Offshore sportsbooks are sports betting platforms that operate outside of the jurisdiction of the country where the bettor resides. These sportsbooks are usually based in countries where gambling laws are more permissive or where regulations are less stringent.
Centralized exchanges are your version of a stock trading exchange but for crypto. You send your money to a CEX and then from there, you can buy and sell crypto
Popular CEX’s most North Americans use are Coinbase and Kraken. You will need to do an identity verification on these platforms, which may take up to a couple days to complete before you can use your account (this is normal). If you are outside of North America and looking to use some of these global books, I recommend googling to see which CEX’s are legal in your country.
What is a hot wallet? A crypto hot wallet refers to a type of digital wallet used to store cryptocurrency assets that is connected to the internet and readily accessible for transactions. It's called "hot" because it is online and connected to the network, allowing for quick transfers and transactions.
Hot wallets are commonly used for frequent trading, payments, and other activities that require immediate access to cryptocurrency funds. In our case, we will use it as part of the withdrawal and deposit process when interacting with offshore sportsbooks.
Why do you need a hot wallet?
CEX’s don’t like interacting with betting websites, so you need to use a “middle man” wallet in between your transactions.
The flow works as follows: Buy Crypto on your CEX, send it to your hot wallet, send it to your sportsbook to deposit. Send crypto from your sportsbooks to your hot wallet, then to your CEX to cash out into fiat to withdrawal money.
Picking your crypto wallet:
The hot wallet you will use is dependant on the crypto blockchain you wish to interact with. Most books mainly use Ethereum / Bitcoin. Here are a list of a few great crypto wallets:
🔸 Metamask: Ethereum (EVM) only wallet | Set Up video: https://shorturl.at/jlvx5
🔸Rabby: Ethereum (EVM) only wallet | Set up video: https://shorturl.at/cfikr
🔸 Trust Wallet: Bitcoin & Ethereum | Set up video: https://shorturl.at/yFL13
🔸 Trust Wallet: Bitcoin & Ethereum | Set up video: https://shorturl.at/yFL13
Once you have successfully created an account with a sportsbook, CEX, and have your hot wallet set up, you are ready to get started!
Step 1: Copy the wallet address from your hot wallet and send your assets (most likely BTC / ETH) to it. Make sure you are sending your assets on the appropriate blockchain network (ETH on the Ethereum network or BTC on the Bitcoin network).
Keep in mind you will need to pay a small fee to the exchange for the withdrawal transaction to your hot wallet
Step 2: Copy the deposit address the sportsbook is giving you to deposit your asset. Before you send your funds in. Just like the step before, a small fee will occur when you go to send your assets. If you have lets say $500 of ETH you want to send, only send $495 of it so you have some $ to pay for gas.
If you are confused on how to send / receive funds, watch this: https://shorturl.at/nBIV1
Once you send the funds from your hot wallet to your sportsbook, you should be all set! If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter / in Discord!
Warnings:
1) Since you are depositing and withdrawing in crypto assets that fluctuate in values, you may experience some sort of value shift in your assets. Since ETH and BTC are large assets, they typically don’t change in values too drastically during a small time frame, but anything is possible.
There will be some fees that you have to pay along the way (CEX withdrawal fees and network gas fees), but this is part of the process and there is no way around it. Consider it a business cost to then be able to make money betting!
Below is an image of what a deposit transaction process should look like. The same applies in the inverse when withdrawing from a sportsbook.