My Mom Doesn’t Want Me Using Bitcoin To Make Bets

I’ve been gambling for a long time, but I don’t have a bookie because I’m afraid of bookies. Bookies are large men that don’t shave and smoke cigarettes. Sure, Dave Chapelle still smokes cigarettes (on SNL no less!) but Dave Chapelle won’t show up at your house unexpectedly and threaten to introduce himself to your wife if you don’t come up with the money you owe him. At least I don’t think Dave Chapelle would do that.

I live in Oregon. Last year, Oregon legalized sports gambling but they only legalized it for pro sports. With the new state sanctioned app, you can place a wager on rugby, darts, cricket, snooker & pool, volleyball, handball, cycling, table tennis, regular tennis, boxing, bandy, golf, MLB, NFL, NBA and the NHL but not college sports. This is a problem because college sports are the best sports to gamble on because not only are you gambling, you’re doing it without the express written consent of the NCAA, one of the evilest legislative bodies in the history of humankind.

So the question is, ‘How does one go about gambling on college sports in a state that doesn’t allow gambling on college sports?’ According to my intensive five-minute Google research, there are two options. I can drive 60 miles to the nearest Native American owned casino or I can open an account with an overseas casino like Bovada and delve into the disorienting world of Bitcoin.

How Far Are You Willing To Drive To Place A Bet?

 Nothing makes a gambler feel like more of a degenerate than driving to a casino 60 miles away from your house to place a bet. That’s two hours of your life you’ll never get back. Think of what you could do with those 120 minutes. You could make a few hundred turkey sandwiches to feed the homeless in your city. You could practice the violin. You could read a New Yorker article. Maybe. You could watch four episodes of The Mandalorian or two episodes of The Queen’s Gambit.

Don’t get me wrong. I like going for the occasional long drive and listening to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast comparing the cafeteria food at Bowdoin to the cafeteria food at Vasser to highlight the discrepancies in financial aid given to minority students as much as the next guy. But when you go all that way AND the casino places a limit on the amount you can wager, it seems a bit much.

To make matters worse, what happens if you drive all that way and then you lose the bet? This happened to me last year, pre-COVID. We were staying with friends on the Oregon coast and I was a mere 15 minutes away from the Chinook Winds casino. On the way home I made a quick detour and bet $500 on a college basketball moneyline parlay needing Kentucky and Gonzaga to win. Kentucky won easily but Gonzaga lost, on the road, at BYU. I think it was the Zags first loss of the season. Nothing is worse than driving out of your way to place a $500 parlay and losing to BYU. BYU! They’re the only college basketball team in America that features middle-aged, balding white guys because a majority of their players recently returned from Mormon missions. Watching BYU play basketball is like watching a pickup game at LA Fitness around 1:30 on a Tuesday. It sucks and I’m never driving to Chinook Woods again. Ever. Unless I do.

Am I Bitcoin Material?

The other option to gamble on college sports in my state involves Bitcoin. As an investor, I never bought into the whole Bitcoin thing. For starters, it seems like there are far too many great companies in America, and around the world, to invest in and make money on. Why would I want to spend time trying to strike it rich using an alternate means of currency that seeks to undermine our current financial system? And yes, I’ve read all about how Bitcoin was designed and how an open source peer-to-peer network with no central authority is much more secure than our current system.

That’s all fine and dandy. But it doesn’t change the fact that when I downloaded the Bvoda app, opened an account and started reading about how I would have to deposit and receive payments, the whole Bitcoin thing made my head spin. It seems incredibly complicated, dirty and, somehow, un-American.

First you have to open a separate Bitcoin account on some other planet. Then you have to figure out a way to fund that Bitcoin account with real money. But wait, isn’t Bitcoin real money? So if Bitcoin is real money, why do I need real money to get the Bitcoin money? Then you have to have your mom or dad co-sign for your new Bitcoin account. Then you have to explain to your wife why you’re so addicted to gambling that you need to start trading Bitcoin to fund tour gambling habit.

I don’t want to do any of this! I don’t want to have to trust a new form of digital currency and get in bed with the Russians. I don’t know why, but I feel like someway, somehow, the Russians are getting rich off cryptocurrency. Maybe I’m old school but I’m still perfectly fine with the American dollar and the financial system we’ve been using for the past century. I just want to make a few small bets on college sports from the state of Oregon. Is that too much to ask?