Edward Ackins, BitcoinCasinoTop: “The best we can do today is to grow rapidly and share truthful and up-to-date information with the iGaming community”
We met Edward Ackins at the SIGMA conference in Malta and decided to make this interview. Ed is one of the opinion leaders in crypto gambling and has great expertise in this area based on 11 years of experience. That is why we believe that our dialogue will be most useful to a wide audience.
Hey Edward! Nice to meet you. Let’s talk about one of the most discussed issues of the last year – how actively will cryptocurrencies develop in gambling in the next few years?
Howdy! Let’s start. In order to answer this question, it is necessary to analyze in detail the events that are currently taking place in the world of finance. The whole world has been taking steps towards the regulation and legalization of cryptocurrencies for several years. The governments of the United States, China, the European Union and Russia have repeatedly announced their intention to create digital analogues of their currencies. Some countries, such as Salvador and Ukraine, already allow Bitcoin banking. Trust in banks is falling and more and more people prefer to keep money in gold, real estate or cryptocurrency. These and many other factors quite accurately answer the question: “Why do we increasingly hear announcements about the launch of new crypto casinos at iGaming events?”. I think that this is a strategically correct decision for large gambling companies.
The price of Bitcoin has high volatility. The rate either rises or falls, and how does this affect the players?
In fact, there is no way – users are used to thinking in their national currency. It doesn’t matter to them what the Bitcoin rate is now, if they planned to play for $ 100, then they will just do it in the equivalent of BTC. Many casinos display their balance in Euros or in mBtc and uBtc. This is more familiar to users and doesn’t force them to constantly think about the exchange rate and recalculate in their minds how much money is in the account.
What are you doing to develop crypto in gambling?
In fact, all we can do is do our job well. We constantly test new casino brands and write honest reviews about them. To prepare quality content that will be useful to our readers we take into account such indicators as the speed of payments, the availability of a license, the minimum deposit limit, the number of supported cryptocurrencies, the availability of promotional codes, etc.
Soon we will present our new table because we noticed that very few representatives of the affiliate industry do it really well. We conducted a survey of our users, identified the most important items and decided to display them in the listing. Our readers can see the described innovations to the bitcoincasinotop.com project in which I work as CMO & chief editor and we are very interested in receiving feedback on whether you like them.
Most competitors simply use plugins to generate tables and this greatly limits the data that the user sees on his screen. Everyone thinks it doesn’t matter but we disagree – the table is a very important element – the user makes his choice based on the data you provide in it. He spends his money in a casino that suits his characteristics, and if you, as an expert, have indicated false numbers there or put the BEST badge on a casino that is not one, how do you sleep at night? After all, the player will get a negative user experience, spend money and never return to you. This is bad practice as our business is all about trust between you and your site on the one hand and the players on the other. If you deceive your reader, then the retention rate will be terrible. Thus, you simply open the doors to a niche for your competitors.
Are you a crypto investor?
Rarely does anyone ask about it. To some extent, yes. I like to diversify risks, that’s why I keep some part of my savings in cryptocurrency. But the main thing you should understand is that I am an investor in my personal development and in my business first of all. I spend money on courses for self-development as an author/entrepreneur/marketer/gambling expert and also I constantly invest in project development.
The project is always expensive. Recently we had a challenge with Google’s PageSpeed report (which is constantly updating its requirements) and we spent about three days in order to meet all quality parameters and to ensure that our site loads equally quickly regardless of the user’s device and location.
Do you believe that crypto casinos will soon completely replace fiat casinos?
Yes, I do. I’ve been seeing this trend for several years now. I hope that soon such advanced countries as Great Britain and the USA will finally adopt laws on the regulation of cryptocurrencies, and then this option will appear in all licensed gambling operators in these jurisdictions.
Have you conducted any surveys of your audience regarding this issue?
Of course, we conduct quarterly research and surveys of our readers and I will gladly share their results in the form of facts:
- The number of crypto casinos in the online gambling market is growing every quarter by 3.7% compared to the previous similar period;
- Only 18.1% of players, having once tried to make deposits in an online casino using cryptocurrency, continue to play fiat currencies in parallel;
- Only 4.3% of players were not satisfied with their experience of using cryptocurrency in gambling;
- The number of cryptocurrencies that can be used to pay on iGaming sites is growing by an average of 2 units quarterly.
How much money can you earn working with crypto casinos?
I think this is the wrong question. I would ask: “What does it take to earn a lot of money?”. The answer is simple – give your all to your favorite business and constantly learn.
As for money – just look at the reports of public affiliate companies that are listed on NASDAQ (such as CatenaMedia, ExcelAffiliates, Gambling.com). It’s millions of dollars. This is quite enough to afford anything: penthouses, yachts, sports cars.
Do you have plans to launch your own crypto casino?
To be honest, not at the moment. Earlier in my career, I was at the forefront of creating several online casinos. This is a very serious challenge and a cool experience, but now it is much more interesting for me to develop my affiliate business in terms of profit and self-development. You need to understand that being the owner of an online casino is a huge responsibility. You have a lot of responsibilities to local regulators, licensees, software providers, gambling platforms, your clients, etc. These obligations are not only financial but also legal. There are many pitfalls in this business that are too resource intensive for me. In other words, having plunged into the creation of my own online casino, I will not have time for self-development and family at all. And of course, gray hair from constant stress will increase. I’m not ready for this yet. Maybe someday in the future, I will answer this question differently, but definitely not now.
You have spoken several times about learning. What exactly are you studying and can you recommend any courses?
There are a huge number of free webinar courses and lectures on the Internet, this is quite enough to have a basic idea.
- If we talk about crypto, the first thing I would recommend is to understand the mechanics of the blockchain.
- Take a course on affiliate marketing – I studied AffLab by Matt Diggity at one time, there is a lot of information for beginners, so I had to skip about 30 first lessons, but nevertheless there is a lot of useful knowledge.
- Take a financial literacy course.
- If you have people in your team, be sure to learn how to manage them. The bestseller by Dan S. Kennedy – “Ruthless Management of People and Profits” helped me with this.
- I am still learning how to hire smart, ambitious and creative people. This is very difficult, because in order to grow rapidly you need to hire people who are much better than you in a certain set of hard skills. It takes a lot of time to find them, and a lot of money to develop and retain. But I’m sure it’s worth it.
What do you say to those who are afraid to engage in gambling because they consider it dishonest?
I would recommend these people to take a few steps:
- Study history. Gambling is over a thousand years old. All sporting events have always been accompanied by bets on their outcome. If you love culture and history – go on an excursion to the Vatican and you will find out that the Popes of Rome have been holding lotteries since ancient times to fill the treasury.
- Study the legislation of the countries in which you live. For example, the United Kingdom. This is by far the most progressive market in terms of gambling regulation. Do you really think that the operators there have a chance to somehow violate the rights of the players?
- Study the tax system of your state. What type of business pays higher income taxes? Where is this money going? And you will understand that the influence of legal gambling has a great impact on the country’s economy.
- Be sure to find information about special organizations that help people in the fight against gambling addiction. There are a lot of them. Probably the most recognizable is BeGambleAware.
- Learn the requirements to run an online casino. License set. A set of certificates from GLI, iTech labs and others. Understand how random number generation and RTP work. And you will see that there are whole sets of world standards that gaming sites must comply with.
Perhaps after that, you will change your mind about the iGaming business. If not, then just accept the fact that this is not for you.
I can continue this list. If you are interested, please email me at [email protected] and I will try to answer when I have a free minute.
I am often told that members of the crypto industry and online gambling don’t like publicity. Is this true, and if so, why is this happening?
It is a myth. Everyone who has a real influence on the gambling niche is public. They attend conferences, make presentations at events, openly hire employees. I would even say that if a person from online gambling is not public, this is a reason to think, maybe something is wrong with him.
Thank you for this conversation Edward! It seems to me that we have managed to discuss all the topics of concern to the gambling community and many readers will now have something to think about at their leisure. We wish you success in your business. See you.
