Getting Started: How to fund a sportsbook account

Note: These instructions are specifically for offshore sportsbooks such as BetOnline, Bookmaker, and Bovada

Opening and funding a sportsbook account may seem challenging, particularly with Bitcoin (“BTC”) involved. This guide will walk you through the process in a few steps:

1. Buy BTC on a cryptocurrency exchange
2. Transfer the BTC into a wallet
3. Sign up for a sportsbook account and make a deposit
4. Start betting

Buy BTC on a cryptocurrency exchange

For convenience, we recommend using Cash App or Gemini. Other popular exchanges include Coinbase, Kraken, and soon Venmo. Go to either cash.app or gemini.com and sign up - you can also just download their apps. When you sign up, you may need to provide a photo ID, routing and account number to connect your bank account and fund your account to purchase BTC. This verification process may take 24-48 hours.

Once you have signed up and connected your bank account, select BTC and click the BUY button to buy BTC. Purchase the amount you wish to use to fund your sports betting account. There will be roughly a 1.5% transaction fee, an annoying, but necessary evil.  

Gemini’s BTC purchase flow

Transfer the BTC into a wallet

After you purchase BTC, you need to transfer your BTC into a wallet. This is a critical step. BTC is essentially a digital currency, and is best served stored in a digital wallet and not on an exchange. This is akin to having your cash in a wallet or in your bank versus sitting in a brokerage account. Transferring BTC from an exchange to a sportsbook is also against the Terms and Service Agreements of most exchanges, so you want to make sure your funds are stored in a wallet before sending them to your sportsbook.

Using your phone, sign up for a wallet such as BRD Wallet or Electrum Wallet. After you sign up, click on BTC and click “Receive”. You will be provided your wallet address or a QR code. Copy this address and login to your Exchange account (Cash App or Gemini).

Transferring into BRD Wallet‍

Click Send and enter your wallet address that you just copied (or scan the QR code) and the BTC amount to send the BTC from your exchange account to your BTC wallet. This can take up to 1 hour and will have a small transaction fee (<0.1%).

Sign up for a sportsbook account and make a deposit

Now that you have BTC in your wallet, it’s time to open a sportsbook account. Go to Betonline.ag, bookmaker.eu, and bovada.lv, and make accounts. Yes, you should make an account on all three, and split your BTC evenly across all three. After you enter your information, you will be directed to make a deposit. Select BTC as your method of deposit, and just as you transferred funds from your exchange using your wallet address, you will need to transfer BTC from your BTC wallet to your sportsbook account. Once it’s transferred, your BTC will be converted to USD.

Note: Bonuses and KYC

When you deposit, sportsbooks offer very generous bonuses to encourage you to deposit. We generally recommend you take advantage of these bonuses, but be aware of the fine print: Most of the time, they have rollover requirements, that effectively mean you have to bet a certain amount before you are eligible to withdraw any funds. Rollover requirements can be as high as 10X - that means if you deposit $1,000 and sign up for a bonus, you will have to place $10,000 worth of wagers before you are eligible to make a withdrawal. If you want to maintain flexibility in making withdrawals, do NOT sign up for bonuses.

Know Your Customer, or “KYC”:, are standards for institutions that deal with large amounts of financial transactions to have documentation of their customers. Similar to your exchange account, you will need to provide a photo-ID and a proof-of-residency (a utility bill or bank statement) to verify your identify before you can make withdrawals. We recommend that you get this done before you fund your accounts to ensure that any money you win is eligible to be withdrawn. You can find this under your profile where there will be an Upload your Documents section.

Start betting.‍

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