Did you lose a boatload of cash on that terrible Tampa Bay game?
Us, too.
And just like that, the Green Bay Packers are now Super Bowl favorites.
Naturally, if you’ve held off on your NFL futures betting for Brady and Co. to drop a bit, now’s the time to go all in.
But first, you’ll want to do that in a way that works best for your bottom line.
In other words, you’ll want to deposit in cryptocurrency.
But which betting-friendly crypto coin is the best option? That’s another matter entirely.
And given that it’s the holiday season, there are even more factors in play when it comes to choosing the best cryptocurrency for online sports gambling.
Normally, those interested in crypto for legal online sports betting make their decisions based on availability, transaction costs, transaction times, and investment potential – in that order.
For example, if you already hodl Bitcoin but nothing else, you’ll probably deposit in Bitcoin for your betting action. Similarly, if you have a bunch of Ethereum but no other cryptos, Ethereum betting deposits will be your go-to. You’ll also be limited by the actual crypto coins your betting site supports.
If you don’t already hodl any crypto and are looking to buy some for the primary purpose of betting sports online, you’ll likely go for an altcoin offering cheaper transactions (i.e. Litecoin, Cardano, Solana, Ripple, Stellar).
And if cost isn’t a concern, then speed probably is. In that case, Cardano, Solana, and Stellar are the best bets.
Finally, if you’re primarily worried about your chosen coin’s investment potential over the medium and long terms, you’ll base your decision on that.
Right now, we’re going to base the order of our top picks on that final point. However, we’re going to focus on short-term investment potential instead of longer-haul propositions.
But there’s a caveat: We’re not basing this list on anything other than our gut feeling. Hey, we’re gamblers, and sometimes you just have to go with your gut. (Had we done that Sunday night, we wouldn’t have taken the Bucs to win outright like we did.).
To determine that potential, the main variable we’re considering right now – the reason we alluded to “the holiday season” above – is Christmas. After all, the holidays are usually when crypto’s at its most bullish.
Of course, there’s another caveat: Thanksgiving usually pushes crypto up, and that definitely didn’t happen this year. Why, then, should Christmas be any different?
After all, the times just before and after Thanksgiving have usually been extremely valuable in the crypto space, as families gather around the table or huddle around the NFL broadcasts and talk about this cool new thing called Bitcoin.
They explain to their relatives what this Bitcoin stuff is all about, how there are lots of “different Bitcoins,” and how they’ve cleared a few grand on a small investment over the past few months. It’s really easy to get started, they say, and they send their loved ones a referral link to Coinbase.
Rinse, repeat.
But this Thanksgiving, the market was caught in something of a sell-off, and prices didn’t climb like we figured they would. For new buyers, that’s a good thing, but if you were banking on that classic Turkey Day bump, you got a Turkey Day dump instead.
Well, don’t be disheartened. It’s very possible that the Christmas bump will be significant.
As with the Thanksgiving holiday, Christmas is a time when the crypto market generally pops off. And that makes sense.
Also working in Christmas crypto’s favor, Thanksgiving isn’t traditionally a time of gift-giving, so there aren’t millions of people getting last-minute bargain-rack greeting cards with hastily scribbled checks or folded 20-dollar bills on the inside.
Plus, Thanksgiving is all about Black Friday and Cyber Monday. People aren’t going to drop a grand on crypto when they’ve been planning all year to drop a grand on last year’s awesome OLED TV (and summarily wasting that grand when they fall asleep with Hulu running and wake up to see that their expensive new TV screen is now permanently burned in with that ever-so-helpful “Are you still watching?” query).
In other words, Christmas is usually even better for crypto than Thanksgiving.
There’s more time over the holiday, there’s more money changing hands, and there’s generally no post-Christmas shopping rush of the same kind we see after the Pilgrimage.
Thus, it’s the perfect time for millions of fence-sitters or budding crypto enthusiasts to buy in and/or buy more.
With that in mind, hype matters more than historical performance for this particular run, which is why our list looks like it does:
- Solana (SOL)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Ripple (XRP)
- Chainlink (LINK)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Stellar (XLM)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Tether (USDT)
- USD Coin (USDC)
Our justification for the above order is pretty simple but again bears repeating: This is predicated entirely on our opinion about how these coins will appreciate in the near term and does not take into consideration any other aspect of the asset in question (i.e. transfer times, blockchain fees, etc.).
Also, this order applies only to the holiday season. After that, we’re almost certainly going to change our outlook.
So, Solana is number one because it’s been the hottest coin all year, which naturally translated into popular Solana sports betting options. It’s gone up something like 20,000% since last year, and the market’s abuzz with Solana news. SOL is also the newest crypto altcoin to be added to the bet funding menus of many top online sportsbooks, casinos, poker rooms, racebooks, etc.
Cardano is number two, despite the fact that FUD peddlers would have you believe SOL has supplanted ADA and that “Cardano is dead.” The current Cardano price – at just $1.30 or so – means you can get a whole lot of coins for your Christmas money, which is a psychological factor that should never be overlooked.
Ethereum – while the slowest and most expensive network – is number three for two reasons. First, it weathered the most recent crypto crash better than all the other top coins. Second, Ethereum 2.0 is going to be rolled out in early 2022, and most of the industry believes a spike in the price of Ethereum will follow ETH 2.0 in short order.
Bitcoin is fourth because it’s Bitcoin, and it remains the number-one crypto investment for the long haul. We honestly could have put this in first place, but remember: We’re only interested in the very near future, here.
Litecoin is fifth and Ripple is sixth, though these could arguably change positions with each other in our book. We gave LTC the edge because it’s much more readily accepted at all legitimate online sportsbooks, and XRP is still delisted from the major exchanges. (You can only easily buy XRP through the Atomic Wallet app if you live in the US.)
Chainlink – at seventh – seems to have kind of dropped off the map after some outsize hype earlier this year, and it’s unclear why. It’s still a top 25 crypto currency, but it’s honestly kind of “meh” at the moment.
Bitcoin Cash is in eighth place. Don’t get us wrong, BCH is still a good investment, but we’re not excited by it like we used to be. And that means that millions of others probably feel the same way.
BCH has been occupying its same stagnant position on the boards for what seems like forever, and it really feels more like a stablecoin these days.
In ninth is Dogecoin. Now, given that we said our list was all about hype in the moment – and given the fact that DOGE has seen incredible gains since last year and now occupies the 12th spot at CoinMarketCap – you might think DOGE should be inside the top three. Well, we’re taking a liberty here.
The price of DOGE may very well spike right after Christmas, but it will be the most short-lived spike of all. DOGE – given its memecoin status – is the most volatile of the top-ranked crypto coins, and we don’t have any confidence about its ability to maintain its position within the industry.
Dogecoin doesn’t do anything, and unless Elon drops another Shiba Inu GIF on his Twitter feed, your money’s better spent elsewhere.
The final two spots are occupied by Tether and USD Coin respectively. These are both stablecoins, which means neither one can increase or decrease in value. Their purpose is to maintain a 1:1 ratio with the US dollar (which, we suppose, means they will actually decrease in value as Bidenflation soars).
But you can still buy these coins and bet with them, and for many people who can’t quite wrap their heads around where crypto “gets its value from,” stablecoins can be a gateway drug (or, for the hopelessly fiat-addicted, a gateway detox).
So there you have it.
This Christmas season, buy the above betting cryptos in the order presented, win your wagers, and keep your payouts in the coins in question.
Happy Hodlidays!
