We love sports betting. It’s our favorite hobby.
But nobody wins all the time, and many people actually lose money in the long run.
While that’s fine for the millions of bettors that simply wager for fun or in solidarity with their favorite teams, if your goal is to finish in the black, successful betting takes a lot of work.
In our experience, risk mitigation and money management are the two aspects of the pastime to which most gamblers don’t give nearly enough credence.
Of course, this goes beyond simple bankroll management or statistical research (which are both important in their own right). Instead, this is conceptual stuff that transcends the actual act of sports betting itself.
Case in point: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
These are popular among gamblers not only because they offer the most secure sportsbook transactions and garner the best bonuses, but also because crypto is a very popular method for players betting from all 50 states. Even more enticing is the fact that crypto is a form of gambling unto itself.
When you buy and spend cryptocurrencies, you are helping increase the value of these “coins” as a whole. Indeed, many bettors who deposit with crypto find that their payouts actually increase in value over time as the crypto itself appreciates.
Using or investing in crypto is something all bettors should strongly consider, as it is useful for both risk mitigation and money management.
Yes, you can wager with the stuff, but treating crypto as an investment can be just as profitable – or more profitable – than betting on sports.
Bitcoin betting is popular, but BTC is a first-generation crypto and has some sustainability issues that other virtual currencies have long tried to improve upon.
The most successful next-generation cryptocurrency – and the most attractive one to gamblers and those looking to cash in on a sure thing (with the proviso that there are no sure things) – is Cardano, or ADA.
Why?
Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency platform founded by Charles Hoskinson and IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), has apparently solved the problem inherent in earlier iterations of decentralized, blockchain-based systems.
Today, Bitcoin – while decentralized from government influence – is mined almost exclusively by a handful of major tech companies. In the past, any individual could make money mining BTC on their home computers, but that ship has sailed. Today, it takes massive data centers with millions of dollars of powerful computers to profitably mine Bitcoin.
So Bitcoin is decentralized from government influence, but it is extremely centralized in corporate influence, which is not ideal.
Cardano works differently.
Just yesterday, at 5:00 PM EST, Cardano achieved proof-of-stake (PoS), one of the holy grails of legitimate cryptocurrency platforms.
By hard-forking from the centralized Byron network to the decentralized Shelley network, five years of concept, design, and adoption have come to fruition.
Using the Ouroboros protocol, Cardano is now the first provably secure proof-of-stake cryptocurrency, and it is – in theory – infinitely scalable.
The same way that Bitcoin has a bottleneck, Cardano is an open glass. And for bettors, the main point is that said glass isn’t even close to half full yet. In other words, the stakes are low, with the current market price of ADA averaging about $0.14 per unit. You can still get in on the ground floor.
If you have a few hundred dollars lying around, you might be compelled to wager that cash on some current sporting event or other. But with any such bet, you stand to make a meager return compared against Cardano’s inevitable near-term growth.
Back in January 2018, when Cardano’s peer-reviewed blockchain and stake pool dreams were still years off, the speculation about the benefits of this system led the coin to achieve its all-time high of $1.33 per unit.
The following crypto crash wiped out those gains, but ADA has doubled in value over the last month, and yesterday’s Shelley hard fork is a harbinger of great things to come.
Per Coindesk’s summary of yesterday’s news:
“By implementing Shelley on Cardano’s mainnet, staking pools will now be able to register on the chain visible to token holders, enabling them to delegate to pools immediately once registered. …
The PoS delegation process lets users holding Cardano’s native ADA token commit their tokens to a pool for a share of rewards [i.e. more ADA], which [IOHK] said will incentivize the network to run ‘accurately.’”
Hoskinson himself has high hopes for the immediate future of Cardano now that its biggest hurdle to date has been cleared. He tweeted as much back on Sunday:
This time next year I predict there will be hundreds of assets running on Cardano, thousands of DApps, tons of interesting projects and lots of unique use and utility. 2021 is going to be so much fun watching Cardano grow and evolve. The community is definitely ready to innovate
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 26, 2020
Of course, as with any bet, if you read the responses to the above tweet, there are skeptics and naysayers – that is, people taking the other side of the proposal.
All cryptocurrencies – even proven successes like Bitcoin, Ethereum (also co-founded by Hoskinson), Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin – have their vehement detractors. It can be difficult to separate the hype from the reality, and given crypto’s speculatory nature, it is actually valuable to hear from those who are cold on Cardano.
Remember, this is pure betting like any other, and your goal is to make an informed wager.
That said, we’ve been following Cardano closely for several years (almost since its very inception), and we’re convinced that the Shelley fork is a momentous occasion.
Most cryptocurrencies never achieve – or even approach – the lofty goals peddled to investors early on. ICOs, or initial coin offerings, are notorious for flaming out after their first bump.
However, Cardano has lived up to its timeline expectations so far, and with Shelley going live, one of its biggest challenges has been met. The next page – where it goes from here – is all about where you go from here. Which should be all the way to the bank.
If – or, in our opinion, when – Cardano takes off and forces its way atop the list of the most-traded cryptocurrencies (where it’s currently trending at number eight in global market capitalization), there’s a very good chance that legal sports betting sites and online casinos will adopt it for banking and wagering.
Right now, the best reviewed offshore gambling operators accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ripple, all of which are within the top seven coins. Cardano is right there, and should it be accepted for use at your betting site of choice, you won’t just be able to bet on Cardano, you’ll be able to bet with Cardano!
And vice versa.
Source: Coindesk, Cardano.org
