Three indirect ways investors can play the cryptocurrency craze

Three indirect ways investors can play the cryptocurrency craze

The cryptocurrency craze is quickly going mainstream.

PayPal's peer-to-peer payment service Venmo has started letting users to buy, sell and hold bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash, the next step in PayPal's foray into digital assets.

But in some cases, investors might find more luck with indirect crypto plays than the currencies themselves, two traders told CNBC on Tuesday.

"In this case “” the rush to the mining “” it's better to sell the picks and shovels than necessarily go for the mined asset," Chantico Global founder and CEO Gina Sanchez said on "Trading Nation."

PayPal, for one, will make "extraordinary fees" off Venmo's move, said Sanchez, also chief market strategist at Lido Advisors.

"We own PayPal in our portfolio [at Lido Advisors]. We also own other chip names like Nvidia and Intel," she said. "You need two things to mine bitcoin: you need very powerful computers and you need electricity. Electricity's harder to play, but the chip shortage is easier."

As businesses embrace digital assets, companies that help facilitate crypto transactions could also win out, Strategic Wealth Partners president and CEO Mark Tepper said in the same interview.

"Silvergate's a bank ... that works with all the crypto companies out there. Venmo's allowing its users to