How to Manage Crypto Volatility at Crypto Casinos

In a traditional online casino your balance is either in euros or dollars which are fairly stable during a session, whereas in crypto casinos the value of your balance might change even when you stop actually playing. You can finish a session with the exact same amount of BTC you started with and you can still be up or down depending on how the market behaved.

And in this case that crypto casino risk can actually come from 2 places. The first one would be the actual normal casino risk like house edge and game variance. The second risk is the exchange rate risk – and that’s the price of the coin simply moving up or down during your play.

Oftentimes it’s the second part that ends up being the bigger factor. And just because the crypto market has moved, a session that might feel neutral in crypto terms can turn into a noticeable loss or gain. 

Here in this case most players have the goal not to eliminate entirely the risk, but to avoid surprises. 

What Crypto Volatility Actually Means in Practice

As we said before, volatility simply means that the price is moving around a lot. For example cryptocurrencies like bitcoin might move several percent in just a single day, while the smaller coins can move around much more than that.

And this can become especially noticeable if you are having longer sessions or if you leave your funds just sitting in your casino accounts for weeks or days.

It’s important to note that this can also affect your bonuses as well as wagering. You might clear a certain bonus and even win technically, however if the coin drops at the same time, the final value might be just lower than you’ve expected. However, exactly the opposite can happen if prices move in your favour. 

Even for operators the situation is quite similar but on a much larger scale. All of the player balances and jackpots are exposed to price changes. If the market moves quickly the value of those balances can really shift significantly.

Stablecoins Reduce Swings But Do Not Remove Risk

Most of the players who are much more experienced actually prefer stablecoins because of the fact that they reduce the size of the price swings. 

Many experienced players prefer stablecoins because they reduce the size of price swings. If your balance is in a coin that follows a normal currency, its value usually stays about the same from one day to the next.

And honestly this makes the budgeting much easier; because like this a €200 session will stay close to €200 in value instead of going way up and down with the market itself. 

However, it’s important to note that even stablecoins are not fully risk free; in this case the term stable can be quite misleading. The peg can sometimes shift for a while, and some coins have even failed before. There is also platform risk and wallet risk just like with any other cryptocurrency.

Anyways even with those certain risks stablecoins remain the simplest way to actually reduce volatility exposure if your goal is much more towards predictable spending rather than only speculation.

Volatility Can Quietly Push Spending Higher

One of the less obvious problems with volatility is psychological. When a coin drops in price, players often deposit more just to bring their balance back to the same value in euros.

It can feel like you are topping up after a losing session, even if you did not actually lose anything in the games. Sometimes the balance only looks smaller because the coin price changed.

What can help with this is setting certain limits. And for that, the most important approach and the simplest one is deciding your session budget in fiat before depositing no matter what the coin price does.

There are some certain players that also follow the no topups rule during a session and this honestly removes the temptation to react to the price movements emotionally.

Keeping Bet Sizes Meaningful in Fiat Terms

When you are betting in crypto the value of a bet in the real world changes along with the coin price and a bet that felt small at the beginning of a certain session might become larger in fiat in terms of market rises. The opposite can happen as well during drops.

In reality some players would deal with this by adjusting their bet sizes to keep the risk roughly consistent, and this idea is quite simple. Because if the coin is moving quickly the smaller bets are reducing the chance that a normal session turns into a larger one than expected loss.

However, please note that this doesn’t change the RTP nor the house edge, it just keeps the session aligned with the original budget. 

Yes, smaller bets are much less exciting however they make your sessions easier to control when the markets are not that stable.

Conversions Matter More Than People Realize

Both deposits and withdrawals involve conversions and they can often determine the very final outcome of a session much more than the games themselves. 

The price differences between that exact moment you deposit and the moment you decide to withdraw can drastically affect the results. That’s why execution prices matter as well and fast markets or low liquidity can lead to worse conversion rates than expected. 

There are some players that would prefer to set up price targets when converting instead of accepting whatever the price is available at that exact moment. On the other hand, others might convert gradually instead of doing everything in only one transaction.

It is quite obvious but even a basic tracking can help and knowing that the deposit price as well as the withdrawal price makes it much easier to understand what has actually happened during a session.

Even basic tracking helps. Knowing the deposit price and withdrawal price makes it easier to understand what actually happened during a session. And without that information it’s easy to confuse market movement with gambling results.

Simple Cash Out Rules Reduce Emotional Decisions

Because the crypto markets are moving very quickly, the decisions made during fast price moves are oftentimes emotional. There are many players that are avoiding this by using simple rules. 

One approach that’s common is they are converting the remaining balance into the preferred cryptocurrency right after they finish their session. Another one is simply setting a threshold where the session would end if the coin moves too far in either direction.

The point of all this is to avoid impulsive reactions and not predicting the market. That’s because sometimes pre-commitment can work much better than trying to make decisions in real time.

How Casinos Deal With Volatility Behind the Scenes

Much like players, casinos also face the same issues caused by volatility on a much larger scale. Everything is affected here, the balances of the player, the operating costs as well as reserves. 

There are a lot of operators that choose a base currency for accounting and only then decide how fast the crypto deposits are converted into that currency. Some of them are converting immediately while others do that on a schedule.  

Immediate conversion would definitely reduce the volatility exposure but adds more conversion costs. On the other hand, scheduled conversion is reducing fees however it increases the time spent exposed to market movements. 

There are operators that would intentionally keep parts of their funds in crypto and that can become more of an investment decision than a payment decision.

In these cases, what helps avoid disputes are clear settlement rules. The players would need to know which exchange rate is used as well as when it was applied and whether fees were included.

Volatility Does Not Change The House Edge

No matter which coin you will use, volatility can not change the mathematics of the game. That means that RTP and house edge will remain the same.

For example, a game with 96% RTP will still return the same percentage in crypto terms. The only thing that changes is the fiat value of the outcome. 

And this is why volatility can sometimes feel a bit confusing – a player might technically win at the tables but still finish with less money if the coin has dropped enough. Managing the volatility is definitely about controlling this additional layer of uncertainty.

Takeaway

Crypto casinos can include a second type of risk that is not existing in the traditional online casinos. Besides the normal game variance there is also an exchange risk from the coin itself. 

As discussed above, most of the time these risks can be reduced with just simple habits. Those include thinking in fiat terms, setting session budget as well as controlling conversions – all of these can remove a huge part of the uncertainty.

What makes this process even easier is stablecoins, however they can also involve their own risks.

The most important thing to understand is that the crypto price movement is separate from the gambling results. Once you fully understand that distinction, managing volatility will become much simpler and easier.