CloudBet Review

Until there’s a Swiss army knife of bitcoin sports betting sites, we’ll all likely be using more than one. Today I added CloudBet.com to my betting shortcuts.

There are a number of metrics to evaluate when you’re picking a gambling site. It can be almost as hard as picking your bet itself.

Well, there’s anonymity vs. trust (don’t forget — with bitcoin there are no chargebacks!), payout speed, liquidity or bankroll, the various sports and bets offered by the site, the vig or the juice, user comfort with the site’s usability and finally, look-and-feel… These are all important.

CloudBet.com shows potential. Perhaps it’s not as anonymous as bitcoin can be: they require a login, then an email confirmation, after which you can deposit. But at least your deposit will show even though it’s unconfirmed, and you can still place bets. Plus, a new address is generated for each deposit, which is a modicum of anonymity.

As a result of requiring a login, the sportsbook does offer promotional considerations, which would be otherwise impossible. For example, they will double your first deposit.

Haha! You thought they were going to double your first deposit! Well they are, but you need “loyalty points” first, which are accrued as you bet, using a formula based on odds and bet amount. For more details, see the site. You can also reach them by facebook or twitter for clarification.

A large variety of sports are offered. This is the first site I’ve seen with any golf, snooker, floorball, handball, or volleyball. The men’s basketball isn’t just the NBA. There’s also FIBA’s EuroLeague, which includes — I kid you not — FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and FC Bayern Munich. I spot-checked the odds for two random games, and they were in the same ballpark as two other sites I compared to, which eases my mind as a bettor.

There is some learning curve. I’m not ashamed to say that I had to google “Double Chance” (only to find out that I was calling it something else). Also, even though they tweeted about moneyline bets on the Super Bowl, the tweet links to spread bets of +/- 2.

Speaking of the NFL, where are the Super Bowl moneyline bets? Where are the over/unders? Should I be at all worried that CloudBet calls it “American Football”? They tweeted World Cup bets, but the link had no bets available. (I was going to put 1 mBTC on the USMNT. Just in case.)

The site’s preferences allow you to view your games with local times instead of UTC times, as well as choose your odds (American, decimal, or fractional). These preferences, your wallet history and bet history are all one click away. The site generally seems pretty slick, and though perhaps it’s more complicated than it needs to be, eventually you get where you’re going.