Not long ago, I got pulled into an investigation that left me seriously uneasy about how the crypto casino business really works. Everything centers on Stake—the platform you’ve probably seen promoted by streamers on Kick.

The story begins with Drake, the Canadian rapper. Picture this: he’s streaming live, he’s just lost $3 million in Bitcoin on slots, and then Ed Craven, Stake’s cofounder, appears on screen, cheering him on. “The vibe here isn’t very good,” Craven says from Melbourne, and then suggests switching games. Drake bets 12 on the quick roulette and wins $800 thousand. Craven tops up another $500 thousand. All while tens of thousands of viewers are watching.

What’s fascinating is that Bloomberg Businessweek analyzed 500 hours of live streams on Stake and found something troubling: Drake was winning major prizes on Easygo (the Stake parent company) at a rate four times higher than the average. While regular players won a major prize every 10,000 spins, Drake did it every 2,500. In other third-party-operated games, his rate was completely normal.

But this is where things start to get serious. Stake is practically unregulated almost anywhere. It’s headquartered in Australia but registered in Curazao, the Dutch Caribbean. It processes about $10 billion in bets every month. Stake casino revenue reached $47 billion in 2024, an 80% increase from 2022. In December, Craven said annual deposit volume was $18 billion.

So how did it get here? Craven started placing bets on RuneScape when he was a teenager, then helped create Primedice, a Bitcoin betting site. When U.S. authorities pressured him, he moved to Australia and launched Stake in 2017. The platform really took off when he founded Kick, an alternative to Twitch that allowed unrestricted gambling streams.

Influencers are at the heart of it. Streamers like Adin Ross, Trainwreckstv, and xQc signed multi-million-dollar contracts to promote Stake. Ross received at least 26,000 ETH from November 2021 to March 2025, worth $78 million. Trainwreckstv admitted to receiving $360 million in 16 months. According to former Easygo employees, Drake’s wallet receives between $45 million and $50 million in crypto per week.

The shady part is that many of these streamers don’t use real money. They use what they call “deposits,” where Stake loads the account. If they win, they can’t withdraw everything. It’s basically a motivational ad designed to get other players to try the same thing.

There was one case that hit me especially hard. Chris, a Swedish teenager, created an account on Stake without age verification. At 17, he was spending between $10,000 and $40,000 in Bitcoin weekly. He deposited 14 bitcoins (100 thousand dollars at the time) without anyone from Stake contacting him for verification. Craven became his “VIP manager” and constantly encouraged him. When Chris asked for self-exclusion, Stake gave him a 24-hour cooling-off period, and Craven simply contacted him afterward to offer to reactivate the account. Over seven years, Chris lost about $1.5 million in crypto.

Bloomberg’s investigation also found that some streamers were winning extraordinary prizes. In July, Trainwreckstv bet $6,000 and won $37.5 million. A week later, Roshtein bet $10,000 and won $45.4 million. The odds of this happening on regular machines are astronomical.

When Bloomberg asked Stake about it, the company denied everything, saying it “has no direct control over the odds of any game.” But they refused to share real data on win rates or payouts.

The most worrying part is the lack of regulation. Even though Stake is blocked in the United States, the UK, and France, it operates through VPNs. Stake casino revenue continues to grow exponentially despite class-action lawsuits in at least 10 U.S. states. In California, Drake and Ross were sued for “planning one of the largest illegal gambling operations in the state’s history.”

Curazao, where Stake is registered, has a notoriously weak licensing system. An activist named Nardy Cramm has been fighting this for years. She even managed to get the Curazao prosecutor’s office to reach agreements with 12 operators in July 2025, but Stake received only a $12,500 fine—equivalent to about a minute and a half of its betting revenue.

Craven continues to live lavishly in Melbourne. In 2022, he bought a mansion for 80 million Australian dollars. Stake’s casino revenue funds an empire that spans the globe—offices in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Serbia, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom.

What truly worries me is that this keeps growing. Since its 2022 launch, Kick has quintupled traffic to Stake. Streamers continue promoting the platform to millions of young followers. Videos of big wins go viral constantly, creating the illusion that everyone can win big.

The reality is different. High-speed online slot machines are one of the most addictive forms of gambling. Stake hired thousands of “editors” to spread win videos, generating $500 for every million views. These videos flood social media, especially among minors.

What started as betting on RuneScape turned into a billion-dollar business that exploits cognitive biases, attracts minors, and operates in jurisdictions where there is effectively little oversight. Stake’s casino revenue keeps rising while victims rack up devastating losses.

Chris finally stopped betting in November 2024 after seven years, but he says it’s almost impossible to avoid Stake content online. Even historical meme accounts post videos with the Stake logo as a watermark.

This is a story about how technology, deregulation, and influencer marketing can create a perfect loss machine. And the most worrying part is that it’s barely begun.