Tonybet.com, one of the fastest growing sportsbooks in the world, has announced that it has started accepting deposits in digital currency bitcoin.

The platform’s support for the digital currency is being facilitated by its partnership with SpectroCoin e-wallet. Tonybet says that it has become one of the first recognized and well established gaming sites to accept bitcoin.

Players will now be able to deposit and withdraw funds in bitcoin and the website will then convert them to regular currencies while in-play – a feature, which according to Tonybet is absent from most sites accepting digital currencies.

According to the site officials, the reason for adding bitcoin support was to make Tonybet more accessible to a wider range of potential players. However, the introduction of the new payment method had a bigger impact than they anticipated as a number of new signups went up.

Tonybet.com spokesman Warren Lush said: “We’re always keeping up with the latest digital innovations in order to adapt them to our online gaming platform. With the introduction of Bitcoin deposits we saw a dramatic increase in recreational punters and poker players especially from the Asian countries who have been struggling to transfer their funds before.”

"Another advantage of using Bitcoin for online gaming is that users can also speculate the exchange rates and earn extra. The fast and easy deposit and withdrawal process makes this an even more attractive feature. What’s more is that partnering up with SpectroCoin we not only opened our online sportsbook, casino and poker site to those who wanted to use their digital currency for online gambling, but also encouraged customers to exploit the advantages of using Bitcoin.”

TonyBet sportsbook was founded in 2009 by the world famous poker pro and a businessman Antanas Guoga. It is licensed and regulated by the Estonian gaming authorities. The TonyBet online sportsbook runs with the SSL Web Server Certificates, ensuring that all communications are secured by encrypting all sensitive data going in and out of the Tonybet website.