I spent time digging into a pretty crazy story about a crypto casino platform called Stake, and honestly, what I discovered raises a lot of questions.

So here’s the deal: there’s this platform, Stake crypto casino, which became massive in a very short time. We're talking about 127 million visits per month, roughly 10 billion bets monthly. That’s huge. But what really caught my attention is how they built their player base.

The founder, Ed Craven, launched Kick, a streaming platform, in December 2022. And since then, Stake’s traffic has increased more than fivefold. Coincidence? Not really. Popular streamers started promoting Stake live, with contracts worth several million dollars. Drake, Adin Ross, Trainwreckstv... all broadcast their gaming sessions live from Kick.

But here’s where it gets weird. Bloomberg Businessweek analyzed 1,500 hours of live streams from 25 different players. They counted spins, winnings, everything. And the results? Drake has a jackpot frequency twice as high as the second luckiest player. His luck on Easygo slot machines (the parent company of Stake) is four times higher than the average player.

Craven denied any manipulation, claiming Stake doesn’t directly control payout rates. But when Bloomberg looked closer, they found that Drake and Ross had higher win rates specifically on Easygo games, while on third-party games, their results were average. Strange, isn’t it?

And then there’s the question of funds. Several former Easygo employees confirmed that some streamers used platform funds to play, not their own money. Trainwreckstv even publicly admitted it, criticizing other influencers who claimed to use real money when they were using what’s called the “deposit” protocol — essentially funds provided by Stake that can’t be fully withdrawn.

What really bothered me is the story of a young Swedish guy named Chris. He was 15 when he signed up on Stake. No identity verification, no questions about his age. He had accumulated cryptocurrencies by trading video game items, and he started betting. During the pandemic, he was putting between $10,000 and $40,000 a week. At one point, he deposited 14 bitcoins — about $100,000 at the time, nearly a million today.

Craven himself was his VIP manager. They exchanged messages on Telegram almost daily. When Chris asked for self-exclusion, Stake gave him a 24-hour cooling-off period. He didn’t confirm. When he finally managed to get banned in 2021, he created another account six months later from the same IP address, with the same crypto wallet. Undetected.

And when Craven contacted him via Telegram to ask him to reload? Chris initially said no. But then he realized his referral earnings were blocked on his banned account. Craven changed the account status from banned to suspended, allowing Chris to withdraw his funds. Two weeks later, Chris created a new account, and Craven transferred all his VIP perks. The permanent ban was bypassed.

Over seven years, Chris lost about $1.5 million in cryptocurrencies on this crypto casino. He told me that if he hadn’t lost that money playing, its current value would be between $15 and $20 million.

Now, let’s talk about Stake’s structure. It’s registered in Curaçao, a small Caribbean island known for its quick and cheap licensing process. No international law enforcement agency guarantees the fairness of payout rates. The license is registered in a small office in a shopping center opposite a cemetery.

There are at least 10 class-action lawsuits against Stake in the U.S. One in California accuses Stake, Drake, and Ross of “organizing one of the largest and most profitable illegal gambling operations in California history.” The UK Gambling Commission ordered Stake to close in the UK. France, Ukraine, and other countries blocked access to the site.

What really strikes me is how this platform managed to grow so quickly without proper regulation. Influencers show huge wins, their followers see that, and many believe it’s realistic. But Bloomberg’s statistics suggest something very different.

Craven continues to live luxuriously in Melbourne, with a fleet of Land Rovers and a house bought for AUD 80 million. Stake reportedly declared $47 billion in revenue in 2024, up 80% from 2022.

The situation with Stake crypto casino raises serious questions about player protection, transparency of payout rates, and how influencers promote products without always disclosing their financial arrangements. It’s a textbook case of what can happen when regulation lags behind technological innovation and marketing creativity.

Some players, like Chris, have finally managed to walk away. Others keep going. But the business model remains the same: streamers show incredible wins, attracting viewers who become players, while the platform takes the bets. It’s a system that works very well for the owners, less so for the players.