83% of US Bettors Want Crypto Deposits, So Why Can’t They Use Them?

A landmark survey of 2,000 US online sports bettors has produced the sharpest demand signal the cryptocurrency payments industry has seen in years. Paysafe found that 83% of respondents said they would use cryptocurrency to fund sportsbook wagers if the law permitted it, a figure so large it crosses from “emerging preference” into “structural misalignment between consumer behavior and the regulatory environment.”

The gap between that 83% demand reading and the reality of US state law is not a gap that will close on its own. It reflects a collision between the rapid normalization of cryptocurrency ownership among younger American consumers, the commercial ambitions of a licensed sports betting industry now operating in 38 states, and a patchwork of gaming regulations written before Bitcoin was a household word. Understanding who benefits when that gap finally closes, and what stands in the way, is the subject of this research.

The Survey And What It Actually Measures

Paysafe released its full research on June 1, using a sample of 2,000 US adults who self-identified as online sports bettors. The headline figure, 83% expressing willingness to use cryptocurrency for sportsbook deposits when permitted, is striking on its face. But the survey’s deeper architecture reveals something more precise than a simple preference poll.

Paysafe segmented respondents by age, frequency of betting, and existing cryptocurrency ownership. Among bettors aged 21 to 35, the willingness figure rose above 90%, while daily or near-daily bettors showed disproportionate interest in faster settlement speeds and lower transaction fees. Those two features, speed and cost, are the practical drivers behind the headline number.

> “83% of US bettors are keen to use cryptocurrency to fund wagers with online sportsbooks, when permitted,” Paysafe said in its June 1 press release, adding that the research signals a potential transformation of US online sports betting payment infrastructure.

What the survey also measures, indirectly, is the degree to which cryptocurrency ownership has already penetrated the sports betting demographic. A 2025 report by PYMNTS Intelligence and BitPay found that 27% of US adults held some form of digital asset, a figure that rises to nearly 40% among adults under 40. Sports bettors skew younger and more male than the general population, meaning this cohort has cryptocurrency exposure rates well above the national average. The survey is not measuring a hypothetical. It is measuring a suppressed real preference.

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The US Sports Betting Market In Numbers

Before the payment layer can be understood, the size and shape of the underlying market must be established. The American Gaming Association reported that US sports betting gross gaming revenue reached $13.7 billion in 2025, up from $10.9 billion in 2024, a 26% year-on-year increase. Legal sports wagering is now available in 38 states plus the District of Columbia, following the Supreme Court’s 2018 Murphy v. NCAA ruling that struck down the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act.

The market is dominated by three operators. DraftKings (DKNG), FanDuel (owned by Flutter Entertainment (FLUT)), and BetMGM (a joint venture between MGM Resorts International (MGM) and Entain (ENT)) collectively hold roughly 80% of the US market by revenue. Each of these operators processes hundreds of millions of deposits annually, overwhelmingly through ACH bank transfers, credit cards, and branded prepaid solutions.

> The US sports betting market generated $13.7 billion in gross gaming revenue in 2025, and is projected to exceed $19 billion by 2028 according to Statista forecasts, making it one of the fastest-growing regulated gambling markets globally.

The current payment stack has well-documented friction. ACH transfers can take 24 to 72 hours to clear. Credit card deposits are frequently declined by card networks or trigger cash-advance fees for consumers. Chargebacks cost operators an estimated $150 million annually in the US market alone, according to payment fraud consultancy Chargebacks911. Cryptocurrency, specifically stablecoins and Bitcoin (BTC) with Lightning Network routing, would eliminate most of those friction points.

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Where Crypto Deposits Are Legal, And Where They Are Not

The legal landscape for cryptocurrency sports betting deposits in the United States is a product of state gaming commission rules, not federal statute. No federal law explicitly prohibits cryptocurrency as a funding method for licensed gambling. The restriction comes from the conditions attached to state operating licenses, which typically enumerate permitted payment methods. Cryptocurrency does not appear on most of those lists.

As of May 2026, the states with the broadest permissive language toward crypto deposits in licensed sports betting include Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. Nevada’s Gaming Control Board has the most developed framework, having issued guidance in 2024 that permits licensed operators to accept Bitcoin and certain stablecoins, subject to anti-money-laundering controls and real-time fiat conversion at the point of receipt. Colorado and Wyoming follow a similar model, requiring that crypto be converted to fiat before it counts as a formal deposit.

> New Jersey, the second-largest US sports betting market by revenue, still prohibits direct cryptocurrency deposits under its Division of Gaming Enforcement rules, despite multiple operator petitions filed since 2022.

The contrast between Wyoming’s permissive stance and New Jersey’s prohibition illustrates how commercially incoherent the current patchwork is. New Jersey operators process more than $1.2 billion in monthly handle and serve a customer base with cryptocurrency ownership rates above the national average given the state’s proximity to New York financial markets. The Division of Gaming Enforcement has been cautious, citing consumer protection concerns and the compliance complexity of on-chain KYC, but that caution carries a direct revenue cost.

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Why Operators Have Been Slow To Push For Change

Given the demand signal and the friction in existing payment rails, the natural question is why major operators have not lobbied more aggressively for crypto deposit permissions. The answer involves a combination of regulatory risk management, banking relationships, and the specific economics of the US market licensing structure.

Licensed sportsbooks in the United States operate under conditions of extreme regulatory scrutiny. A license in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Michigan is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and takes years to obtain. Operators are deeply reluctant to jeopardize those licenses by associating themselves with a payment method that regulators view skeptically. The reputational risk of a headline about money laundering through a crypto sportsbook deposit, even a hypothetical one, outweighs the incremental deposit revenue in most compliance officers’ calculus.

> Major US sportsbook operators collectively spent an estimated $6.2 billion on marketing and promotions in 2024 and 2025 combined, according to industry tracker PlayUSA, but allocated a fraction of their lobbying budgets to crypto payment rail advocacy.

There is also the banking relationship problem. Operators maintain direct deposit-processing relationships with major US banks, and those banks have historically been cold toward cryptocurrency. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Bank of America (BAC) both issued internal guidance as recently as 2024 discouraging clients from routing gambling revenue through crypto-adjacent accounts. For operators, upsetting those banking relationships to enable a payment method that regulators may not approve is a poor trade.

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The Stablecoin Variable That Changes The Calculation

The cryptocurrency payment debate in sports betting has been complicated by an important distinction that most regulatory discussions have not yet fully absorbed. Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) carry price volatility that creates genuine accounting and consumer protection complexity for gambling operators. A bettor who deposits 0.01 BTC when Bitcoin is priced at $82,000 and withdraws after a price drop faces a different real-money outcome than the nominal balance on their account implies. That is a legitimate consumer harm vector.

Stablecoins, particularly USD-pegged instruments like USD Coin (USDC) (issued by Circle) and Tether (USDT) (issued by Tether), eliminate the volatility problem entirely. A deposit of $100 in USDC is $100 in the operator’s account within seconds, with no conversion risk and no price exposure. The settlement is final, the fee is a fraction of a cent on established blockchain infrastructure, and the transaction is fully auditable on-chain.

> Circle’s USDC processed more than $11 trillion in on-chain settlement volume in 2025 according to Circle’s annual transparency report, demonstrating that stablecoin infrastructure already operates at a scale that dwarfs the entire US sports betting market.

The passage of federal stablecoin legislation in the United States, which passed the Senate in May 2026 and awaits House reconciliation, directly improves the regulatory legitimacy of USDC and USDT as payment instruments. State gaming commissions that have been reluctant to approve “cryptocurrency” deposits may find it considerably easier to approve deposits in a federally regulated stablecoin. The legislative calendar is therefore not peripheral to the sports betting payments story. It is central to it.

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The Unbanked And Underbanked Bettor Opportunity

One of the most underappreciated dimensions of the Paysafe survey is what it implies about access, rather than preference. Approximately 5.6 million US adults remain unbanked, meaning they have no checking or savings account, according to the FDIC’s most recent National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households published in 2024. A further 18.7 million are underbanked, meaning they have a bank account but still rely on alternative financial services for day-to-day transactions.

Sports betting is not a product used only by affluent, fully banked consumers. Survey data consistently shows high sports betting participation among lower-income brackets, particularly for lower-stakes parlay wagers on major events. Yet ACH and card-based deposit rails functionally exclude unbanked consumers from licensed sportsbook participation. Those consumers either bet illegally with offshore books, bet with unlicensed street-level operators, or do not bet at all.

> The FDIC estimates that unbanked and underbanked US adults collectively number 24.3 million, a population whose access to licensed sports betting is currently limited almost entirely by the absence of cryptocurrency deposit rails.

Cryptocurrency wallets have no requirement for a bank account. A bettor with a self-custodied wallet holding stablecoins can, in principle, deposit into a licensed sportsbook with the same friction level as a bettor with a Chase checking account. This is the access argument for crypto deposits, and it is a materially different argument from the “speed and fees” case that appeals to high-frequency bettors. From a regulatory standpoint, expanding access for unbanked bettors to licensed, regulated books is precisely the consumer protection argument that gaming commissions say they want to advance.

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International Precedents And What They Teach

The US is not operating in an informational vacuum on this question. Multiple regulated gambling jurisdictions have already navigated the question of cryptocurrency deposits, and their experiences provide a direct evidence base for US state regulators.

The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA), which oversees one of the world’s largest concentrations of licensed online gambling operators, updated its Virtual Financial Assets framework in 2023 to explicitly permit licensed operators to accept cryptocurrency deposits, subject to mandatory real-time conversion to euro and enhanced source-of-funds checks for deposits above $2,500. No MGA-licensed operator has faced a money-laundering enforcement action attributable specifically to the crypto deposit channel since the framework went live.

The UK Gambling Commission has taken a more cautious path, requiring operators to verify the source of cryptocurrency funds above $1,800 equivalent and prohibiting the use of credit to purchase cryptocurrency for gambling purposes. That rule, which came into force in 2024, has reduced the volume of crypto deposits in the UK market but has not eliminated them. The Commission’s published data through March 2026 shows licensed crypto gambling deposits account for approximately 2.4% of total UK online gambling deposit value.

> The Malta Gaming Authority’s regulated crypto deposit framework has operated without a major money-laundering enforcement action for more than two years, providing the most direct evidence base for US regulators considering similar rules.

The Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission went further, permitting crypto-native sportsbooks to operate with no mandatory fiat conversion, provided they maintain reserves in stablecoins. That model is unlikely to transfer directly to US state law, but it demonstrates the outer boundary of what regulated crypto gambling can look like.

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Anti-Money-Laundering Risk, The Argument That Keeps Regulators Cautious

The most substantive regulatory concern about cryptocurrency sports betting deposits is not consumer price exposure or accounting complexity. It is anti-money-laundering risk, specifically the use of sports betting as a layering mechanism, the second stage of money laundering in which illicit funds are moved through a series of transactions to obscure their origin.

The argument runs as follows. A bad actor acquires Bitcoin from a darknet marketplace or ransomware operation. They deposit that Bitcoin into a licensed sportsbook. They place a small number of low-risk bets, accepting small losses, and then withdraw as a fiat check or ACH transfer. The funds have now been “laundered” through a regulated institution and arrive in a bank account with a gambling operator as the originating source. This is a recognized typology in Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidance.

> FATF’s 2023 update to its guidance on virtual assets identified online gambling as one of eight high-risk sectors for cryptocurrency-enabled money laundering, a designation that directly shapes how US state gaming commissions approach crypto deposit proposals.

The response from the pro-crypto side of this argument is that on-chain transactions are actually more traceable than cash, and in many cases more traceable than ACH transfers. Blockchain analytics firms including Chainalysis and Elliptic provide real-time transaction monitoring that can flag wallets associated with darknet markets, sanctions lists, or ransomware addresses before a deposit clears. That capability does not exist for cash deposits or even ACH. The question for regulators is whether they trust those tools enough to rely on them in a licensed gambling context, and the answer so far has been cautious.

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Which Operators And Platforms Are Best Positioned

Assuming regulatory conditions shift in favor of crypto deposits across a larger number of US states over the next 12 to 24 months, the question of commercial positioning becomes critical. Not all operators are equally ready to absorb a crypto payment integration.

DraftKings has the most developed public posture toward cryptocurrency of the major US operators. The company began accepting Bitcoin for deposits in several states in 2023 and has since expanded that offering to additional jurisdictions as state rules have permitted. DraftKings also launched a non-fungible token product line in 2022, giving its engineering and compliance teams early familiarity with blockchain-adjacent infrastructure. The company’s scale, its 2025 annual report showed 3.4 million monthly unique payers, means even a marginal conversion of existing users to crypto payment rails would represent a significant volume shift.

FanDuel has been more conservative, reflecting parent company Flutter’s cautious global posture on cryptocurrency. Flutter operates in the UK, Australia, and Italy, all markets where crypto gambling regulations are either restrictive or still forming. A systemic change in US state law would likely accelerate FanDuel’s timeline, but without that external trigger, the company is unlikely to move first.

> DraftKings reported 3.4 million monthly unique payers in its 2025 annual report, and even a 10% conversion of that base to crypto deposit rails would place it among the largest cryptocurrency payment processors in US consumer finance.

The wildcard is the pure-play cryptocurrency sportsbook category. Platforms including Stake, Cloudbet, and BC.Game serve global markets from offshore jurisdictions and accept cryptocurrency natively, without fiat conversion. These platforms cannot legally serve US users under current law, but they represent the product template that US-licensed operators would be approximating if state laws change. Their existing user experience, including instant deposits, instant withdrawals in stablecoins, and no-chargebacks, sets the consumer expectation that licensed US books would need to match.

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What A Realistic Timeline Looks Like

The 83% demand figure from Paysafe does not translate into 83% of US bettors using crypto deposits within 12 months. The path from consumer preference to market reality runs through a series of structural bottlenecks, each with its own timeline.

The most immediate bottleneck is state-level regulatory action. For a large-market state like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Illinois to permit crypto deposits, its Division of Gaming Enforcement or Gaming Control Board must first publish proposed rules, accept public comment, allow operators to respond, and then issue final guidance. That cycle typically takes 12 to 18 months from first proposal to enforcement. New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement has not yet published a formal notice of proposed rulemaking on crypto deposits as of June 2026, meaning the earliest realistic approval window in that state is mid-2027 at the optimistic end.

The federal stablecoin legislation is the second variable. If the GENIUS Act or its House counterpart passes with language that explicitly classifies regulated stablecoins as permissible instruments under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act’s payment processing provisions, the legal basis for state gaming commissions to approve stablecoin deposits becomes substantially clearer. Without that federal clarity, each state commission must make its own legal determination, compounding the timeline.

> A state like New Jersey completing a full regulatory rulemaking cycle typically requires 12 to 18 months from notice of proposed rulemaking to final enforcement, meaning the earliest realistic large-market approval window for crypto sportsbook deposits is mid-2027.

The third variable is operator investment. Integrating a compliant cryptocurrency deposit rail requires engineering work, compliance staff with blockchain analytics expertise, and new banking relationships with crypto-friendly custodians. DraftKings has already done most of this work. For smaller regional operators, the upfront cost is a genuine barrier. Estimates from payment integration firms suggest a full-compliance crypto deposit integration for a mid-size US sportsbook costs between $2 million and $4 million, including ongoing monitoring infrastructure.

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Conclusion

The Paysafe survey’s 83% figure is the most concrete demand-side data point the crypto payments industry has produced in the context of US regulated gambling. It is not a prediction market or a price signal. It is a direct statement of consumer intent from a sample large enough to be statistically meaningful. That signal exists in tension with a regulatory architecture that was not designed with cryptocurrency in mind and that is changing slowly and unevenly across 38 licensed states.

The structural case for crypto sportsbook deposits is compelling on multiple dimensions: faster settlement, lower fees, elimination of chargebacks, and expanded access for unbanked bettors. The stablecoin maturation story, backed by Circle’s $11 trillion in 2025 on-chain settlement volume, has specifically addressed the volatility objection that most regulators cite first. What remains is the anti-money-laundering question, and on that front the international evidence from Malta and the UK is broadly supportive of a managed, monitored crypto deposit framework.

The commercial winners when this regulatory gap closes will be the operators with early crypto infrastructure investment, the payment processors with compliant stablecoin rails already built, and the blockchain analytics firms whose tools will be mandatory compliance requirements for every licensed book that goes live. The timeline is not months. It is more likely two to four years for meaningful multi-state penetration. The demand, as Paysafe’s data makes clear, will not be the constraint.

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Murtuza Merchant

Consulting Editor

Murtuza is a seasoned finance journalist with extensive experience covering cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. He has contributed to Benzinga and Cointelegraph, among other publications, reporting on emerging trends, the regulatory landscape, and more. Find him at @murtuza_merc on Twitter and mmerchant001 on Telegram. Disclosure: Murtuza holds ATOM, AKT, TIA, INJ, and OSMO.