This holiday season, BetOnline is gifting members a brand-new deposit method in their virtual stockings: TRON (TRX).
And because BetOnline is an all-in-one gambling site, that means you can finally have access to a full slate of legit TRON gambling. This includes TRON casino gambling, TRON sports betting, TRON online poker, and even TRON horse racing betting.
And it’s about time.
We’ve been waiting for TRX coins to be supported for a couple years now, given its status as a top-20 cryptocurrency practically since its 2017-2018 launch.
That said, we’re a bit surprised that support rolled out during 2022.
Of course, if anyone was going to launch TRON gambling this year, it was going to be the BetOnline Casino, Sportsbook, and Poker Room.
Already the leader in cryptocurrency banking options with nearly 20 different supported coins, BetOnline clearly isn’t in the habit of resting on its laurels when it comes to adding even more cryptos to its portfolio.
While such an addition might seem trivial to non-crypto users who think “Bitcoin is Bitcoin is Bitcoin,” it’s actually a pretty big deal to those in the know.
The main takeaway: BetOnline has continued adding to its roster of supported coins even during the 2022 crypto crash, which shows that the site is all in on crypto as a legitimate long-term deposit and payout option.
We can’t say the same for many other highly-rated operators.
Why Sites Abandoned Altcoin Deposit Methods During 2022
Unfortunately, several legit betting sites actually scrapped support for several of their altcoins (aka non-Bitcoin cryptos) during the current bear market.
To be clear, we understand this temporary move on a financial basis. And it’s hard to take too much issue with it, despite its customer-unfriendly positioning.
On paper, it’s sensible to drop support for coins trading very low for two reasons.
note: The next two sections are h3s because theyre nested within this h2. More h2 sections will continue later down the page.
What Goes Up…
First, those values are virtually guaranteed to spike. When said spike happens, it’ll happen with neither rhyme nor reason, and it’ll happen quickly.
That lack of predictability comes with more risk than many online betting sites are willing to take on.
Let’s say you buy Cardano at $0.30 and deposit $100 worth. That’s about 323 ADA coins. Your deposit gets credited as Bitcoin/milliBitcoin (mBTC). At the current Bitcoin price ($17,200), that means your 323 ADA gets you 0.0058 BTC – or 5.8 mBTC.
Now, let’s say you go on to gamble with that stack at your site of choice. You win some, you lose some, and you walk away with the same exact amount of mBTC (5.8) in your balance as before.
If the Bitcoin price is higher than $17,200 when you withdraw your winnings, you made money despite breaking even!
Even better, if you lose half your stack but the price of BTC doubles, you still make money!
(But, of course, so would your site, so that’s a specific outcome they’d actually be OK with. And if this was the only risk your site had to take, they’d certainly take it.)
…Must Come Down
All that said, there’s an even bigger risk with supporting crypto during a bear market. This comprises the second reason cited above:
The coins could lose even more value before going back up.
Here's a hypothetical to explain why these sites really got rid of the majority of their crypto menus in 2022:
Let’s say you deposit the same amount of Cardano cited above: $100, or 323 ADA at $0.30 per coin. You convert it all to milliBitcoin (5.8 mBTC), and you make your bets.
While that mBTC is in your account, the Bitcoin price tanks.
Now you have twice as much Bitcoin, or 11.6 mBTC. You make the same small wagers you always made, you break even, and you withdraw that full 11.6 mBTC.
During all this – whether before or after you withdraw your Bitcoin – the BTC price skyrockets. For argument’s sake, let’s say it hits its all-time high of $62,000.
Now, that $100 of Bitcoin you gambled with – and broke even with – is worth not just $100, it’s worth $720. Because betting sites profit on their crypto takes the same way an investor does (i.e. when the price goes up), this is a bad beat for any operator.
And it’d be multitudes worse if you actually won more than you lost and took home an apples-to-apples profit.
Great for the player, bad for the house.
We Don’t Like It, But We Get It
Given the above uncertainties, it’s really not surprising that many sites wanted to avoid those contingencies wholesale, even at the risk of missing out on potential positive outcomes for their own bottom lines.
Big picture, we’re in a big crypto dip, and these sites are more likely to lose than win. In such dips, most outcomes favor the crypto gambler, not the crypto gambling house.
Of course, some of the best reviewed gambling sites are big enough – and established enough – to navigate bear markets without dropping support for the coins they accept.
And in BetOnline’s case, the site is positioned such that it can actually add more crypto options to its betting menu during these downturns.
That’s why they’ve finally added TRON.
But Why Did BetOnline Choose TRON Specifically?
To be sure, there are several top-rated cryptos that BetOnline doesn’t support – at least, not yet.
As of this writing, the site’s non-supported options from the top-25 cryptos include the following (ticker symbol and current rank in parentheses):
- Binance USD (BUSD, 6)
- Polkadot (DOT, 11)
- Dai (DAI, 12)
- Uniswap (UNI, 17)
- UNUS SED LEO (LEO, 19)
- Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC, 20)
- Cosmos (ATOM, 22)
- Monero (XMR, 23)
- Ethereum Classic (ETC, 24)
- Toncoin (TON, 25)
Now, in the case of BUSD and DAI, those are stablecoins. Since most legit betting sites already support Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), there’s not a great need to support more stable coins.
Plus, stablecoins carry no profit potential for player or house, so we don’t really recommend them for online gambling, anyway.
As for WBTC, this is just Bitcoin packaged and delivered (i.e. “tokenized”) on the Ethereum network. As such, it’s designed for trading, not actual use to purchase goods or services.
Monero also seems like a nonstarter, given its pop culture “ties” – however unjustified – to the “dark web.”
But as for Polkadot, Uniswap, Cosmos, and Ethereum Classic, we think these will eventually be added to the BetOnline crypto banking roster.
That said, TRON was the first new altcoin to make the cut – and to make it during the big 2022 crypto downturn – thanks to its performance during that very downturn.
TRON Outperformed All Other Top Cryptos In 2022
It’s this simple: TRON actually lost less of its value during the 2022 crypto crash than any other major coin.
Out of every single coin BetOnline supports, TRON performed better this year. While the coin still lost 44.44% of its value, that was substantially less than the next crypto on the list.
Here are the year-over-year losses (December 2021-December 2022) for each BetOnline crypto banking option, ranked from smallest decline to largest decline:
- TRON (TRX): -44.44%
- Binance Coin (BNB): -51.04%
- Dogecoin (DOGE): -52.38%
- Ripple (XRP): -62.00%
- Litecoin (LTC): -65.16%
- Polygon (MATIC): -71.53%
- Bitcoin (BTC): -71.75%
- Stellar (XLM): -73.53%
- Ethereum (ETH): -74.44%
- Chainlink (LINK): -75.91%
- ApeCoin (APE): −79.92%
- Shiba Inu (SHIB): -80.00%
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH): -81.33%
- Cardano (ADA): -82.56%
- Avalanche (AVAX): -90.10%
- Solana (SOL): -94.38%
The crypto crash is real. It’s by no means the worst crypto crash ever, but it’s a definite crash.
That said, we also think each coin above will come roaring back to eventually eclipse its all-time high.
But so do the betting sites, and many aren’t willing to take that risk right now.
Except for BetOnline.
And now it’s up to you to take advantage of that.
Pro-Tip: For those TRON holders who are pessimistic about the asset and think it’s headed into a death spiral a la Terra LUNA, betting with TRON at BetOnline also makes sense. Remember, TRON deposits get credited to your account as BTC/mBTC, which – if you’re worried – is the safest crypto there is.
