A pair of Las Vegas hotel & casinos are among the first in the world to adopt a new high-tech alternative to traditional payment methods as they take a gamble to allow guests to foot their bills using bitcoin.

Owners of the D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino in downtown Vegas have announced that they will begin accepting the increasingly popular digital "cryptocurrency" on Wednesday.

Although guests won't be able to actually place bets with bitcoin, the currency will be accepted at five locations, including both hotel front desks and the D's gift shop. Guests at the D also have the option of eating out on bitcoin at American Coney Island and Joe Vicari's Andiamo Italian Steakhouse.

Co-owner and CEO of the pair of hotels, Derek Stevens, said that discussions had taken place about possibly opening up the door to digital currency, but that the plan was spurred into action as a result of growing guest demand.

"We're located in the growing high-tech sector of downtown Las Vegas, and like all things downtown, we're quickly adaptive to new technology," Stevens said. "The timing is right for us to launch this initiative, and I'm happy to be able to offer this to our customers."

According to a report from Reuters, by becoming the first known casino hotels to accept virtual currency, the hope was that many guests who are unable to use bitcoin as payment at other facilities would opt to spend their money at the D and Golden Gate instead.

"I think that this is a technology where early adopters have an advantage," Stevens said.

Bitcoin purchases at these two locations will be processed using BitPay, a service that enables transactions through tablet and mobile interfaces. The casino hotels will install iPads at cashier stations in order to utilize the online platform to process bitcoin payments.

Yahoo! News reports that bitcoin was first launched in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis and is alleged to have been created by a "mysterious computer guru" who goes by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin is an unregulated currency that does not have the backing of a central bank or government. The units of currency are generated using a computer algorithm that determines their value by the current demand for them.

Since entering the digital world bitcoin has grown wildly popular and is now being accepted as a legitimate payment option by an increasingly wide range of places.

Online retailer Overstock.com has employed the use of the cryptocurrency and some colleges and universities are even offering the option of tuition payment by bitcoin. Additionally, Sacramento, California's pro-basketball team The Kings announced they would start accepting bitcoin earlier this month and one town is even using it to pay the salary of its chief of police, according to a report from RT.com.

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