The Question of Anonymity: How it is Addressed at Cryptocurrency and Sports Betting Sites
Privacy is a major concern in the online realm. If you want to sign up at a website or pay for a service online, you normally have to hand over your personal information.
Unless you’ve been living on the moon over the past few decades, you know that this type of information is a goldmine for fraudsters and other ne’er-do-wells. There have been countless data breaches and similar unfortunate occurrences that have severely disrupted and even ruined lives.
This is why anonymity has been such a hot topic during the internet age. However, there might be a question whether anonymity truly exists online. Let’s look at anonymity in terms of cryptocurrencies and online sports betting sites.
Anonymity at Sports Betting Sites
Anonymity on a licensed and legal betting site? Not a chance. Is this a bad thing? Not at all. Let’s break down two scenarios:
- You register on a licensed sportsbook site. You provide the necessary documents, such as a personal ID or driver’s licence, to go through the verification process, also known as KYC. Next, you start placing bets, taking advantage of free bets or cash bonuses, and smoothly depositing and withdrawing funds. This is the path that the vast majority of users follow.
- You seek anonymity (for whatever reason, that’s a different matter) and find it only on an offshore and unlicensed site. There, they might not ask for your documents or personal details. Perhaps they’ll request a nickname, an email, and a payment method. After you’ve deposited your hard-earned cash, you face problems when trying to withdraw funds. The support team promises to help, but days pass and nothing changes. Not pleasant, is it? Indeed. Furthermore, you have nowhere to turn, as there are no regulatory bodies overseeing these grey-market sites. You’ve chosen anonymity but risked your money.
Sure, problems can arise even on licensed sites, but they get resolved. Just believe, a legal bookmaker has no incentive to receive complaints from an official regulatory body and risk losing their licence.
And about anonymity? Well, licensed sportsbooks in many major countries are regulated by government bodies. Hesitating to show your ID during verification is comparable to hesitating to show your ID at any government institution.
Is Cryptocurrency Anonymous?
A lot of people believe that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many others offer complete anonymity.
Users store their crypto securely in their wallets which are only identifiable by their keys. When you pay for goods or services using cryptocurrency, you only need to provide a few numbers so that the payment either comes out of or goes into your numbered wallet.
Because you don’t normally need to provide any other information, the transaction is essentially anonymous. Well, almost anonymous. While it would be difficult to link that particular transaction to a specific person, it can be done.
Most people who purchase and sell their cryptocurrency do it through crypto exchanges like Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase to name a few.
These exchanges are heavily regulated and require customers to provide certain details. Seeing how you need to furnish the crypto exchange with data like your payment information, true anonymity goes out the window.
If you use almost any FIAT payment method to acquire your crypto, it’s going to leave a paper trail that leads straight to you. As such, cryptocurrency is not 100% anonymous.
Is True Anonymity Necessary and Does It Really Exist?
The word “anonymity“ is best defined as a situation in which a person’s name, description, or any other identifiers are unknown.
Most folks would agree that using cryptocurrency online offers a very high degree of privacy. It is certainly a lot more private than using traditional payment options that leave paper trails.
However, most would also agree that cryptocurrency does not offer total anonymity in the true sense. Again, when you purchase crypto or convert it into FIAT currency at a crypto exchange, you are usually required to provide a few revealing details.
Online betting sites that claim to be anonymous aren’t being completely truthful either. Sure, you can open an account at one of those sites without providing any personal information. You can even deposit using vouchers in a somewhat anonymous manner.
However, legal and regulatory requirements like KYC throw a wrench into the plan. Any reputable sports betting site will require you to verify your age and identity.
In the end, real anonymity does not yet truly exist in cryptocurrencies or sports betting sites. Of course, this is how a lot of regulators and governments like it. But it seems that data breaches involving personal and sensitive information happen less frequently than issues with anonymous, but grey-market sites.
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