The relationship between cryptocurrency and online gambling did not happen by accident. Both industries attracted the same profile of early adopter: someone comfortable with digital assets, sceptical of legacy financial infrastructure, and willing to engage with platforms operating outside conventional regulatory perimeters. That shared user base has since evolved into a structural dependency, and the numbers reflect it.
Cryptocurrency accounted for around 24% of all iGaming bets during Q1 2024, with the crypto bet sum growing more than 20% year-on-year, according to SOFTSWISS quarterly data. In an industry with global revenues estimated at $97 billion in 2024, that share represents a meaningful and growing segment of total volume — one that operators are increasingly building infrastructure around rather than treating as an edge case.
Why Crypto Suits Online Gambling Better Than Traditional Banking
Speed is the most immediate reason. Conventional withdrawal routes through UK high street banks can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours, depending on the operator and the payment processor sitting between them. Crypto removes most of that friction. Transactions settle at the blockchain level, meaning funds reach a player’s wallet in minutes rather than days.
The fee structure is the second advantage. Credit card processors typically charge operators between 1.5% and 3.5% per transaction, costs that are either absorbed as overhead or baked into payout percentages. Blockchain transactions carry a fraction of that overhead, particularly on networks designed for high throughput.
There is also the question of access. A portion of UK gamblers who use offshore platforms do so because UKGC-licensed operators have introduced deposit limits, affordability checks, and other compliance requirements under the 2023 Gambling Act reforms. Crypto payments allow those players to fund accounts on offshore platforms without routing money through a domestic bank account that might trigger flags. This is not a niche workaround. The Gambling Commission has acknowledged that crypto-facilitated deposits to unlicensed offshore casinos represent a growing compliance challenge, and that standard AML monitoring processes struggle to capture the activity.
The UK Picture Is More Complex Than It Looks
The United Kingdom surged to second place globally for crypto gambling interest in 2025, overtaking Canada. That rise tracks with broader crypto adoption in the country, though adoption itself has not followed a straight line. Ownership of cryptocurrency among UK adults fell from 12% in 2024 to 8% in 2025, a drop that analysts have attributed to asset liquidations during the cost-of-living squeeze and lingering regulatory uncertainty around crypto’s legal classification.
Despite the dip in ownership, the gambling use case appears resilient. Players who already hold crypto tend to continue using it for deposits and withdrawals regardless of whether they are actively expanding their holdings. The utility argument holds independently of investment sentiment.
The UK market generated £6.5 billion in gross gambling yield in 2024, a 2.8% increase year-on-year, even as tighter controls came into force. Remote gambling now accounts for around 40% of all UK gambling revenue, up from a much smaller share a decade ago. Crypto is increasingly embedded in that remote segment rather than sitting on the margins of it.
Where the Growth Is Actually Coming From
Stake.com, one of the largest crypto-native casinos globally, reported monthly deposit volumes of $1.1 billion as of early 2025 and subsequently secured naming rights to a Formula 1 car. That level of commercial scale signals to the broader industry that crypto gambling is no longer an experimental category.
Several factors are compounding the growth. Decentralised finance has introduced models such as decentralised betting pools, where the house function is replaced by liquidity providers earning a yield on wagered funds. While these remain a small fraction of total crypto gambling volume, they represent a structural challenge to the traditional operator model. SOFTSWISS data also shows that altcoins are gaining ground rapidly — their share of crypto bets rose from around 25% in the first nine months of 2023 to nearly half of all crypto bets in the same period of 2024, reflecting a growing preference for assets beyond Bitcoin.
Faster networks have also reduced the friction that slowed adoption in its earlier years. Early Bitcoin transactions on gambling platforms were slow enough that players would sometimes wait for block confirmations before a bet settled. Layer 2 solutions and alternative chains have largely resolved that, bringing settlement times down to a level competitive with card payments for most use cases. As covered in before, the infrastructure supporting these transactions is maturing rapidly, with AI tools now monitoring wallet activity and on-chain agents flagging irregular patterns in real time.
Offshore Platforms and the Non-Gamstop Question
A meaningful share of UK crypto gambling activity takes place on platforms that operate outside the Gamstop self-exclusion scheme. This is a segment the UKGC has consistently flagged as a priority concern, and for good reason. Players who have voluntarily enrolled in Gamstop can access offshore platforms with relative ease, particularly when using crypto as a funding mechanism.
For players who are not enrolled in self-exclusion schemes and are looking for platforms that accept cryptocurrency alongside a broader range of payment options, community-sourced evaluations have become a useful reference point. According to Rfactorcentral, all ten of the non-Gamstop casinos evaluated in their community thread accept crypto — with several, including Winstler and Jackbit, offering sub-hour crypto withdrawal times once verification is on file. Their assessments also note that legitimate offshore platforms hold licences from regulators such as the Curacao eGaming Authority under its 2024 framework, and maintain responsible gambling tools independently of UKGC oversight.
The regulatory gap between what Gamstop covers and what offshore platforms offer is not going away any time soon. Estonia has moved quickly toward regulating crypto betting within its own jurisdiction, positioning itself as a potential model for other markets. The UK’s approach remains reactive rather than anticipatory, and that gap is what continues to drive demand toward offshore operators.
What Comes Next
The trajectory is not straightforward. Crypto gambling exists in a compliance grey zone in the UK, and there is growing political appetite to address it. The Treasury’s ongoing consultation on crypto asset regulation, combined with the Gambling Commission’s stated intention to address crypto payments specifically, suggests the current environment is unlikely to persist unchanged through 2026 and beyond. The Commission received an additional £26 million in government funding in 2026 specifically to increase enforcement capacity against unlicensed and offshore operators targeting UK players.
For operators, the window to establish crypto-native products under a tolerant regulatory framework may be shortening. For players, the practical appeal of crypto — speed, lower fees, and accessibility across licensed and offshore platforms — remains intact regardless of how regulation develops. The parallel growth of two industries that share foundational principles around decentralisation, user control, and frictionless transactions was always less of a coincidence than it appeared.
David Prior
David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.
