Whenever a new piece of technology is adopted, a new industry formed, or some new territory opened up for development, pockets of opportunity appear with a Wild West mentality. Since bitcoin hit the scene in 2009, crypto has become one of the biggest changes to the way people conduct financial transactions. Proponents of crypto rap enthusiastically over an anonymous, decentralised currency, under the control of no government that can be sent anywhere in the world quickly and cheaply with zero oversight.
The problem is crypto’s attributes are also being exploited by the outlaws in this new arena for their own gain. None more so than Stake, an online casino that repeatedly pops up on the radar for all the wrong reasons. Famously, Stake has helped destroy casino streaming on Twitch by sponsoring fake streamers, leading to a major backlash from viewers and other content creators. Such was the negativity that Twitch finally stepped in to ban the sharing of links and referral codes from several of the platform’s gambling channels.
Twitch’s rule change may help lessen traffic to sites like Stake, but in many ways, the damage has already been done. Stake’s name is still out there, all over the place, incredibly as a main sponsor of Watford FC and an official betting partner of the UFC. The casino is popular amongst players who want to gamble anonymously using crypto, with minimum KYC and nationality discrimination. Some are probably legit players, but others take advantage of these ‘benefits’ because they would not be able to gamble at legit casinos otherwise due to age, jurisdictional laws, or various legal reasons such as where the funds came from.
In fact, many online articles point wannabe players in the direction of casinos that do not have KYC or advise users how to avoid KYC requests. One tip is to keep transactions small to avoid hitting KYC request thresholds. It appears this does not apply at Stake when gambling with crypto, highlighted in a recent Reddit post about a huge loss incurred there. Over the course of a few hours, said player lost millions at Stake, with screenshots showing a string of massive deposits as well as hashes of the transactions.
What’s sad is the loss didn’t happen to some whale who might have been able to shrug off the hit. The punter in question was a 20-year-old serving in the armed forces on a 20k a year salary. You’re probably wondering where the heck a 20-year-old obtained the millions to bet with? The explanation is it came from a mixture of gambling wins and crypto gains amassed over a period of time. Instead of potentially retiring young, it was all flushed away in the course of a couple of hours at Stake. In their words, it was ‘Up Mount Everest and then back down it at 10x the speed.‘ The Redditor explains the loss was so fast due to ‘an insanely long loss streak on crash, ending with $400k bets til wiped clean.’
At many crypto casinos, all that is needed to register is a username, password, and email. KYC is notoriously loose, meaning underage players can potentially find ways to gamble, and there appears to be no limits on crypto deposits at Stake. Who cares as long as the cash is rolling in, right? The more dough that winds its way into the Stake trough, the bigger the party. This anonymous, decentralised, regulation-lite gambling might seem great for some, but it also means less protection or limits for others who need it.
