- Barely any traditional bookmakers offer Bitcoin price odds
- Most don’t understand the market enough to bother
- Market is so manipulated that it would be like offering odds on a fixed match but not knowing which way
Trading Bitcoin can sometimes seem like a gamble, but for those who actually want to bet on the Bitcoin price with a licensed bookmaker, what are the options out there? Few and far between is the answer – very few bookmakers offer future Bitcoin price odds, and the reasons are pretty simple, and understandable.
Bitcoin Price Odds Hard to Find
Bitcoin price odds come under the ‘novelty’ section of the bookmaker’s playbook, meaning that most times you will have to enquire and see if they will entertain you. This is backed up by a quick glance at well known odds comparison site oddschecker, which shows that there is only one open market for Bitcoin, it’s price at the end of 2020, and only one bookmaker offers odds on it:
Currently, Betway is the only bookmaker on oddschecker offering Bitcoin price odds, and it’s good news for Bitcoin bulls – if you think Bitcoin will be hovering at all-time highs by the end of the year, you can get very nice odds of 8/1. The most likely option, according to the bookmaker, is for Bitcoin to be between $5,000 and $7,500 by the end of the year, requiring at least a $2,000 drop between now and then.
Interestingly, the incessant slew of negativity in the mainstream media about Bitcoin doesn’t seem to have translated to the bookmakers, with the odds of Bitcoin being under $1,000 by the end of 2020 being the longest offered, at 16/1.
Bookmakers Don’t Like the Unknown
So why are bookmakers reluctant to offer Bitcoin price odds? Simply, it comes down to product knowledge. Bookmakers understand the intricacies of horse racing, football, boxing, and baseball. They know who is in form and who isn’t, who’s playing at home and who’s not, who’s physically in better condition – they have stacks of data on hand on which to draw when creating their odds.
When it comes to Bitcoin, there are too many factors for which data is not available. Traditional bookmakers don’t have the expertise on hand to analyze Bitcoin, and even if they did they are looking weeks or even months in advance. They also know the market is heavily manipulated but they have no more information than that. It would be like asking them to offer odds for a World Series where they knew the matches were fixed but didn’t know which way.
If you really do want to bet on the future Bitcoin price, you might have more luck asking a bookmaker to make you odds further into the future – say 2-5 years. The chances are they’ll say no, but you’re more likely to get a price than anything generally available on the market.
