The Honest Nitrobetting Review

Introduction

When you first visit Nitrobetting and play a few games, you might think that good old Bovada just got a facelift. I mean that in a good way, like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes.

If you’ve played at an all-in-one online gambling site in the past 5 years, you’ll instantly be familiar with the format of Nitrobetting (which was originally launched as Nitrogen Sports in 2012). So, what’s the catch to make you pay attention to Nitrobetting over the other guys? There are a few good ones.

For starters, Bitcoin is at the center of the Nitrobetting universe. No dollars or credit cards are anywhere to be found. Every bet is either in BTC or, in the case of poker, mBTC. As a Bitcoin evangelist, I love it.

As a poker player that thinks of betting limits in dollars, though, it can get a little confusing.

It also seems like a small thing, but do you know what I might like best about Nitrobetting? Totally anonymous accounts. Nitrobetting mimics the anonymity of Bitcoin itself. No name or address is required to make an account.

Going even further, if you only want to play for a single session, you don’t even need to give them your email address. If you want to bet in complete privacy, Nitrobetting will let you. In this post-Snowden post-Patriot Act internet, I didn’t know that was still possible.

Nitrobetting also has an interesting system you won’t find at bigger online casinos called “Provably Fair”. Among the 40 casino games on the site, 8 of them are provably fair:

• Dice
• Baccarat
• One-Deck Blackjack
• Two-Deck Blackjack
• Eight-Deck Blackjack
• Three-Card Poker
• Craps
• Knockout Slots

Each one offers a peak behind the results of every deal, dice roll, and spin. The rest of the games, are more traditional, and don’t operate on this system.

If you bet on sports, Nitrobetting has an obscene number of sports available for betting. Besides the usual major American sports available at big sportsbooks like Bovada or BetOnline, Nitrobetting has betting markets on things like eSports, cricket, and table tennis.

Nitrobetting Poker is straightforward, looks good, and has, table for table, some of the looser poker games you’ll find online. The biggest problem with the poker room is their lack of traffic and stripped-down software client.

Nitrobetting has a solid foundation as an all-in-one Bitcoin betting house, but they also need to work on some glaring omissions.

Under its previous branding, Nitro Poker, the brand didn’t really offer bonuses – but, that’s all changed at NitroBetting. Now, there us a wide array of offers available in the sportsbook, casino and poker room.

The Nitrobetting Casino side is ahead of its time with the “Provably Fair” concept, but it’s begging for more casino games to be added. Modern online casino players are overwhelmed with game variety elsewhere.

Overall, I like what Nitrobetting is offering as a Bitcoin-only one-stop online gambling shop. Nitrobetting is also open to USA players for real money.

If you’ve got Bitcoin and you want to bet on sports, you probably can’t do it faster or more anonymously than at Nitrobetting. They just need to add some meat on the bones of the casino and poker room.

Anonymous accounts

I think the ability to play from completely anonymous accounts is one of the biggest draws of Nitrobetting.

Most online gambling sites have increased the invasive personal information required of players over the years. Players usually end up having to send in scans of personal documents just to cash out their hard-earned bankrolls.

At Nitrobetting, you literally don’t even need to provide a username or email address if you don’t want to. Just keep the session open in your browser, make your Bitcoin deposit, play, and request your cashout without giving them a thing.

You’ll only be identified by Nitrobetting with an account number.

You can change your username at any time. Note that you never need to give your name or address to the Nitrobetting team. In that way, Nitrobetting mirrors the anonymity of Bitcoin itself.

If you want to play poker, some casino games, or bet on sports in complete privacy, Nitrobetting can offer anonymity that larger online gambling sites aren’t even close to providing.

Understanding Nitrobetting and Bitcoin

With everything at Nitrobetting done in Bitcoin, there’s never any conversion done to USD or any other fiat currency. That’s a big difference from mainstream gambling sites like Bovada, who accept Bitcoin deposits but then convert it to USD at the current exchange rate.

At Nitrobetting, they just make a Bitcoin wallet deposit address for you, you send them Bitcoin, and then you place bets directly from your wallet with them.

As a big Bitcoin believer, it’s kind of cool to always be wagering with Bitcoin, but it can also get a bit confusing. Nitrobetting doesn’t have any sort of ticker that tells you the current USD value of BTC or how much your bets are in USD.

That left me constantly doing mental math or using an online BTC converter like Preev to realize how much I was betting on a game or what the stakes were at a poker table.

I recommend you always leave Preev open to do quick conversions for Nitrobetting bets. It’s lightweight and you can quickly plug in poker table stakes in order to know how much you’re actually playing for.

For example, placing a bet for .001 Bitcoin doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, so I had to figure out that was about $6.75 at current BTC values. Maybe that won’t be an issue for smarter folks. I admire Nitrobetting for only dealing in Bitcoin, but I think most of us still think of value in Dollars.

Volatility

The other risk of Nitrobetting holding your balance in Bitcoin is that your bankroll value is tied to the volatility of Bitcoin values.

With most online gambling sites, your bankroll is in USD, protected from the changing values inherent to Bitcoin. You can even strategically wait to cash back out to Bitcoin until there’s a Bitcoin price rally going on.

At Nitrobetting, you’re holding Bitcoin at all times, so your fate is tied to whatever the Bitcoin market is doing.

How to calculate mBTC

For Nitrobetting Poker, things even get a little more complicated because the base unit is always mBTC, or millibitcoin. One mBTC is 1/1000th of a Bitcoin.

When Bitcoin is valued in the 4-figure range, as it has been for a while now, an easy mental shortcut is to think of the first digit as the dollar value. For example, when 1 BTC is $7,000, then 1 mBTC is $7. When Bitcoin gets back to 5-figures (wishful thinking, I know), it’ll be the first 2 digits.

Okay, so mBTC is simple enough to understand, but now you’ve got to do more math to figure out the stakes at each Nitrobetting Poker cash game or tournament:

• Tournaments might have a 50 mBTC guarantee with a 0.1 mBTC buy-in.
• Cash tables go all the way from .01/.02 mBTC up to occasional games of 1/2 mBTC.
• That might sound modest, but in USD that’s actually about .07/.14 and $7/14.
• When Nitrobetting Poker values are displayed in mBTC, it can be easy to forget you’re playing for more than it looks like.

Deposits

As a Bitcoin-only gambling site, Nitrobetting doesn’t mess around with other deposit methods. It’s Bitcoin or bust. The best part is that, because Nitrobetting is never dealing with banks, credit cards, or cutting checks, there’s virtually no chance of being shut down by any government body.

The deposit interface is a little different than on mainstream sports, casino, and poker sites.

Bigger gambling sites ask how much you want to deposit in USD and then giving you a Bitcoin address with a timer to send an exact amount to. Nitrobetting simply gives you a Bitcoin address to deposit to. Just click your yellow Bitcoin balance at the top to get there.

You can send any amount of Bitcoin to your Nitrobetting deposit address and you’ll see it show up in seconds on the right side. Nitrobetting doesn’t let you wager with it until you’ve gotten at least one Bitcoin confirmation.

The Bitcoin network isn’t clogged at all these days, meaning this should only take about 10-60 minutes. My Nitrobetting BTC deposit took about 45 minutes to confirm.

What I like about how Nitrobetting does Bitcoin deposits is that they show unconfirmed deposits and link you directly to the blockchain transaction to check on its status. Bigger sites tend to just leave you guessing and refreshing, paranoid that you sent your Bitcoin to the wrong address.

Payouts

For a betting site that uses Bitcoin exclusively, I was especially interested to see how Nitrobetting handled payouts. There’s a box to enter your withdrawal Bitcoin address built right in to the cashier.

After entering a small 13 mBTC payout request, Nitrobetting let me know that it would be adding a .0001 BTC processing fee.

I was fairly irritated by that; unnecessarily so after having a very positive experience at Nitrobetting. That .0001 amounted to less than 70 cents, which is almost nothing, but the fact that Nitrobetting would risk annoying its players for such a small amount of money seems myopic. They should just eat it for the sake of player goodwill.

If Nitrobetting wants to charge players the miners fee, it would be a petty, but logical, request, but they simply call this a flat “processing fee”. The bigger gambling sites accepting Bitcoin send out payouts for free. Nitrobetting would do well to follow their lead.

I learned that Nitrobetting only charges the payout fee for accounts under a week or if you request more than one withdrawal in 6 days. So, accounts over a week old who only request withdrawals once a week will get them sent for free.

Again, it’s a minuscule fee, but it feels unnecessary.

The actual payout time from Nitrobetting was excellent. I received BTC to my wallet in about 4 hours, which is some of the fastest I’ve gotten Bitcoin from any gambling site. Anything under 12 hours impresses me, so Nitrobetting easily passes my withdrawal time test.

Bonuses

There are several great bonuses available at Nitrobetting. Seeing as the original Nitro Sportsbook didn’t previously offer promos, this is a very, very welcome addition.

Casino Bonus

A 200% match bonus is available to players who want to play casino games. You can claim up to m₿40.00000, and the minimum deposit to qualify for the offer is m₿1.00000.

It comes with a 20x wagering requirement. Most games contribute 100% to the playthrough but there are some exceptions that only contribute 5%. These are mostly blackjack, roulette and video poker variants. So, make sure you check the terms and conditions before you claim to offer to ensure that the games you enjoy playing contribute 100%.

Free Spins

Free spins are awarded to players from time to time at Nitrobetting Casino. Some of the top slots from Spinlogic are available for free spins, including Reel Reel Hot, Mancala Quest and Coco Tiki.

There is no expiry on these spins, and there are no wagering requirements.

Sportsbook Bonus

If you’re more interested in the sportsbook, then you can claim a 100% match bonus worth up to m₿25.00000. It has a 35x wagering requirement, and all sports action counts toward the turnover, except for live betting.

Poker Rakeback

Rakeback was introduced to Nitrobetting in June 2023, offering players the ability to earn up to 35% rakeback, depending on how much rake you generate:

• 10% Rakeback – 3 to 9.99 mBTC in rake
• 15% Rakeback – 10 to 49.99 mBTC in rake
• 20% Rakeback – 50 to 99.99 mBTC in rake
• 25% Rakeback – 100 to 249.99 mBTC in rake
• 30% Rakeback – 250 to 999 mBTC in rake
• 35% Rakeback – 1000 mBTC or more in rake

Contests

Another new feature available at Nitrobetting is the Contests section. Here, you compete against other players in a variety of competitions in order to win bonuses and cash prizes.

• Survivor: Players make picks, and those who make successful picks move on to the next round. The further you get, the bigger your prize.
• Picks: Collect points by making correct picks among a pool of players.
• Squares: Select a square. If it contains the last digits of the final score of a given event, you’ll win Bitcoin.

Is the Nitro Store still around?

Nitrobetting Promotions Instead of a deposit bonus, Nitrobetting previously had the Nitro Store, which let players cash out rewards points for free bets or cash in the form of mBTC.

It worked with the Nitro Points system and the Bronze, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond rewards tiers. Similar to other online gambling rewards systems, you would earn rewards at a higher rate the more you play each month, and you could exchange your Nitro Points for either free sports bets or real money in mBTC.

Sportsbook

The focus of Nitrobetting is, naturally, betting Bitcoin on sports. They have an impressive number of sports available besides the major American football, basketball, baseball, and hockey leagues. You can bet on rugby, cricket, tennis, or rousing obscurities like handball or chess.

Here’s the complete list of sports that Nitrobetting supports betting on:

• eSports
• Tennis
• Basketball
• Soccer
• Baseball
• Cricket
• Eating Contests
• Football
• Golf
• Hockey
• MMA
• Entertainment Betting
• Politics
• Aussie Rules Football
• Badminton
• Boxing
• Chess
• Darts
• Motorsports
• Rugby
• Table Tennis
• Volleyball

I can’t think of any sporting matches Nitrobetting doesn’t offer betting on.

The sports betting selection is comparable to major sports sites like Bovada, with Nitrobetting offering a few extra rare sports.

The minimum bet at Nitrobetting is .0001 BTC. That’s about 60 cents USD at current Bitcoin values.

The sports betting interface is easy to understand and you easily switch from single straight bets to build-your-own parlays in your bet slip. There are countless props and live betting on current matches.

What I like about Nitrobetting is that, like the Bitcoin blockchain itself, everything is public. You can share any of your bet slips with anyone using its own URL.

Esports Betting

One of the more popular sections of Nitrobetting is the esports section. Nitrobetting has money line, point spread, and over/under betting on esports matches in most popular leagues, including:

• CS:GO
• Dota 2
• League of Legends

Esports are a popular betting option during the day, before major sports games start in the evening. With esports matches tougher to verify, Nitrobetting sometimes takes some time after a match ends to grade it.

Players can request that Nitrobetting admins grade a match quicker in the site-wide chat box.

Casino

The Nitrobetting Casino section is quite small. About 100 games are available, 4 of which are provably fair:

• Dice
• One Deck Blackjack
• Two Deck Blackjack
• Eight Deck Blackjack

What Does Provably Fair Mean?

Most online casinos have an obfuscated fairness system. They rely on a random number generator the players can never inspect. Online casinos often boast that they’ve been licensed and inspected by some offshore government body, but there’s nothing players can do to verify that the RNG is working properly.

We’d all like to believe that online casinos we trust with our real money deal fair games and fair spins, but intangible trust is all we have to rely on.

Game Selection

The casino game lobby at Nitrobetting comes with just over 100 games, provided by a number of top-rated software developers:

• Spinlogic
• Concept Gaming
• Mancala Gaming
• Nucleus Gaming

In the US online casino market, you don’t often see a wide range of game makers available on the same site. One casino is normally powered by either Rival Gaming or RealTime Gaming – so, NitroBetting really stands out in this respect.

The result is a diverse and interesting online casino lobby. You’ll find games with various features and formats, like clusters, cascades, free spins and more.

Poker

Since I’m predominantly a poker player, the Nitrobetting Poker section was what I was most interested in reviewing. The real-money USA-friendly poker landscape has pretty much remained unchanged for the past several years. Could a Bitcoin-only upstart compete with the big boys?

In short, I liked Nitrobetting Poker more than I expected to and they’re doing a lot of good things. Nitrobetting Poker has real potential. They’ve also got some growing to do before making the impact they could.

When you first open the Nitrobetting Poker lobby, be sure you understand that you’re looking at everything in mBTC, which is .001 BTC (1/1000th of a Bitcoin). That’s usually going to run around $6-8 depending on the price of Bitcoin.

I recommend keeping the Preev Bitcoin converter open and plugging in the mBTC numbers before joining a table to get an idea of what you’re playing for in USD or EUR.

For example, a popular cash table limit at Nitrobetting Poker is .02/04. That looks like pennies, but the minimum bet is about .27 in USD and the maximum buy-in almost $30. Tournaments may have a 1 mBTC buy-in, but that’s around $7.

Nitrobetting Poker and HUDs

Nitrobetting Poker explicitly bans HUDs, which I’m always in favor of doing. I’m not even sure how a HUD would work at Nitrobetting Poker with its browser-only interface.

Although players can keep notes on each other, you’re free to change your username and avatar at any time to avoid being recognized by the small group of Nitrobetting regulars.

Software

Nitrobetting Poker is playable entirely from your browser window and there isn’t a standalone download. No other major poker site runs that way. This has both pros and cons.

The biggest pro is that there’s nothing to install and you can play it on any platform or operating system. Nitrobetting Poker on mobile works just as well as it does on a desktop.

Nitrobetting Poker has one of the best mobile implementations I’ve seen. Every table can be played on mobile, it never glitched on me, and there’s no app to install. Nitrobetting Poker feels incredibly lightweight, meaning it never seemed to slow down, hang, or glitch regardless of how many tables I had open. That was impressive considering that it runs only from your browser.

The graphics are sharp and vector-based, which allows you to maximize table windows to full screen without a loss of image quality. Very little has changed from the original design of Nitrobetting Sports but, as the old adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The biggest con of an in-browser poker approach is the lack of advanced features. The table options are very limited, although I liked the vibrant and colorful table themes.

However, the biggest annoyance to me was that Nitrobetting Poker can’t bring tables to the front or flash them on your taskbar when it’s your turn to act. I didn’t realize how much I had come to rely on that, but it’s something I took for granted after every downloadable poker room I’ve ever played on had it.

Because Nitrobetting does everything in-browser, you’ll need to keep a constant eye on your Nitrobetting Poker tables. They have no way to get your attention if you’re on another window checking email. Unfortunately, you’ll see a lot of players randomly sitting out because of that.

Nitrobetting Poker does have a nice tile option that can fit multiple tables so they’re all visible. I highly recommend tiling your tables if you’re multi-tabling.

Another strange omission by Nitrobetting Poker is the lack of a waiting list function. Again, I’ve just come to expect that with every other poker site including waiting lists for years. Since Nitrobetting Poker doesn’t usually have more than 8-10 active tables, each limit will have only 1 or 2 tables going.

If they’re full, your only choice is to keep checking back manually for a seat to open up.

Traffic

The biggest complaint I have about Nitrobetting Poker (and it’s one that plagues almost every online poker startup) is the lack of traffic. During the busiest hours of 5-10 P.M. EST, Nitrobetting only has around 100 cash players.

Besides freerolls, real money buy-in tournaments rarely surpass 50 players. Nitrobetting is still drawing a lot more players than other Bitcoin-only sites, such as SwC Poker.

There aren’t a whole lot of players at Nitrobetting Poker, but, in a way, that’s part of the charm. You’ll often see the same players at multiple tables and it feels like a tight-knit crypto community rather than a faceless cutthroat competition.

It’s like you’re all in on a secret little poker site together.

Even with the low player count, the cash stakes that fill up at Nitrobetting Poker are fairly high. The lowest stakes are .01/.02 mBTC, which is about $.06/.12. However, 0.25/0.50 mBTC tables are almost always filled, which is about $3/6.

Occasionally, 1/2 and 2/4 mBTC tables will fill up, which is higher than many bigger poker sites draw.

Tournaments

With its low traffic, Nitrobetting only has around 10-12 daily tournaments, although almost all of them have guarantees. For example, there’s a daily 50 mBTC guarantee, which is about $350. Unfortunately, the buy-in is around 10% of the guarantee at 5 mBTC!

The big weekly Sunday poker tournament at Nitrobetting is 500mBTC (~$3,500) with a 20 (~$140) mBTC buy-in. I do like that almost none of the tournaments offer rebuys.

Nitrobetting Poker Freerolls

Although rarely do I spend my time on no-restrictions freerolls, they can serve a purpose in getting to learn the software of a new poker site before playing for real money. As more poker sites have eliminated or reduced their freeroll generosity, Nitrobetting Poker is actually one of the best freeroll sites left in the USA poker market.

Anyone can enter their daily 7 P.M. EST freerolls, which award 8 0.6 mBTC tournament entries each. The best part is that, since almost no one knows about Nitrobetting Poker, less than 200 players enter each one.

Better than that are the freerolls for regular Nitrobetting Poker players. The Rookie and All-Star Challenges are fairly easy to unlock by earning 7.5 Nitro Points per day and per week. You can then play in a daily 50 mBTC freeroll and a weekly 200 mBTC freeroll. Bigger players can unlock entrance to a 500 mBTC weekly freeroll.

None of these restricted freerolls usually see more than 50 players each, making your entry effectively worth between $5-75 each.

Game Looseness

Nitrobetting Poker doesn’t have a lot of games, but they’re certainly above-average on the Fish Rating scale.

The Nitrobetting lobby doesn’t show the traditional metric of the percentage of players seeing the flop, but they show an unorthodox “flops seen” percentage. This can reach as high as 80% on some tables, but it isn’t a perfect indicator of loose games. Average pot size is shown and it’s above-average in size, usually settling in around 20-30x.

Actually playing at the cash games and a few tournaments, however, gave me a feel for how Nitrobetting Poker plays.

Most players seem casual and loose, with many moderate pre-flop raises becoming big community pots. I experienced plenty of wild bluffs and the occasional complete cash game maniac going all-in every other hand.

I think the mBTC stakes help Nitrobetting Poker players forget how much they’re actually playing for. Also, it’s likely there are a bunch of sports bettors who wander in to the poker section.

Simply put, Nitrobetting Poker games aren’t a tough nut to crack.

Mobile

Nitrobetting mobile is one of the better mobile betting implementations I’ve seen.

Everything that’s available on the full website is available from any mobile browser, including the sports, casino, and poker sections. There is no Nitrobetting app to download because it just works directly from the website.

Casino animations run smoothly, but I’m most impressed by Nitrobetting Poker on mobile. Unlike poker sites such as Bovada or BetOnline, Nitrobetting Poker doesn’t require Android files to download or an iOS shortcut. From the website, you’ll see the poker lobby, you choose a table or tournament, and then it just works in your browser.

I played Nitrobetting Poker on mobile for several hours without a glitch or delay, even when switching between 4 tables. The platform also has one of the best ways I’ve seen to display multiple tables.

You’ll see every table as a small number on the left side and it will change to yellow when the action is on you. Tap the number and you’ll see the table appear instantly. For a smaller poker site, Nitrobetting Poker could teach a lot about mobile to the bigger ones.

Support

Nitrobetting only allows you to get in touch with customer support via email form. There is no live chat option, even though it might look like there is. You can click on the chat button in the corner of the screen but it only brings up an interactive FAQ. If you want any more information than is available in the FAQ, you’ll be redirected to the email form.

VPN Difficulties

I’ve read some reports from players and the Nitrobetting sub-Reddit that payouts may not be processed if you’re using a VPN. Conversely, other players have said they always use a VPN and regularly cash out their Bitcoin just fine.

Due to the anonymous accounts Nitrobetting allows, I understand their hesitance if a player suddenly requests a cashout from a very different IP address.

I suspect that if you have Two-Factor enabled on your account, Nitrobetting is less likely to care which IP you’re using, as a third-party wouldn’t be able to log in to your account. Also, if you’ve always used your VPN to play and chose the same location every time in your VPN, you probably won’t have an issue.

If you’re using Nitrobetting with a VPN, I recommend that you either turn on two-factor or at least keep using the same geographical location setting.

Conclusion on Nitrobetting

I don’t think Nitrobetting is going to compete with the big boys anytime soon, but that’s okay. They’re offering an anonymous way to gamble online for Bitcoin, a smattering of casino games with proven fairness, and an efficient poker room with some quality cash games.

I enjoyed my time enough at Nitrobetting that I ended up leaving some Bitcoin there to play with after the review process. For a grizzled veteran, that’s a big compliment.