In 2009, Bitcoin debuted on the Web as
a virtual currency that did not generate much interest upon its launch and in
the first year of its existence. It slowly began to gain steam as time passed,
primarily on account of the novel digital ledger system it introduced. And in
the early 2010s, various sectors began testing the blockchain waters. Among
these was the online gambling sphere, which unleashed gaming sites that
accepted Bitcoin two years after the appearance of the world's initial crypto exchange. These platforms
were essentially dice ones, offering elementary gameplay and modest win potentials.
While the initial sets of Bitcoin
casinos could not compete with their fiat competitors in almost all imaginable
departments, one aspect where they had them beat was anonymity. In the early to
mid-2010s, basic gambling Bitcoin hubs permitted users to wager via BTC using
avatars, not requiring anyone to divulge who they are in the real world. On the
flip side, fiat currency operators got payment info that identified players,
and during the closing of the decade, they started to make Know Your Customer procedures
mandatory. These policies, often forced upon fiat gambling sites by regulators,
made them ask users for documentation that proves they are who they claim to
be. Bitcoin Casinos in Canada, on the
other hand, demanded no such thing.
However, over time, as these casinos
wished to broaden their gaming horizons and offer more varied gambling
entertainment, they had to get licensed to work with top-end slot and live game
providers or even deliver sports betting services. That opened them up to KYC
rules and threw anonymous gambling out the window in most cases. Below, we
explain where Canadians can enjoy secretive play and why KYC procedures are a
thorn in gamblers' sides wanting to gamble online without anyone knowing.
Why Provably Fair-Only Sites Still Allow Anonymous Gaming
First off, we should explain what
provably fair betting refers to. That is a gaming genre where players can
manually verify the random nature of in-round results. That occurs on account
of gamblers having the ability to reset the seed or the initial figure a
pseudo-random-number-generation software uses. Plus, they get an opportunity to
review the hashes of the server and player seeds. The hash is a fixed-size
character set that appears random at first sight. Yet, a small change in the
input data used to create it will generate a significantly different one.
Hence, because gamblers can check the fairness of the sessions themselves, and
everything is so transparent, there is no need for independent third-party
audits or licensing.
No licensing means no regulators and
no need for identity verification. On top of these, websites that feature this
sort of online Bitcoin gambling do not care about where their clientele comes
from. Thus, they can accept players from every corner of the globe, including
Canada, regardless of provincial laws.
The number of exclusively provably
fair sites is not vast these days, primarily as a consequence of crypto-centric
operators looking to compete with traditional online casinos for casual
gamblers, which has resulted in such hubs getting mainly Curacao licenses that
ask they impose KYC rules.
What Is KYC & How Does it Hinder Secretive Gambling?
KYC, short for Know Your Client or Customer
procedures, are guidelines that originated in the financial sphere, conceived
to regulate business relationships and stop the funding of terrorism and money
laundering. They feature rules that identify a customer and his activities,
aimed at spotting high-risk clientele. In the online gambling landscape, KYC
policies began to get widely implemented towards the end of the 2010s. That
started to occur following many instances of nefarious individuals using
Internet casinos as mixers, depositing funds with one payment method or
currency and withdrawing them through another. That can constitute money
laundering, which gets owed to the fact that financial institutions cannot be
aware of how much of the deposited fund someone has gambled and what portion of
the withdrawn ones stem from wins, leaving room for foul play.
In highly regulated European markets,
like the United Kingdom and Sweden, identity verification is mandatory upon
signup. No one can start gambling in these regions without providing proof of
their identity. In Canada, every business must verify clients thanks to the
Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act when receiving $3,000. Moreover,
this condition also applies when extending credit past this milestone point or
exchanging currencies in sums above it. So, any iGaming Ontario-overseen brand
will, at some point, demand that its users undergo a KYC check.
It should get said that some famed
hubs successfully balance regulatory compliance with user privacy, appealing to
those who desire secretive gaming. Dailyspins Casino is one such
example, as this popular website has implemented verification processes that
align with legal requirements. Yet, these are not super-strict, meaning users
can still uphold a high degree of anonymity here. That shows this platform's
rare commitment to supplying secure gaming without sizably compromising user
privacy, which is possible for those who want to test their luck in games of
chance confidentially.
How to Boost Anonymity Even More?
When someone visits a site, the
accessed platform gets data that states from which IP address a user has opened one or
more of their pages. For the not-so-tech-savvy readers, IP is the acronym for
Internet Protocol, and an IP address is a numerical label that every device
connected to a computer network has that utilizes Internet Protocol communication.
The chief purpose of this digital label is - host/network interface
identification and location addressing. You may have seen markings such as
192.177.1.1. That is one type of super common IP address known as IPv4.
Therefore, when someone joins a Bitcoin
casino from Canada operating from an offshore land, its operator instantly
knows, based on that user's IP, that he has a new player from the Great White
North. To circumvent geo-location, Canadian Bitcoin gamblers who wish to enjoy
a more modern crypto casino can opt to utilize a VPN service that will mask
their physical location with a dummy one. They can also select to play a low
KYC site or an unlicensed one that has no identity verification. The dangers of
using a VPN for online gambling is that many operators frown upon this, and if
a user drops the ball, logins in with a different IP on multiple occasions, or
uses a widely known VPN IP, he can get discovered, have his account closed, and
get his casino funds confiscated.
To Sum Up
For secretive online gambling action,
Canadian game-of-chance lovers would be wise to select unregulated provably
fair sites that do not care where their users come from, hopefully ones with
decent sector standing, who also do not care about VPN use.
