IN SI GHT
C R A CKI N G THE
C RY P TO C U RRENC Y
T RANSITIO N
For Winning Poker Network, the old adage ‘cash is king’ doesn’t ring true. Just three years after it accepted
its first bitcoin deposit, cryptocurrencies now account for more than half of all transactions. Jamie Harvey
explains what it was that convinced WPN to join the blockchain revolution, how it overcame the challenges
in implementing such a strategy, and how the company is convincing its player base to join the party
AT THE WINNING POKER NETWORK we took our first bitcoin
deposit in early 2015. By the middle of that year, bitcoin deposits
counted for roughly 2% of our overall volume, which was still
a very small part of our business.
Fast forward to today, and not only do we take bitcoin, but we
also accept more than 60 other types of cryptocurrencies for both
deposits and withdrawals. In fact, cryptocurrency now accounts
for a staggering 60% of our overall processing volume.
So why the huge shift from conventional processing methods?
And why are we aiming to expand our crypto offerings even
further? There are a few reasons, the most obvious of which is
that cryptocurrency payment processing is dramatically more
cost efficient for both customer and operator than the more
traditional methods.
“Change is hard, especially in business,
and introducing a new way of doing things,
or a new technology, can lead to more
than its fair share of challenges”
Credit card transactions usually carry a price tag of 13-22%
for the operator, with the need to implement a rolling reserve
to defend against potential losses due to chargebacks.
Person-to-person transactions such as Moneygram or
Western Union tend to cost us 9-12% with an additional 2%
in variables from issues connected to customer compensation.
Cryptocurrency operational costs, on the other hand, come
in at 2.7-3.5%, making it by far the most attractive option to us
as an online poker network. If you add in the fact that the
individual customer value is much higher for those that use
crypto than those that don’t (because of the convenience and
ease at which they can deposit, and the higher transac