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Two downtown Las Vegas casinos have announced that they are now accepting Bitcoin as a payment option in their Freemont Street Experience venues.
Players who win Bitcoin playing online poker, now have the opportunity to play the virtual currency up in live games of poker thanks to the Golden Gate Casino and “D” Las Vegas Casino; who have just announced that players will be able to pay with Bitcoin at the front desk of both venues.
Bitcoin can also be used to pay for pay for food in the casinos´ restaurants and for goods in their respective gift shops – where transactions will be processed using the BitPay payment processor – but unfortunately the luxury of live gaming by Bitcoin on the casino floor is not yet available.
Bitcoin Payment Facility due to Customer Input
Co-owner of the “D” Casino – Derek Stevens (who also has a major stake in the Golden Gate Casino) – said at a news conference to announce the Bitcoin payment facility, that it was something the casinos had been considering for a while; but when clients started asking for the facility to pay with Bitcoin, he made the decision to implement payments via the virtual currency as quickly as possible.
Stevens continued:
I’m proud that the D and Golden Gate will be the first casino properties to accept Bitcoin. We’re located in the growing high-tech sector of downtown Las Vegas, and like all things downtown, we’re quickly adaptive to new technology. The timing is right for us to launch this initiative, and I’m happy to be able to offer this to our customers.
Bitcoin Not Approved for Direct Gaming – Yet
Although players will not be able to directly exchange Bitcoin for chips or convert profits back into Bitcoin at the two casino venues, state regulators are keeping an eye on the demand for Bitcoin transactions. A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said that the industry had not approached the regulatory authority for approval to use Bitcoin for gambling.
Mr. Burnett said:
It’s (Bitcoin) absolutely not approved for gaming transactions and no licensee has approached me for considering its use. It’s one of those things that we’ve been studying for some time now and we wanted to stay aware of [but] we would have to have an extremely high level of comfort with virtual currency of this kind in order for that to ever occur.
No Sign of Online Bitcoin Payments in Las Vegas
Neither of the two regulated online poker sites in Nevada – WSOP.com and Ultimate Poker – has indicated that they will be accepting Bitcoin as a deposit option in the near future. Understandably for WSOP.com, the acceptance of Bitcoin may cause a conflict with regulators when it comes to accepting entries for their flagship live poker series from May 27 to July 14 2014.
However, Ultimate Poker have a history for innovative deposit options, and surely Bitcoin poker is a concept that the company will have to consider soon as new poker products prepare to enter the Nevada market and their market share diminishes further.
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