Why the Mega Moolah jackpot has never paid out in Bitcoin

It is no secret that you can play Mega Moolah using Bitcoin (BTC) as your preferred deposit method. It is also no secret that the game's progressive jackpots routinely pay out millions.

What you might not know is that the Mega Moolah Jackpot has never paid out in BTC. The point of this post is to explore reasons why that might be.

Not being able to win BTC is more curiosity than anything else. It is curious mainly because your typical online casino awards credits when you make a deposit. A single credit is equal to the single unit value of the fiat you deposited. If your deposit was made in Canadian dollars for example, CA$1 would score you one credit.

The thing is, you have probably never seen credits represented as BTC. And if you have, you've experienced the rare exception. Here's the deal: cryptocurrency prices change so quickly that it would be difficult for an online casino to maintain financial stability if it operated solely on crypto deposits. That's why there are only a small handful of Bitcoin casinos that actually pay out in BTC. Most of them accept BTC via third party but pay out in fiat.

The way it used to be

You might not know it, but it used to be that online casinos licensing the Mega Moolah game were not allowed to accept cryptocurrency deposits for that game. Casino operators got around the restriction because Skrill and Neteller started to convert crypto to fiat. Doing so meant that, for all practical purposes, players were really playing with fiat and not BTC.

Not too long ago a Bitcoin Casino received a gambling licence and was able to offer Mega Moolah among many other games. Now Mega Moolah is their most popular jackpot slot!

Why the long wait and apprehension? We can make some educated guesses based on what we know about both online gambling and cryptocurrency.

The legal tender problem

As wonderful as cryptocurrency is for making payments outside of the traditional banking system, it does have some systemic weaknesses. The first of those weaknesses is that crypto is not considered legal tender in most countries. Take the UK and the US. In both countries, Bitcoin is considered a security for tax purposes. BTC is considered a payment system. Neither the Bitcoin platform nor BTC are recognized as legal tender.

Legal tender is defined as something recognized by a governing authority for the settling of debts. The British pound is legal tender throughout the UK. You can use it to pay your UK debts and, in doing so, guarantee those debts are settled once the recipient accepts your money. The same is true with the Euro in the Eurozone countries.

The key aspect of legal tender is that it completely and legally settles debts. BTC doesn't do that. No cryptocurrency does. You could make a payment with BTC only to find that the recipient disputes your payment. If you were to be sued in court, it is possible that you could lose based on the fact that BTC is not legal tender.

This is a problem for online casino operators and companies like Microgaming. Why? Because gambling debts are legally recognized debts. In other words, Microgaming and its licensees are legally responsible for paying jackpot winnings. If they don't pay a legitimate winner, they are in violation of the law.

This legal constraint makes them wary of paying out in BTC. Remember that BTC is not considered legal tender. If they pay out a massive jackpot in BTC, they would run the risk of litigation that could end up costing them even more. It is safer, from a legal standpoint, to not pay out in BTC.

The price volatility problem

Even if the legal tender issued were not a problem, price volatility still would be. Volatility could be the number one reason Mega Moolah has never paid out in BTC. There is just too much risk involved. The starting point for understanding this problem is knowing that the minimum Mega Jackpot payout by the Mega Moolah slot game is £1 million.

At the time this post was written, the price of 1 BTC was hovering around £8,780. Early this month, the price was closer to £10,000. Hopefully, you already see the problem. BTC easily experiences an £1,000 swing in a matter of hours. The swing was up in this case. However, the swing could also be down at any time.

Price volatility makes it impossible for online casino operators and Microgaming to ever know the value of one of the four progressive jackpots in BTC. The problem is made worse when you account for the progressive nature of the jackpots.

How progressive jackpots work

A progressive jackpot is a jackpot that is fed by all of the gamblers playing a specific game at any one time. If there were 1,000 gamblers playing Mega Moolah simultaneously, all 1,000 of them would be contributing to the game's four progressive jackpots with each spin of the reels. Jackpots would continue to grow until they were won.

This theoretically means that a jackpot could continue growing for weeks before someone won it. That is not a problem when the payout is proffered in fiat. Fiat prices do not change dramatically enough to make a significant difference over a few weeks' time. The same is not true for BTC.

History is replete with examples of BTC prices increasing or falling by thousands of dollars in a single day. A single bitcoin was worth about £5,000 just a couple of months ago. At the end of June 2019, it was worth over £10,000. That's too much of a swing when you're talking about paying a jackpot worth millions.

Why it matters

So why does any of this matter? It goes back to the guaranteed £1 million minimum for the Mega Jackpot. Let's say for just one minute that Mega Moolah's jackpot was payable in BTC. Let's also say that BTC was worth £10,000 at the start of the day. Winning a jackpot of £1 million would require a payout of 100 BTC.

Now imagine that BTC's falls to £9500 by midday. Paying that same £1 million would require 105 BTC. Not only would the casino's BTC holdings be worth less coin-for-coin, they would have to pay out more to cover the jackpot. They would lose on both ends of the equation.

Of course, things could go the other way as well. A casino operator could actually make money on the deal if the price of BTC goes up. But operators are not willing to take that risk. There is too much to lose and not enough to gain.

The legality problem

If the legal tender and volatility issues were not enough, there is also the issue of whether or not BTC is legal in certain countries. If you are not sure why this is an issue, you might want to read a previous post in which we talked about some of the countries where BTC is illegal.

Remember that online gambling operators must report their financial activities. Imagine having to report a BTC payout to a winner living in a country where BTC has been outlawed. Reporting would instantly put that player in legal jeopardy. We would imagine that neither online operators nor Microgaming wants to be put in that position.

There is also the issue of legal gambling. There are plenty of places around the world where online gambling is not allowed. That doesn't stop players from using VPNs and Bitcoin to play Mega Moolah. We are not saying it's okay to do that, but it might happen.

Any such player winning the Mega Moolah jackpot would be exposed through normal publicity activities. Again, that winner could be put in legal jeopardy once it is discovered he has played from a country where online gambling is outlawed.

Fiat jackpots work better

We have offered you three reasons that might explain why Mega Moolah has never paid out in BTC. No gambling company has never explained the reasoning, so what we have offered here is mere speculation. It is probably safe to say that, at the end of the day, fiat jackpots are just better all the way around unless there is a game that is specifically a Bitcoin game.

Paying out in fiat guarantees that every winner gets what he or she is due. It makes reporting a lot easier. Paying out in fiat erases any and all questions of legal tender as well. On the other hand, paying out in BTC creates a lot of unnecessary hassles that operators just don't want to get involved in.

The good news is that you can still play Mega Moolah with BTC. There are several ways to do it, all of which are outlined in another post on this website. Just know that you will be paid in fiat should you be one of the lucky ones to hit the jackpot.