The world of decentralized digital cryptocurrencies is getting a lot more valuable these days. Its true that investing in digital money has always been a bit of gamble, but lately both Bitcoin and Ether have seen huge increases in value since the new year began. The newer cryptocurrency Ether, which operates on the Ethereum network, has seen the most increase with 76% in the last month and just at 1000% since January. This will affect all markets currently utilizing the currency, including gambling sites accepting Ethereum deposits such as online casinos, poker rooms and sportsbooks.
However, increases like these make some people feel even more worried about the drastically changing values. How did the value shoot up so sharply? Andrew Keys is the head of global business development at Consensus Systems and a prolific blogger. He wrote in one of his blog posts that the Royal Chinese Mint has exhibited interest in using blockchain technology as the main driving force in digitizing the Chinese Yuan. He even zoomed in a little closer and said that they are testing it out with Ethereum smart contracts and the ERC 20 token standard.
Singapore is in the mix too. The Monetary Authority of Singapore with the R3 banking consortium have been working on a “a digital representation of the Singapore dollar for interbank settlement” with the stated mission in mind to find “new methods to conduct cross border payments using central bank digital currency.” That testing process ended in March of last year and apparently had favorable results because more tests in the future are planned.
The rise in Ether comes at a price however. It’s true that the large banking organizations and tech companies are taking notice of what Ethereum supporters have been saying for a long time. That Ethereum as an international computing platform will eventually help to create a new type of internet. Now, there is a wave of entrepreneurs who are trying to deliver on that goal in addition to these foreign governments.
There is, however, a direct correlation between the cost of the individual Ether token and the cost of using apps on the Ethereum platform. The more expensive those tokens become, the more expensive those apps are to use.
In the Ethereum network each app that you use costs Ether, this means that you must directly pay for Ether, which in turn is used to directly pay for the computational power that you use. The co-founder of an app on the Ethereum network, Ethlance, recently took a screenshot and posted it of a person about to create a user account on the Ethereum platform. The screenshot showed that and action cost about 0.08 Ether which amounts to about $7 and is approximately a 600% increase from when the same action cost around $1 dollar. Although digital cryptocurrencies appear to be quite the gamble, that gamble seems to be paying off lately quite well.
With the growing interest in integrating this specific cryptocurrency into global money transfers by major world powers such as China, it is safe to assume that its presence in the online gambling market will experience exponential growth as well. We can expect to see an increase in the number of online casinos, poker rooms and sportsbooks accepting Ethereum for deposits and withdrawals. Should the currency become a mainstay in e-currency markets worldwide, it could theoretically surpass Bitcoin in the market and in the online gambling arena.