Bitcoin play slots were first introduced in the early 2010s, not long after the creation of Bitcoin itself in 2009 by the enigmatic developer, Satoshi Nakamoto. But despite the advanced technology underpinning the games, those who decide to play Bitcoin slots will find that they are operated in pretty much the same way as traditional online slot games.
The key difference is that, instead of gambling with dollars or euros, players wager cryptocurrency. Those learning how to play Bitcoin slots are still using real money – just the digital version of it.
What is a crypto slot machine?
The global online gambling market is projected to produce over $100 billion in revenue in 2024, and those playing slots with crypto make up a growing portion of that revenue. But how do they differ from the traditional version?
Well, classic online slots are offered by casinos where players fund their accounts with government-issued fiat currency. They make transfers from bank accounts and/or credit cards to build up their account balances.
On the other hand, crypto slots casinos allow players to wager in Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies. These include Litecoin slots, Ethereum slots, and Bitcoin Cash slots, to name a few variants. Players use digital wallet transfers to fund their account balances and then can use this for real money gambling at their casino of choice. The amounts in players’ accounts and the sizes of wagers are typically represented in U.S. dollars or euros, avoiding the hassle of understanding and calculating fractions of a Bitcoin. At the time of this writing in April 2024, the value of $1 is equal to 0.000016 BTC. It would be quite tricky to handle bets in these amounts.
This brings up the important point of fairness in gaming. Blockchain technology has enabled a special check on the validity of games that makes them provably fair. We will discuss how this works in more detail below, but it is a level of transparency that has traditionally not been found in any of the big-name live casinos.
How to play cryptocurrency slots
When you play slots with crypto, how exactly does it work? Well, if you’ve ever played online slots, it works just the way your favorite slot games already work. After you load up your casino account balance with a Bitcoin transfer from your digital wallet, you can use those funds to gamble. Head to a slot game collection and pick any kind you like. Your available balance will be there waiting for you. You can then pick your wager amount and start those reels spinning.
Types of slots available to digital coin players
There are a wide variety of slot games available when you play with Bitcoin. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the more popular slot types:
- Single-line slots. These are classic one-armed bandit slot games with a single horizontal payline. Look for traditional symbols like cherries, lucky sevens, and BARs.
- Progressive jackpot slots. Some slots offer a large jackpot that is funded with a portion of player wages. This jackpot increases all the time until a fortunate player finally hits it. Bitcoin jackpot slots can offer prizes in the millions.
- Megaways slots. An innovative slot mechanic that changes the number and size of the reels on each spin, for over a hundred thousand possible ways to win.
- Bonus game slots. This incredibly popular type of slot features scatter symbols that trigger a bonus round, typically with free spins and win multipliers.
- Mobile slots. You can play crypto slots from your mobile device at many casinos, so long as you have an Internet connection.
Fun features – multipliers, scatters, cascading reels, and more
You’ll find lots of fun features when you’re learning how to play slots on Bitcoin sites. Here are some of our favorites:
- Scatter Bonus Symbols. Hit the right number of special symbols anywhere (usually 3) and you’ll trigger a free spins bonus round. Book of mBit uses golden tomes with jewels for the scatter symbol.
- Multipliers. Multipliers boost your wins, multiplying them by a specified amount (i.e. “2x” means your win is doubled). mBithalla is one of the Bitcoin casino’s best slots to play thanks to its Viking theme and huge multipliers that can reach up to 500x.
- Double or Nothing. Want to quickly double your winnings? Double or nothing features offer you a simple selection between two options. Guess right and you get double. Guess wrong and you lose your previous prize amount. mBit Lucky Streak does this through a “pick a card” round.
- Bonus Buy. Bonus buy features allow players to pay to initiate a bonus round instead of waiting to trigger one naturally. mBit Cyber Crush enables crypto gamblers a way to start 10 free spins at any time by bringing down 4 of the special scatter symbol: a dark-featured man with neon green specs.
- Cascading Reels. Cascading reels slots feature symbols that explode and disappear, making room for new symbols and new wins. mBit Crush not only uses this game mechanic but also is a “cluster pays” game. This means that symbols cause a win when they connect in sufficient numbers in any direction. For our example game, five or more symbols touching anywhere in the 6×6 grid leads to a winning round.
- Wild Respins. In some games, a wild symbol can trigger a respin from the other reels and symbols, holding the wild in place to help increase the chances of a win. The golden crown symbol in Fruits of mBit, for example, triggers a free spin any time it appears.
Play free Bitcoin slots in practice mode before you take on features like these and you’ll have a chance to get the hang of things before you put real money at stake.
Technical terms to know: volatility, RTP, and hit frequency
Volatility
Volatility in slots is best thought of as a way to describe the “swings” a player will go through. Low-volatility games feature frequent wins of smaller amounts. High-volatility games, on the other hand, feature bigger wins that are spaced further apart. Medium games are somewhere in the middle of these two ends of the spectrum.
The takeaway for players is to focus on high-volatility games if you love those big scores (and you don’t mind waiting for them) and to play low-volatility games when you want a steadier experience with lots of happy bells and whistles.
RTP or “Return to Player”
RTP is a slot metric that lets you know how much a game will give back to you for every dollar wagered. If a game says that the RTP is 97%, the game will award you $0.97 on average for each dollar you bet on spins. This number is calculated over the long term. The more you spin, the closer you will get to the average RTP of the game. Don’t be surprised if a small session does not track this number closely, either positively or negatively.
Hit Frequency
Hit frequency slot numbers are calculated by dividing the number of possible winning outcomes by the total number of outcomes. Gemhalla, for example, has a hit rate of 25.64%. That means that around a quarter of the possible results in the game are winning combinations that pay a player a prize.
How games ensure fairness: RNG and Provably Fair Slots
One of the most important mechanics that casinos rely on is a random number generator or RNG. Because many games do not feature a physical object to create a random outcome (like dice or a roulette ball), the computer must do it for us. But computers follow their programming and do exactly what we tell them, so developers needed a way to get numbers that could not be guessed ahead of time.
Enter RNG.
RNGs pull numbers from a variety of sources and typically perform functions on them to further obscure the source of the number. A popular starting input in traditional programming was the computer’s internal time, represented as an integer. Nowadays, producing randomness has led to highly advanced methods, like Cloudflare’s cameras that scan a wall of lava lamps. At mBit Casino, we use the product of our RNG to determine the outcome of each spin of the slot reels.
Blockchain technology (the backbone of cryptocurrency platforms) has allowed us to take this one step further, and enable players to check the randomness of our games themselves. This is called “provably fair” technology and is available for slots like Aztec Magic and Book of Pyramids, from BGaming.
Provably fair games provide players with the same seed input that will be used by the game they are playing. After a spin, they can then run this through the game’s public algorithm and see if the result they get is the same as the one that occurred in the game. In this way, the fairness of the slot can be demonstrated after every single spin. This transparency removes any doubt about the integrity of the game.
Getting an edge: Bitcoin slots tips
When you play slots for Bitcoin, you want to maximize winnings. Here are mBit Casino’s best tips and tricks for Bitcoin slots profits:
- Focus on high RTP games. High RTP slots give you the best mathematical expected value of your play sessions. You can check the RTP of any slot game when you’re browsing in mBit Casino’s slot collection, or you can search for the specific game’s developer page to find detailed information.
- Read game info. Each game has details available in a menu you can access from the basic game screen. Look for these symbols: “i,” “?” or a gear. From this menu, you can find paytables, bonus game info, and explanations of all of the game’s features. That way, you’ll be sure to understand how everything works in the game you’re playing.
- Look for big jackpots. Progressive jackpots reset to a base amount after a lucky player wins; often a few thousand dollars. If you’re going to play jackpot games, make sure that the jackpot is at a healthy amount when you start spinning. This gives you a better value for your win.
- Follow requirements. Some games mandate that a player wager the max bet amount to be eligible for a particular jackpot. Make sure you are complying with the requirements for whatever prize you’re chasing.
- Stay updated on crypto values. It’s important to know what the market value of your particular coin is as a part of your larger crypto investment strategy. Crypto can be volatile, and if your coin price is rocketing to the moon, you may want to consider taking advantage of favorable market conditions.
How to start bitcoin gambling (even if you’ve never bought any crypto)
The mBit Casino Crypto Guide can help you learn more about cryptocurrency, including the way to pick up your first Bitcoin. We recommend using Jiggle if you’re new to digital coins. There, you can create a digital wallet and trade fiat currency (i.e. dollars or euros) for your crypto of choice.
