How does the Coinbuzz team rate all of the casinos that make it onto our list?
It’s a simple question, but it doesn’t have a straightforward answer, as a lot of different factors are considered when we approach our reviews.
In simple terms, there are two things that you need to know about our reviews.
The first is that we only give publicity to the ones that we like. If a site fails our initial tests, it is not reviewed and we don’t take things further. The result is that we don’t list casinos we don’t like and we don’t give publicity or virtual real estate to casinos that are undeserving.
The second thing you need to know is that all of our reviewers are dedicated casino/gambling writers and have decades of combined experience within the gambling industry.
If you’re looking for a little more information, take a look at our review and rating process below.
The Coinbuzz Process
We have been reviewing casinos for a very long time and have been working with our team of researchers and writers throughout most of that time. Our experience has allowed us to hone our review process and create a 5-step process that gives our reviewers the freedom of personal opinion while still providing an accurate and detailed description of every site that we review.
All of the sites that make it onto our Bitcoin casino top list have been through the following steps.
Step One: Find the Sites
The first step in this process is also one of the most important.
We have a small team of researchers whose job it is to find new online casinos. This role is also occasionally completed by our writers. We give them some basic requirements (such as “Focus on Bitcoin Casinos”) and we send them on their way.
Their goal is to find a list of websites that might be of interest to our readers. At this stage, the review is a long way from being written and we’re not ready to post the sites for our readers to see.
We focus on discovering sites that are new or have been thus far overlooked. Obviously, this was easier in the beginning, and it gets harder now that we have published hundreds of reviews and considered many hundreds more sites, but there are always new casinos and sportsbooks to consider.
Step Two: Vet Them
Once the list has been created, it is checked by a larger team whose job it is to vet the sites and make sure they are up to scratch. If not, the sites will be rejected and will not be reviewed or added to our top list.
That way, we don’t waste our time writing and publishing sites that don’t deserve to be on our list and sites that will clearly get a terrible rating, and you don’t waste your time joining them.
That doesn’t mean that we’re only interested in the very best sites, far from it. If you have read our reviews in the past, you will know just how brutally honest our reviewers can be. We encourage them to talk about the bad, as well as the good, and these reviews can be mediocre, average, or great. They can also be on the poor side, as long as they have something unique or the review will provide some value for our readers.
For instance, we are often approached to review sites that have not been regulated. We reject all of these approaches and encourage our readers to avoid these sites like the plague. However, to make our point clear on this matter and to talk about the issues that stem from joining these sites, we covered two of the most popular.
Those reviews are nestled at the very bottom of our checklist and we make it clear that despite their popularity, we don’t recommend joining them and can’t rate them highly. But writing those reviews clearly offered some value to our readers and that’s why we did it.
Step Three: Review Them
The next step is to give our writers the green light to create the reviews. We publish multiple reviews every single week and highlight the good and the bad; the pros and the cons. If we don’t like something about a site, whether it’s the terrible design and the sloppy interface or the limited gaming selection, we make it very clear.
But it’s not all negative, because we also talk about the things that we love. The goal of these reviews is not to swing one way or the other. It’s not to be biased. We make sure that our writers only report on the things that they experience.
At this point in the process, we typically don’t have any agreements with the casinos. We don’t want them interrupting our process and insisting that our writers focus only on the good or that they mention “this and that”.
Of course, we have to make money somehow and so these agreements are signed, but that doesn’t happen until much later and we don’t let it impact the way that we rate or review the casinos.
Step Four: Rate Them
All of our casino reviews are finished off with a rating, which wraps everything up neatly. We score all casinos on four major areas, but each of these takes many different aspects into account, as noted in the “What Our Reviews Cover” section below.
Step Five: Categorise Them
All of our casino reviews are categorized based on everything from the software developers to the bonuses and the payment methods.
One of the biggest complaints that our reviews have on online casinos is that they don’t always make it clear which options they have available. On many sites, if you want to know what the deposit methods are, you have to sign up; if you need to learn about the withdrawal limit, you need to dig through the Terms and Conditions or ask the Live Chat; if you want to filter the games by provider, you can’t.
It occurred to us that we could make life easier for our players by providing them with all of this info. So, if you want to look for casinos that accept Litecoin or Ethereum, we have sections for that. If you want to play at sites with Betsoft games, we have a page for that, as well.
What Our Reviews Cover
All Coinbuzz reviews go through a multi-stage process to ensure that they cover the points that players want to learn about, including:
Security
One of the first things that our reviewers do it look for regulation, security certificates, and audits. We only review sites that are regulated, secure, and fair, and if there are any concerns in this area, the site is dismissed without question.
Believe it or not, there are supposedly legitimate sites out there that are not regulated, as well as ones that claim to be regulated but don’t have the supporting documents or license numbers. Our reviewers are told to avoid this sites and if you want the best experience as a player, you are advised to do the same thing.
Games
If you have read any of our reviews in the past, you will notice that there are a few commonalities when it comes to their casino games.
Firstly, we’re not interested in suspicious proprietary software. Sure, this software can be safe and fair, but if you look back over every story about fake casino games and rigged software (they are very rare, but they do exist) they always revolve around proprietary software.
We also take sides, making it clear that we have a preference for Betsoft, NetEnt, Playtech, Blueprint, Microgaming, Evolution Gaming, and Yggdrasil, and that we don’t like RTG. It all comes down to quality, as well as fairness, and the quality of games and software plays a big part in our review composition.
Bonuses
Welcome Bonuses are important and are a major consideration for our reviews, but the problem with focusing on these bonuses is that they disappear very quickly.
It’s not our job to show you sites that you can join for a few hours and then leave when you’ve blown your bonus.
It’s not all about Welcome Bonuses, and our reviewers also devote a lot of page pace to loyalty programs and reload bonuses, as well as real money tournaments.
Customer Support
There are several key questions to answer when it comes to customer support:
- What are the options available?
- How friendly and helpful is the support team?
- Do they respond to external reviews and complaints?
Customer support is often overlooked on casino reviews but it’s something we pay close attention to. If you have ever experienced an issue with an online casino or sportsbook, and your complaints have fallen on deaf ears, you will understand why it’s so important.
Banking
Does the site accept cryptocurrencies? Does it allow for payments to be made using web wallets, debit cards, credit cards, prepaid cards, and other payment methods? These questions need to be answered, but there’s more to it than that.
We also check the speed of the withdrawals, the ease of the verification checks, and whether or not there are any withdrawal limits and deposit fees in place.
Personal and Group Opinions
Finally, we leave a lot of space in our reviews for personal opinions and encourage our reviewers to talk about the things that they love and hate about the sites.
Some of our reviewers get frustrated with the interfaces and design of online casinos. Others get annoyed by withdrawal limits and bad customer support. And because our reviewers have been involved with this industry for many years and have often used the sites in the past, they also tend to have real life experiences to report on.
All of this is crucial to creating a complete, detailed, and honest online casino review. In fact, by the time all of this information has been processed, the reviews have been written and the accompanying details have been provided, our reviews are between 2,000 and 3,000 words long.
For comparison sake, most online casino reviews are just 500 to 1,000 words.
What About Localisation?
Many Bitcoin casinos are only licensed in Curacao, which means they can offer their services to players in key locations worldwide, but not in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, and a few other countries.
To make sure our site is accessible to all players from regions, we also cover the sites that are available in countries like the UK. Wherever you are, you’ll find sites that you can join legally and games you can play without issue.
Helping You to Find What You’re Looking For
As noted the guide to our review process, all of the sites that we cover are categorised based on games, payment methods, limits, and even countries in which they are available.
For example, let’s say that you have some Bitcoins in your wallet and want to play at an online casino where you can use those coins.
Not only will you find a list of all sites that accept Bitcoins for deposits, but you will also find an extensive guide on how to use this payment method, what pros and cons it provides, and what you need to be aware of.
It’s all part of our goal of being the biggest and the best gambling destination online, one that gives you everything you need to play and win.
What Happens to Rejected Sites?
The sites that we reject during our vetting process don’t make it onto our list and we don’t waste time by putting them in front of our reviewers, either.
We also monitor all of the sites that we have reviewed and see what players are saying about them. Although it’s rare, some sites have been known to go “bad”, at which point we reassess. In many cases, we update the review and the rating to accommodate the changes. If the site has completely gone rogue, then we remove it from our list altogether.
In the future, we may launch a blacklist. If that’s what our customers want to see, then that’s what we will do. But for now, we don’t think that it’s the best option as we just don’t want to give these sites any kind of publicity or backlinks.
