site of choice and let the cards/odds fall where they may.

Jumping into the calculation, it’s important to note that not all operators provide a 100% welcome bonus. Some provide only a 50% bonus and in all cases, those bonuses might have a maximum limit up to a certain dollar value. That said, for the sake of this calculation we will assume you’re playing at 7Bit and getting a 100% bonus on your 1.5 BTC. That’s the maximum 7Bit will match for any player.

With the Bitcoin in your 7Bit account, you realize that the terms and conditions stipulate you must play 40 times your bankroll in order to receive the full 100% welcome bonus they offer.

The Bitcoin Bonus Math
The calculation for receiving that bonus breaks down as follows:

1.5 BTC x 40 = 60 BTC

This means you will have to wager 60 Bitcoins in order to receive the maximum of 1.5 BTC 7Bit is willing to pay out to you.

Considering that at the time of this writing, the price of Bitcoin stands at nearly $7,200 USD, your 1.5 BTC deposit is worth $10,800.

Multiplying $10,800 40 times means you’re indeed a high roller, because you have to wager $432,000 worth of Bitcoin in order to add an extra $10,800 in bonuses. That’s a lot of money to wager!

Given that the average Bitcoin casino’s main objective is to hook even the hopes that most of their players lose money, resulting in a profit for the casino, your job as a savvy gambler is to try and find opportunities to beat the house so that you can hit that wagering requirement and hopefully go well beyond it.

Please note, some Bitcoin bonuses calculate the total wagering requirement by adding both the deposit and the bonus before multiplying. This means that the same 1.5 BTC deposit would be added to the bonus (another 1.5 BTC), leading to a new calculation:

3 BTC x 40 = 120 BTC

This makes a huge difference to the viability of the bonus. Be sure to check the terms and conditions before jumping in!

Keeping Track of Bonus Progression

For many Bitcoin gamblers, especially players new to the world of cryptocurrency, keeping track of a bonus that won’t allow you to cash in until you wager 40 times the bankroll is helpful. After all, wagering that much in Bitcoin can take a long time if you’re just a casual player betting smaller amounts.

There are several ways to track your progress easily. Doing so is not only important to keep you encouraged as you move along the journey towards winning more Bitcoin, it also provides added incentive for portioning bets appropriately and encouraging you to treat your wagers like an investment where you can really play for the long-term with the idea of cashing in on bonuses acting as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In many cases, it will be possible to track a bonus in your casino account’s dashboard, where the whole process is automated and you don’t need to lift a finger. However in some Bitcoin casinos that’s not the case, so instead the player needs to track their bonus in other ways.

There are three simple ways to track your journey towards the coveted welcome bonus:

• Ask customer support or live chat.
• Track your own bets on a spreadsheet.
• Review the bet history on whatever site you play on.

Tracking Bonus Progression via Customer Support or Live Chat

Most Bitcoin casinos make it as easy as possible to get questions answered. They want you to make a deposit and start playing as soon as you land on their homepage after all. Introducing yourself via live chat is an easy way to ask how many wagers you’ve placed or what the total value of your wagers may be and how close you are to rolling over your bankroll the appropriate number of times to meet your operator’s Bitcoin bonus requirements.

Tracking Bitcoin Bonus Requirement Progress on a Spreadsheet

This is perhaps the most classic way to track how close you are to a juicy Bitcoin betting bonus. Simply track the value of each of your bets on a spreadsheet in Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel or Apple’s Numbers and use the SUM function to add up the total. As the total progresses, you’re another step closer to cashing in.

Review Betting History

Tracking daily bets in the spreadsheet is a tedious task. There is also the chance of making a mistake and miss typing the wager amounts, especially because Bitcoin trades at 12 decimal places. Most Bitcoin gambling sites will let you look up your bet history, although they don’t usually allow you to export it directly into a spreadsheet. Still, combining this method with the one above makes tracking progress a lot easier.

Other Bitcoin Bonus Rules and Requirements

Welcome bonuses are only one aspect of the entire Bitcoin bonus experience on most sites. That’s just the hook that gets players in the game and at the tables. There are other types of bonus promotions that follow other rules. Some may be offered for a limited time. Others may only honour a maximum number of wins or losses, and others still may only honour a bonus up to a maximum wager amount.

Limited Time Bitcoin Wagering Bonuses

Limited time wager bonuses usually applied to one-time major sporting events like the NFL’s Super Bowl. Sometimes betting sites will offer limited time promotions in their poker rooms where they may offer cash back, guarantee tournaments or special ways to buy in. That said, the most common type of promotion that features limited timing is anything related to a day of the week. For example, a site may stipulate that on a certain slot machine on Mondays, players can get a refund on their losses up to 1/10 of the Bitcoin. These kinds of promotions will start on midnight on a Monday and end at 11:59 PM on the same day. Makes sense doesn’t it?

Bitcoin Bonuses Limited by a Maximum Bet Amount

Sometimes sites will offer the chance to progressively win more and more as a game drags along. To keep players from winning too much at one time, they limit the maximum number of bets a player can put down. This often happens on progressive slot machines.

It’s also why table games have a maximum bet amount. Remember that whether it’s a Bitcoin Casino or a traditional casino, operators never want the house to go broke. The last thing they want is a high roller to come in, when a few massive bets in a row and walk away with a little too much Bitcoin for their liking. This explains why operators also cap bonuses up to a maximum number of wins. Couple a maximum bet amount with capping bonuses of the set number of wins and the fact that the odds are stacked against the average player, and it becomes just enticing enough to chase the bonuses, but not so easy to get them that the house goes bankrupt.

Beating Bitcoin Casinos: How to Get the Bonuses

Beating the house to earn a bonus is the name of the game. The question is, how do you do it? It all comes down to managing one’s risk tolerance, being selective with the game you choose to play and managing the bankroll.

A gambler that tries to earn their bonus with a Bitcoin sports betting website will be best served to wager no more than 1-5% of their given bankroll on one game. This is a common strategy among professional sports handicappers. The 5% plays are very rare and only used in situations where the handicapper feels strongly about selecting a given team. The same kind of strategy might work for slots or table games, where players might double up on their losses to try and make the next win bigger than all of their losses (this is called the Martingale betting system), or somehow finding another way to manipulate their bet size that works for them.

The only surefire way to skirt Bitcoin Casino bonus requirements is to take advantage of bonuses that don’t require a deposit. This usually means taking advantage of free spins of a wheel, or using cash back bonuses that reward players on their losses and letting them try again (which is very similar to a free spin bonus)

Closing Thoughts

As with anything in life, no matter what opportunities you decide to take advantage of, be sure to always read the fine print. Bitcoin gambling websites tend to license their businesses in countries with favorable laws, but that doesn’t mean they don’t enforce a strict set of rules when it comes to paying out bonuses. After all, they don’t want to make it too easy for players to cash out. Keep in mind that most sites will limit deposits and withdrawals, maximum amounts that can be wagered or won, and other aspects of the gaming experience all in the name of protecting their bottom line.

The more you can understand the fine print, the better your odds of cashing in on some extra Bitcoin on top of whatever you manage to win. Now go and take a look at the best bonuses the world of Bitcoin gambling has to offer.