Crypto gambling sites are facing growing legal pressure.
The past few years have seen a wave of crypto-based casinos and sportsbooks completely flood the market, with total bets at crypto casinos in Q1 2025 alone reaching over $26 billion.
It’s a fast-growing industry, but after a period of what can only be described as a crypto gaming boom, operators are now facing the first signs of legal pressure.
Singapore and Belgium Blacklist ‘Prediction’ Gambling Site Polymarket, While Australia Bans Crypto Gambling Altogether
One of the biggest movements in the crypto gambling space post-2020 has been the rise of Polymarket, known as the world’s largest prediction market, which both Singapore and Belgium have now blacklisted.
The site allows users to bet on future events across a huge range of markets, from “Who Will Trump Pardon in 2025?” to “#1 Searched Person on Google this year?”.
Users stake crypto on these predictions instead of real money and it’s proven to be a huge hit, as The Block’s data shows that Polymarket’s monthly active traders climbed to an all-time high of 477,850 last month.
However, at the start of the year, Singapore and Belgium opted to ban the popular crypto site due to concerns over it being non-compliant with existing gambling laws.
It appears as though more countries are following suit, with The Romanian National Office for Gambling blacklisting Polymarket and stating that it will “not allow the transformation of blockchain into a screen for illegal betting.”
And when it comes to the wider crypto gambling market, Australia has been much more hands-on.
Since 2024, all licensed gambling sites in Australia have been prohibited from accepting crypto payments following an amendment to its Interactive Gambling Act 2001.
What this means is that the crypto gambling market in Australia is now close to non-existent, with many crypto investors still unhappy about the recent regulatory changes.
US Yet to Target Crypto Gambling, But Sweepstakes Casinos Take a Hit
Interestingly, the US has yet to really take a stance on crypto gambling and the activity itself remains largely unregulated.
Sites like Stake and Betpanda have already attracted millions of gamblers in the States, so far proving to be a major hit.
Stake is now the standout player in the crypto gambling space, earning a reported GGR of $4.7 billion in 2024, putting it right up there with some of the wider gambling industry’s biggest names like Flutter ($14B) and Entain ($5B).
The tide is definitely shifting, with Gen Z and Millennial players in particular showing much more of a fondness for crypto-based gambling than traditional real-money betting, which is why sites like Stake are growing at such a rapid pace.
Interestingly, though, no US state directly licenses crypto casinos and regulated sites like FanDuel, BetMGM, and DraftKings have stayed well away from crypto over the years, so this has created a “gray” market where crypto casinos are operating in the US without any real scrutiny.
However, what a growing number of states in the US have decided to do is target sweepstakes casinos, with California, Connecticut, and Montana all recently banning this new type of casino site.
Many sweepstakes casinos readily accept crypto as a deposit option, so it’s an indirect attack on the crypto gambling market.
But the main reason behind the anti-sweepstakes casino movement going on in the US at the moment is more to do with them exploiting legal loopholes using virtual currencies known as ‘Gold Coins’ and ‘Sweeps Coins’.
The recent movement against sweepstakes casinos does prove that crypto casinos could be next, though, so operators will have to wait to see if states turn their attention to them over the coming years, which now seems more likely than ever.
Underground US Crypto Casinos Generated $67.1 Billion in 2024
Crypto gambling sites like Stake may have huge audiences in the US, but the country itself has a huge problem when it comes to underground crypto gambling.
America’s crypto casino black market just generated $67.1 billion in 2024, making it one of the most lucrative underground markets in the entire country.
Yield Sec’s state-by-state analysis found that California and Texas, two states where legal online gambling itself isn’t even permitted, have an illegal market share worth $5.5 billion and $4.5 billion respectively, showing just how concerning the issue is.
This has put traditional gambling companies, many of which struggle to make a profit, in an impossible position, as they spend billions on compliance and taxes while underground crypto gambling sites are raking in money.
You would think that DraftKings and others won’t stand for this much longer, and it will likely reach a breaking point where US regulators are either forced into action or have to sit and watch while the unregulated crypto gambling market in the US completely takes over to the point of no return.
Many Sites Offer No-KYC Requirements, Worsening Regulatory Concerns
There’s also the growing no-KYC controversy, not just in the US but many of the other countries that currently allow crypto casinos to operate.
Bet Panda, Lucky Block, and many other crypto casinos reportedly operate with minimal or no-KYC requirements at all, which is obviously attractive to players who are looking to gamble in complete privacy without any checks.
However, this makes money laundering, underage gambling, and other similar issues much more likely to come to the forefront, again raising concerns that more countries will have to address sooner rather than later.
Why Crypto Gambling Is Hot Right Now and Likely Won’t Disappear
As we head into 2026, it’s reached a point where anywhere between a third to half of all cryptocurrency transactions worldwide are gambling-related.
These transactions are mostly taking place across crypto-based gambling sites, many of which are completely illegal.
The benefits? Aside from increased privacy, casino fans and sports bettors alike get faster transactions, lower fees, and a host of other benefits, so you can’t necessarily blame them for enjoying the crypto gambling space.
A growing number of countries are now banning crypto gambling or, at the very least, starting to take a much closer look at it, though, which is why the expectation is that the US will soon start to crack down on it.
It’s incredibly difficult to regulate a market that’s largely offshore and allows users to gamble with virtual cryptocurrencies not tied to any type of government, so the US and other nations certainly have their work cut out for them.
The goal should, of course, be to encourage the continued growth of cryptocurrencies as a whole — which have provided people with greater financial freedom over the past decade — but the crypto gambling space shouldn’t be allowed to go on unregulated for much longer for the sake of consumer protection.
