You see it flicker up on an odds screen. There’s a plus-EV price on a game, but it’s only available at an offshore out. You’ve been curious about betting offshore, but always held back because sports betting with crypto was never as easy as linking your bank account to the book and letting a deposit rip.
But moving crypto to fund accounts on offshores isn’t much more difficult than setting up deposits with the domestic books.
Whether you’re using Bitcoin, Ethereum, or stablecoins, the process is largely the same across the board.
Step 1: Buying Crypto for Sports Betting
First, you need to actually buy the crypto you’re going to use. There are any number of crypto exchanges available out there. Coinbase is one of the largest and most well-known, but there are others like Binance (Binance.US in the States), Gemini, and Kraken.
Larger, U.S.-based sites are legally required to operate under Know Your Customer regulations.
The first step to sports betting with crypto is to get money onto the exchange. Coinbase, for example, uses Plaid to connect to your bank account, the same service you’re already likely familiar with if you’ve ma
de deposits at DraftKings, Caesars, or other sportsbooks. You can also link a debit card or a PayPal account.
Once you’ve connected an account the transaction process is straightforward. Select an asset, choose your payment method and hit “buy.”
Which Cryptocurrency Should I Buy?
Which crypto you buy depends on which sportsbook you’re sending to. Offshore sportsbooks can vary in reputation, but Captain Jack’s advice to stick to the B’s: Bet105, Bookmaker, Bovada and BetOnline, is sound.
Check with the book you choose to see what currencies they accept.
Sportsbooks typically only accept a few different currencies for deposits. The most common are Bitcoin, Ethereum and the stablecoin U.S. Digital Currency, which is always pegged to the value of the dollar on a one-to-one basis.
Some books will accept more than those big three, though. Bet105, for example, also accepts Binance Coin, Litecoin, and Tether – another one-to-one stablecoin pegged to the dollar.
(The differences between Tether and USDC are negligible on a practical level, but owe more to who issues the coin, the regulations involved, and other factors that matter more if you’re trading crypto and not just using it as a means to bet sports.)
Choosing a cryptocurrency is mostly a matter of preference. Once you deposit into your sportsbook account, the crypto is converted into U.S. dollars regardless.
This means if the price of Bitcoin drops or rises after you deposit, it doesn’t affect the amount in your account.
However, currencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin can fluctuate wildly, even in the time between you purchasing your crypto and depositing it in your sportsbook account. If the price shoots up, you may end up making money just off of your deposit. If the price drops, you could be depositing less than you planned.
That’s where the stablecoins come in. When you buy $100 in Tether or USDC, it’s always worth $100 when you’re ready to deposit, regardless of what fluctuations are happening in the crypto markets.
Step 2: Depositing Your Cryptocurrency Into a Wallet
Once you have exchanged your dollars for crypto, you need to move that crypto from your Coinbase account to a digital wallet.
Don’t transfer crypto directly from Coinbase to a sportsbook. Doing so is a violation of Coinbase’s terms of service.
You have several options for crypto wallets. Exodus, Trust and MetaMask are just a few, and they’re all free to use.
When you’re ready to transfer, your wallet will have an address you use to receive crypto transfers. It’s usually a long alphanumeric string you can copy and paste into Coinbase or other exchanges when you initiate your transfer. Or you can use a QR code if you’re doing it all on your phone.
Step 3: Funding Your Sportsbook Account
Funding your Bet105 or other offshore account works the same way as transferring your crypto into your wallet did. Your sportsbook will give you an address to send the transfer to. Copy that to your wallet, and initiate another transfer.
You must select the same currency that you are sending. If you try to send Ethereum to a Bitcoin address for example, it won’t work. You’ll lose your crypto forever. Double check your address before you hit send.
Transferring crypto from an exchange to a wallet, a wallet to a sportsbook and back out again will incur fees.
These “gas fees” are the cost of doing business on a blockchain network. These fees change depending on the size of the transaction, the amount of network activity, the currency itself, or even which of a specific currency’s networks the transaction happens on.
Check with your exchange and wallet to see what their additional fees and network costs are. Wallets will typically show you their estimated fee before you initiate any transaction.
If you wanted to deposit $1,000 in your sportsbook account, that means you might need to buy $1,015 worth of Bitcoin to comfortably cover all costs from the original Coinbase purchase through multiple transactions transfers through a wallet to a sportsbook, depending on current fees.
Once your account is funded, that’s it. Sports betting with crypto is like any other account you’re already used to. The crypto you use to deposit gets converted in your account.
You bet in dollars like you would in domestic sportsbooks. But always check your book’s terms and conditions to see if there are any playthrough requirements before you can withdraw.
When you’re ready to withdraw winnings, the process works the same way. But be aware you can only withdraw in the same cryptocurrency you deposited. You can’t deposit Bitcoin and withdraw Ethereum.
Once you already have accounts, the entire process of buying crypto and transferring it through a wallet to a sportsbook will only take a few minutes.
It opens up a world of new outs once you’re comfortable with crypto transactions, though, of course, the usual caveats apply any time you bet with offshore sites.
In order to shop lines across Bet105, Bovada and BetOnline, or other sportsbooks available on our Odds Screen, you have to assume a little extra risk.
These books exist outside the protections afforded by domestic regulation. If you have a dispute with the book, you’ll largely be on your own to solve it.
Whether that risk is worth it or not is an individual decision, but the question of how to fund an account at one of these sites is significantly easier to answer than it was 20 years ago. Sports betting with crypto has made the deposit process much smoother, and with a greater level of anonymity than you had compared to the days you had to stay a step ahead of rules around credit cards, eChecks and other methods.
Questions about offshores, crypto, or any other accounts? Pop into the Discord and ask the community.
