Stake.com has turned itself into the biggest crypto casino on the planet, and it did it fast. Here is what makes it worth your time - and what to watch out for before you sign up.
Some online casinos are just casinos. Stake.com is something else. Since launching in 2017, it's grown into the largest crypto casino on the planet, processing over $100 billion in bets, pulling in millions of players, and building a sponsorship portfolio that would turn heads in any industry. Drake. Everton FC. The UFC. A Formula One team. At some point it stopped looking like a gambling site and started looking like a media company - and honestly, that's probably intentional.
The real question, though, is whether it actually delivers. Celebrity deals are great but you can't spin a roulette wheel with them. So we dug into the games, the payouts, the bonuses, and the fine print. Here's what we found.
The origin story is genuinely unusual. Stake.com didn't come out of a traditional gaming background - it came out of RuneScape. That's where Ed Craven, an Australian in his early twenties, and Bijan Tehrani, his American-Australian co-founder, first crossed paths in the mid-2010s. They got curious about gambling mechanics through the game's player-run betting communities, and in 2013 they launched Primedice - a simple cryptocurrency dice game that quietly built a loyal audience among early Bitcoin users.
By 2016 they'd formalised things into a company called Easygo and turned their focus to building a full online casino. Stake.com went live in 2017, licensed in Curacao, and growth came fast. They expanded to the UK in late 2021 through a partnership with TGP Europe, and by 2022 the brand was everywhere. Craven appeared on the Financial Review's Young Rich List in 2024 with an estimated net worth of over AU$2 billion. He was born in 1995. It started with a dice game.
Stake pulled out of the UK in early 2025 after a cautionary notice from the Gambling Commission, but that's not slowing it down elsewhere. In February 2026, it secured a five-year licence in Denmark and set up its local headquarters inside Parken Stadium, home of FC Copenhagen. That's not the move of a company in retreat.
There are over 6,000 games on the platform. That puts Stake among the biggest online casino libraries around, drawing from providers like Pragmatic Play, Hacksaw Gaming, NetEnt, and Evolution Gaming. But the most interesting part of the catalogue isn't from any of them.
Stake Originals are built in-house by Easygo, and they're unlike anything you'll find at a typical casino. Plinko, Mines, Crash, Dice, HiLo, Limbo - these games all use provably fair technology, meaning you can independently verify every outcome yourself using cryptographic proofs. No trust required. You can just check. That's a genuinely rare thing in this industry.
Outside the Originals, the library covers everything you'd expect:
There's no dedicated mobile app, which some players will find annoying. But the browser experience on mobile is genuinely good - fast loading, clean navigation, no features missing compared to desktop. For a library this size, it holds together well.
Stake runs on a Curacao Gaming licence (OGL/2024/1451/0918) via Medium Rare N.V. Curacao is a legitimate offshore credential and widely recognised in the industry, but it's not the same level of oversight you'd get from the MGA or UKGC. If strict regulation is your top priority, that's worth factoring in. What Stake does control - its own security setup - is solid: 256-bit SSL encryption, two-factor authentication, and a Vault feature that lets you ring-fence part of your balance behind a time delay, which is a nice touch for anyone who's ever made a withdrawal they regretted at 2am.
The biggest test of Stake's security came in September 2023. Hackers tied to North Korea's Lazarus Group got into one of its hot wallets and walked away with around $41 million in crypto. Not a minor incident. What happened next, though, was impressive - no player lost a single dollar. Stake covered the full amount, restored every affected balance, and was back online within hours. We've seen regulated casinos handle far smaller problems far worse. That response matters.
One thing to know before signing up: KYC verification is required before your first deposit. If you were hoping to play anonymously, this isn't the platform for that. Third-party RNG fairness is independently audited, and the Originals are fully provably fair and player-verifiable at any time.
Stake doesn't do bonuses the way most casinos do. There's no giant welcome offer plastered across the homepage followed by a thin calendar of recycled promos. Instead, it runs a continuous programme of high-value competitions that refill every day, every week. For players who stick around, the cumulative value is hard to match anywhere.
Welcome Bonus - 200% up to $3,000: New players can get a 200% match on their first deposit, capped at $3,000. You'll need to deposit at least $50 in crypto and contact Live Support to activate it - not the smoothest process, admittedly - and a 40x wagering requirement applies with contributions weighted by house edge. The value is real, the activation is just slightly clunky.
Daily Races - $100,000 every 24 hours: This is the one. Every single day, Stake splits $100,000 between the top 1,000 players on a wager-based leaderboard. Races reset at midnight UTC, standings update live every minute, and winnings pay out in real cash with no wagering requirements attached. Most casino welcome bonuses don't come close to this kind of daily value for active players.
Weekly Raffle - $75,000: One ticket per $1,000 wagered on slots and Originals, draw every Friday. Simple, and the prize pool is nothing to dismiss.
Stake vs. Eddie - $50,000 per week: Players go head-to-head against the house host, trying to out-multiply him on featured slots. It's a fun format that makes slot sessions feel less solitary, and $50K a week keeps the competition lively.
Originals Ascent - $40,000: Hit specific multiplier targets across the Originals library to earn rewards. Good motivation to actually explore the in-house games properly.
Bonus Drop Codes: Free codes dropped on Stake's Telegram, X, and Instagram at irregular intervals. You need to be paying attention to catch them, but they're genuinely free money when you do.
And then there's rakeback - from Bronze tier upwards, a percentage of every bet's house edge comes back to you automatically, on every single game, win or lose. No claiming, no codes, just passive returns on your play.
The VIP programme is probably Stake's strongest card, and nearly a million players are already in it. What makes it stand out is that it's open to everyone - no invitation required, no getting handpicked by an account manager. You just play, your wagers accumulate, and you move up.
There are 15 levels in total: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum I through VI, Diamond I through V, and Obsidian at the top. Here's what you unlock as you climb:
Bronze requires $10,000 in wagering to unlock. Silver and Gold sit between $50,000 and $100,000. Platinum starts at $250,000. So yes, the top tiers are for serious players - but the rakeback and weekly boosts you get from Bronze onwards still add up to real value even if you're not wagering at high-roller volume. Worth noting: sports betting wagers count three times faster toward VIP progress than casino bets, which is handy if you split your time across both products.
For a deeper breakdown, you can check out our full Stake Casino profile on the site.
Stake is crypto-first and that's not changing. Every deposit and withdrawal goes through cryptocurrency, which means no waiting on bank processing, no currency conversion fees, and no withdrawal limits imposed by the platform. Over 20 digital currencies are accepted including:
Not set up with crypto yet? MoonPay is built directly into the platform, so you can buy crypto with a Visa, Mastercard, or Maestro card without leaving the site. Your balance displays in whichever fiat currency you prefer - USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, and others - but the actual transactions run on crypto rails throughout. It's a smooth enough on-ramp that even players with no prior crypto experience tend to get through it without much friction.
The no-limits withdrawal policy is a genuine differentiator, especially for bigger players. Cashing out large amounts quickly, without submitting forms or waiting days for approval, is something a lot of traditional casinos simply can't offer. For more on how crypto payments work across the industry, our Bitcoin casinos guide covers the basics well.
No gambling company has spent on marketing quite like Stake has. Rather than buying banner ads and affiliate traffic, they went straight for the biggest names in sport and entertainment. The results have been hard to ignore.
Drake - reported $100 million per year: The headline deal. Drake serves as Stake's global brand ambassador under what's been widely reported as a $100 million annual arrangement - one of the biggest celebrity sponsorship deals in history, gambling industry or otherwise. He's hosted exclusive Stake streams, given away thousands to viewers live on air, and the initial campaign included a $1 million donation to the LeBron James Foundation. The reach this generated is enormous.
Everton FC - record Premier League kit deal: In June 2022, Stake's logo went onto the front of Everton's shirts - reportedly the largest commercial deal in the club's 144-year history. It covered both men's and women's kits, stadium screens at Goodison Park, and the club's full digital presence. Watford FC carried the Stake badge before that, giving the brand two consecutive seasons of Premier League exposure.
UFC - Official Betting Partner: Stake holds official UFC partner status across Latin America and Asia, putting the brand ringside in front of a global audience that tops a billion TV households. Among the fighters who've represented the brand: Israel Adesanya, Alex Pereira, Jose Aldo, Alexandre Pantoja, Merab Dvalishvili, and Caio Borralho.
Kick Sauber F1 Team: Stake sponsors the Sauber Formula One team - known as the Kick Sauber F1 Team - with branding on the cars across 20+ race weekends per season. The deal ties directly into Kick.com, the streaming platform Ed Craven co-founded as a competitor to Twitch.
eSports - Astralis and Team Vitality: Since March 2026, Stake has partnered with Danish CS organisation Astralis, building on a deal with 2025 CS Major winners Team Vitality. If you're using Stake for eSports betting, these partnerships give the brand some genuine credibility in that space.
Football and combat sports beyond the Premier League: Sergio "Kun" Aguero has been a brand ambassador. Stake sponsors Mumbai City FC, Hyderabad FC, and clubs across South America. It's also partnered with the Davis Cup in tennis and sponsored the Gennadiy Golovkin vs. Ryota Murata world title fight in Japan. The reach is genuinely global at this point.
Stake puts its winners front and centre, and there are a lot of them. The Daily Races and Weekly Raffles produce hundreds of documented payouts every week - real people, real amounts, verifiable results. That's a different kind of win culture to the one-in-ten-million progressive jackpot story most casinos lean on.
The Originals games - Crash, Plinko, and Mines in particular - have generated some of the platform's biggest individual wins. Because they're provably fair, those wins can actually be verified by anyone who wants to check the seed and outcome data. That gives the stories a credibility you just don't get with a screenshot of a slot machine. It's also helped build a large community of streamers who broadcast on Kick.com, where big sessions attract hundreds of thousands of live viewers and turn individual wins into shared moments.
For progressive jackpots, third-party titles from providers like Pragmatic Play bring network-linked prizes into the mix. Combine that with Stake's own competitions and there's a reasonable amount of upside available at any given time. You can track what's currently live across top casinos in our progressive jackpots section.
Stake's reputation across the player community is largely positive, and it's earned rather than bought. The platform pays out. Complaints get resolved. And when something went badly wrong - the $41 million hack in 2023 - the response was fast, transparent, and complete. Every player was made whole. The platform was back within hours. You can find regulated operators who've handled far smaller incidents far worse.
Live chat support runs around the clock with response times that consistently come in under a minute. That's an unusually high standard. The communities on Reddit, Telegram, X, and Kick are actively maintained - actual engagement, not just scheduled posts.
The Curacao licence is the main caveat, and it's a fair one. You don't have the same regulatory backstop as you would with an MGA or UKGC operator. The UK exit in 2025 raised some eyebrows too, though it came down to a specific regulatory issue rather than a general pattern of non-compliance. The Danish launch - in one of Europe's stricter regulatory environments - suggests the long-term direction is toward more oversight, not less. The platform runs in 16 languages and serves players across most of the world, which at least tells you it's not struggling to find an audience.
If you want to weigh Stake up against other options before deciding, our top online casinos list is a sensible starting point. And if the sportsbook side of things interests you specifically, we have a separate review covering Stake Sports in its own right.
What we like:
Worth knowing before you sign up:
Stake.com has built something genuinely impressive. The provably fair Originals, the $100,000 daily races, a VIP programme that rewards everyone not just whales, and a brand presence that's reached places most gambling companies could never dream of - it all adds up to one of the most well-rounded platforms in online gambling right now.
It's not perfect. The Curacao licence is a real limitation for players who care about regulatory protection, and the crypto-only deposit model will put some people off. But if you're comfortable with crypto and you want a platform that delivers ongoing value rather than a one-time welcome offer, Stake is genuinely hard to beat.
It started as a dice game built by two guys who met on RuneScape. Now it's sponsoring Premier League clubs and Formula One teams. Whatever you think of gambling, that's a hell of a story - and the platform behind it is worth your time.
Want to see how it stacks up against other crypto-friendly operators? Check out our guide to the best fast payout casinos for more options.
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