The Elections in USA Drives Record Betting With Bitcoin

The election in the USA attracted a lot of interest, and more so when it came to betting on the outcome. A spokesperson for the BetBet website said that people were passionate about betting during the election season. Betting on outcomes like Brexit and other important issues has become a common practice. Bitcoin has become a common currency that people prefer to use for betting. On another betting site, Fairlay, it is mentioned that a single political bet had attracted 4,356 predictions worth about $956,000 at the current Bitcoin exchange prices. Popular betting sites that accepted Bitcoin bets during this year included Fairlay, BitBet, BetMoose, Predictious, and the sports betting site Nitrogen Sports. The Fairlay betting site stated: “Overall people won about 2000 BTC betting on Trump.”

During the 2012 presidential elections Bitcoin was still in its infancy. At that time the first platform for Bitcoin betting was created. During April 2012 ShapeShift’s CEO, Erik Voorhees, launched SatoshiDice. This simple online dice game gave people the opportunity to bet small amounts of Bitcoin on the outcome of the roll of the dice. They used a system that was provably fair. The anti-scam feature specific to cryptocurrency has cryptographically proven that the wagering process is not fudged by site administrators or anyone else. Despite this small site's questionable legal standing, it was responsible for about half of all the Bitcoin transactions during June 2013. Voorhees sold the SatoshiDice site in July 2013 for 126,315 Bitcoins, which was worth well over US$10 million at the time.