Some 83% of US bettors wish to use crypto when making online wagers with sportsbooks, according to Paysafe’s ‘All the Ways Players Pay: Crypto Edition’ report.
The report gathered survey responses from 2,550 individuals who are either active bettors or intend to bet within the next 12 months.
Bettors from Wyoming and Colorado were surveyed as part of the report, two states in which crypto deposits are permitted and 45% and 59% of respondents, respectively, said they had made use of that availability.
The report suggested that across the whole of the US, around 64% of active bettors possess crypto, so those wagers in Wyoming and Colorado demonstrate just a small fraction of the total trading potential.
Participants in Florida, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Virginia were all part of the report, with crypto deposits banned in all but the last two.
Regulations in Illinois and Virginia allow for permission to be granted to operators in certain cases – this is also the case in Kentucky and New Hampshire, and in all of these four jurisdictions, DraftKings has been permitted to support crypto-to-cash deposits.
Away from traditional sportsbooks, crypto is also an important piece of how many prediction markets operate.
Polymarket users, for instance, trade exclusively with crypto, and the company has recently started rolling out its platform to waitlisted users across the US after a four-year absence.
Appetite for making crypto deposits
Regardless of its potential use in betting, around 30% of adults in America own one or more cryptocurrencies.
Among active sports bettors, this figure surges to 64%.
In terms of how that equates to bettors’ interest in using them to actually fund wagers, those hard figures of 45% and 59% from Wyoming and Colorado offer the strongest evaluation.
But of the 2,550 active and prospective sports bettors surveyed for Paysafe’s study, around four in five (83%) suggested they are to some extent interested in using crypto to fund their bets.
Interestingly, in those two states where crypto deposits are allowed, interest was reported as the lowest, at 75% and 76%.
Of all the states surveyed, the appetite was strongest in New York at 92%.
This could indicate that the harder crypto uptake figures seen in Wyoming and Colorado would be even higher if the same rules were in place in the Empire State.
CFTC influence
Michael Selig’s leadership of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has seen the financial regulator take a more sympathetic stance towards crypto innovation.
For instance, the CFTC has reassured Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs) that they can accept stablecoins as margin for derivatives transactions.
Previous chair Caroline Pham also played a significant role in beginning the more permissive trajectory of the regulator.
And though the CFTC has no authority to regulate use of crypto for deposits and withdrawals in traditional state-regulated sportsbooks, there is clear user crossover between bettors and prediction market traders.
Interestingly, Pham is now chief legal officer at MoonPay, a fintech company that has powered Paysafe’s own ‘Pay with Crypto’ solution for wagering with cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.
This product was launched in April 2026 to help iGaming and DFS brands’ customers to fund their player accounts with their preferred cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin, Ethereum and USD Coin make up the three most popular coins, but participants in the study reported owning more than 10 other digital assets on top of those.
The more complex the landscape of coins and currencies becomes, the trickier it will be to implement and integrate the frameworks and tools that make them work for operators.
And with appetite for crypto deposits seemingly ever-increasing, the industry will be paying close attention to whether state regulators feel compelled to follow the CFTC’s permissive example.
Paysafe suggests that operators getting ahead of the curve by upgrading their cashier solutions to accommodate crypto will give them “a competitive edge.”