Duel's Monarch Slams Stake and Trainwreck in "Apology Video"

Ossi "Monarch" Ketola, the Finnish founder of crypto casino Duel, posted a "State of the Union" apology video on Sunday that spends as much time attacking Stake and its former headline streamer Trainwreck as it does apologizing.

Ketola accuses Stake of "fake betting, fraudulent marketing, lying about their odds and trying to normalize gambling huge amounts," and says the industry's biggest crypto casino "became the thing they wanted to destroy."

Dueling on Social Media

Ketola, Duel, and his first company CSGOEmpire have all been suspended from X since October 22, 2025, a ban he blames on rivals retaliating against Duel's 100% RTP games.

"Make no mistake, we are at war," he wrote at the time, promising that traditional crypto casinos would lose billions to Duel.

Nine months later, the war has a script, a costume department, and an apology arc. The video is spreading through reposters and Reddit threads instead of official channels, and it is spreading fast.

An Apology or A Declaration of War?

The first half of Monarch's speech appears genuinely apologetic, at least by Ketola's standards. He admits Duel's first year produced "offensive slop," concedes that his outrage-driven culture rewarded whoever acted most extreme.

The antics worked. Duel is currently one of the fastest-growing crypto casinos. Our data indicates it has doubled its daily deposits in the month of July.

Turning over a new leaf, Ketola promises a "Season 2" with more direction and taste. "The goal is not to become less offensive; the goal is to become less stupid," he says.

Monarch takes aim at his enemies in the second half of the speech. An operator publicly torching the sector's biggest casino and its most famous streamer, inside his own apology, is not something this industry produces often.

Ketola claims Stake started with a similar disruptive mission but "got lost in the sauce," then delivers a round of sarcastic apologies to competitors:

• to "Eddie from Stake" for "damaging the bottom line and putting future yacht-related collaborations with Drake at risk,"
• to Trainwreck, whom he says he believed was "ruining the lives of children" before mockingly absolving him thanks to a "Do not gamble" watermark.

The Stake Wars Have a Money Trail

Strip out the theatrics and Ketola's core accusations have documented weight. Trainwreck himself revealed in October 2022 that he had been paid $360 million for 16 months of sponsored gambling streams, money that normalized million-dollar slot pulls for an audience skewing young and male.

Stake, which minted founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani as crypto casino billionaires, reported roughly $4.7 billion in gross gaming revenue for 2024, up 80% since 2022, while the wider crypto casino sector hit $81.4 billion in 2024 revenue, a five-fold jump in two years despite blocks across the US, UK, and EU.

The human cost of that model keeps surfacing. In July 2025, Trainwreck announced a break from Kick after losing $19.5 million across five casino streams, a reminder that even the sponsored side of the table bleeds on camera.

Duel and Stake are fighting over the same customer: crypto-native young men raised on skin gambling, Kick streams, and influencer codes.

Duel's pitch is that its in-house Originals run at 99.9% to 100% RTP, an offer that only makes sense as a customer-acquisition weapon aimed directly at Stake's margins.

>> For more on Duel's business model, see our recent research report.

How Innocent Is Monarch?

Well, Ketola is not known to shy away from controversy. Ketola built CSGOEmpire from an €11,000 loan in 2016 into a skin-gambling giant.

His record since includes a December 2024 Coffeezilla investigation documenting a $20,000 bounty to dig up dirt on rival CSGORoll, and a November 2025 partnership with Andrew Tate.

There was also a number of live-stream scandals that saw Nazi salutes at Duel's branded blackjack tables and Ketola dealing at his own tables in May, incidents Tribuna described as crossing every red line.

The nastiest thread is unproven. Gambling commentator "Dr. W", the DrWgamba account that previously accused Duel of blocking a withdrawal, posted a screenshot alleging that a man introduced as Monarch's lawyer offered him money to stop posting damaging content.

The screenshot itself shows the opposite flow: a demand that Dr W pay $50,000, return a watch, and accept within one hour or face "litigation and legal trouble everywhere."

The claim is single-sourced and unverified, Duel has not commented publicly, and it mainly indicates one thing: lawyers are now involved on both sides.

What This Means for Players

Duel is growing at a staggering pace while generating scandals at the same rate, and Ketola's critique of Stake is largely accurate coming from a messenger with his own file of red flags.

The 100% RTP math is genuinely player-friendly, but a Nevis entity on an Anjouan license leaves you thin protection if a dispute ever lands on your account.

Season 2 starts now, and the open questions are concrete: whether the promised restraint survives its first viral clip, and whether the Dr W dispute reaches an actual courtroom.

Image Source: YouTube