iGaming Weekly: Stake's Ireland exit, Duel's $1M bounty, Kalshi's NFL record

This week at a glance:

• Stake geo-blocks Ireland, plans to apply for a licence under the new regime
• Kalshi and Polymarket hit $14.10 billion in NFL opening week volume, Kalshi takes record 92.1% share
• US House committee votes 38-5 to repeal 90% cap on gambling loss deductions, backdated to 2026

Crypto Casinos

• YEET launched Sportsbook Insurance across three markets, refunding a losing pre-kickoff stake as bonus bets up to $100 per market on QB injuries, match points and 90th-minute goals.

• Stake geo-blocked its entire site in Ireland after engagement with the Gambling Regulatory Authority, and says it will apply for a licence under the regime launched July 1.
• Duel disclosed it paid a $30,000 bug bounty for a theoretical crash exploit where the client received a round-end tick roughly 200ms early, with no funds at risk.

• Rollbit added two new deposit options: Phantom's CASH stablecoin on Solana and ETH on BNB Smart Chain.
• A licence-tracking account flagged that Rollbit's latest licence entry sits under a new company rather than the Bull Gaming N.V. currently named on its site.
• Sportsbet.io signed a three-year deal as Tottenham Hotspur's Official North America and Africa Betting Partner, covering digital content and fan engagement across those two markets.

Latest Originals

• Stake released a reworked version of its Original Slide, calling it new and improved.
• Cloudbet launched Don't Get Cancelled, a Minesweeper-inspired in-house game where each safe tile revealed boosts the payout.
• Goated launched Punch, a boxing-themed in-house Original where you pick your move each round and a miss knocks you out.
• BC.Game migrated its Crash Original to a new provably fair seed chain supporting 20,000,000 rounds, with roughly 120 minutes of downtime.
• 500 Casino shipped a redesign of its in-house TOWERS Original and posted gameplay of the new build the same night.
• YEET raised its Keno limits, with a player reaching the top of the leaderboard on the bumped caps the same day.

Third-Party Releases

• Drakesiege, built with streamer KuangTV, launched on Stake with a confirmed 50,000x max win, paired with a $30,000 leaderboard.
• Hacksaw Gaming released Le Bandit Hold & Win, a Hold & Win rework up to 2,500x, live on MetaWin and Sportsbet.io.
• Moglabs released Mech Strike, the Stake Engine studio's first game, live on Stake Sep 16 and on Roobet a day later.
• Pragmatic Play released Helios – Triple Sun, a pays-anywhere slot where three sun scatters unlock a bonus with up to three modifiers, live on Sportsbet.io.
• Hacksaw Gaming released Fist of Destruction Megamultiplier, a fighter-select title, live on DegenCity within the hour of the studio's announcement.

Latest Drama

A Duel staffer offers @hairlessEV on X $1,000,000 to prove Duel fakes its volume, and a gambling watchdog account pours petrol on it

@hairlessEV alleged Duel's biggest wagerers are fake accounts playing only house games, because slot volume carries provider fees and cannot be faked. Duel answered with a six-month open bounty and a published RTP ladder.

• @hairlessEV: "Duel's largest wagerers only play on House Games Because they're all fake accounts… they never have any volume on slots."
• Duel disclosed house-game RTP tiers of 100% for most players, scaling between 98% and 99.9% for whales by bet size.

Daily streamer drama, wins and deal changes: Degen Highs on X

iGaming General

• The House Ways and Means Committee voted 38-5 to repeal the 90% cap on deductible gambling losses, restoring full deductibility up to winnings and backdating it to January 1, 2026.
• A report commissioned by EUROMAT estimated Europe's black market has grown at an 18% compound annual rate since 2019 and could reach €13 billion by the end of 2026.
• The acceptance period closed on Kenneth Dart's Candle Lake mandatory cash offer for Evolution at SEK 695 per share, valuing the supplier at about SEK 132 billion against board opposition.
• A cross-party House of Lords committee recommended a comprehensive ban on gambling advertising across the UK and called for the Gambling Commission to become the primary statutory advertising regulator.

Related News

• The Senate blocked the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act 49-50 on cloture, and Bitcoin slid to around $76,100 with roughly $570 million of long positions liquidated.
• The Revolut data breach escalated as hackers holding data on roughly 700 clients demanded a $3 million ransom in Monero, with Italian prosecutors opening an inquiry.
• Circle launched the Arc public mainnet with USDC as native gas and 11 founding validators including BlackRock and Visa, listing over $300 million in TVL on day one.
• Visa moved to close the loophole letting memecoin purchases be coded as digital media and earn card rewards, cutting off an on-ramp overlapping crypto-gambling deposits.

Prediction Markets

• A Ninth Circuit panel ruled two tribes are likely to succeed on claims that Kalshi's sports event contracts constitute unauthorized gaming, reversing the denial of a preliminary injunction.
• The Wall Street Journal reported fraudsters linked stolen debit cards to thousands of new Polymarket US accounts to route at least $10 million through the platform.
• Kalshi and Polymarket Global contract volume for NFL opening week hit $14.10 billion, with Kalshi taking $12.98 billion for a record 92.1% share.

FairGambling Analytics Spotlight

Deposits across the casinos FairGambling tracks on-chain came to $1.09B for September 14–20, up 3.3% week over week.

Top 10 casinos by deposit volume

Stake took $471.6M, 48% of the top ten's $984.8M; Roobet was next at $148.1M. The biggest mover was Roobet, up 45.3% week over week to $148.1M.

Chain dominance

TRON led with 37% of deposits, ahead of Ethereum at 31% and Solana at 17%.

Coin dominance

USDT carried 60% of deposits, USDC 19% and SOL 10%; BTC was the fastest mover, up 23.1% week over week to $16.5M.

FairGambling tracked 47.07M bets from roughly 345,300 players, $8.34B wagered in total, up 14.3% on the week.

Top 5 casinos by wager

Stake handled $4.77B, more than half of the top five's wagers. Among the rest, Duel was up 31.6% to $708.5M.

Top games and biggest bets

Waylanders Forge led the week at $921.5M wagered, 1.3x the runner-up Blackjack at $728.4M. All five of the biggest bets landed at Stake, between $1.6M and $1.6M; only one won, $1.6M on Baccarat paying $3.1M.

Biggest wins of the week

The top multiplier was 5,148,297× on Mines at Stake, turning a near-zero stake into $3K; none of the five biggest multipliers paid more than $21K. The biggest payout was $25.0M on Odin'S Vault from a $4K stake; all five of the week's biggest wins landed at Stake, $101.5M between them.

That's the week. Follow @FairGambling on X for more weekly recaps, on-chain data and industry insights, or bring what we missed to the FairGambling Discord.

Treat gambling as entertainment you pay for. 18+, and if it stops feeling like entertainment, help exists at BeGambleAware and GamCare.