iGaming Weekly: X's Duel lawsuit, Kalshi's $40B raise, Brazil's operator suit

This week at a glance:

• X sues Duel operator Immortal Snail LLC and founder Ossi Ketola over alleged $300K handle bribe
• Kalshi nears $1 billion raise at roughly $40 billion valuation led by Sequoia and Wellington
• Brazil's Attorney General sues 17 betting operators seeking at least R$1 billion in damages
• Duelbits restores BTC and LTC deposits after publishing new seed commitment post-hack
• Flutter halts all Brazil betting and iGaming, expecting about $70 million revenue hit

Crypto Casinos

• Rollbit added deposits in SOL on Base and WETH on Polygon, then followed with ETH deposits on Robinhood Chain within three days.
• Duelbits restored BTC and LTC deposits and withdrawals a day after publishing a new seed commitment for 5 million Crash rounds following last week's $7 million hot-wallet hack.
• Housebets launched Wave 2 on-chain rewards, paying up to $25,000 for past activity elsewhere. Its founder said about $500,000 was claimed early. It also added Duel Mode, an opt-in 50% rakeback that pauses cashback and reloads.
• Gamdom signed MMA fighter Tommy "Gun" McMillen, joking that Steve and Gamdom now have someone who can literally fight their battles.
• @Cabrzytv on X left Stake after more than four years and returned to Roobet, which welcomed the streamer home, though neither side disclosed terms.
• CoinPoker says its first Global Online Poker Championship drew 48,815 players and paid $88.44 million, 177% of the $50 million guarantee, with Siema winning a record $423,600 Main Event.

Latest Originals

• Rainbet launched Baccarat as a new Rainbet Original, a fast-hand version with one-choice betting.
• Gamba launched Lines, billed as a small new Gamba Original, and promised a new feature every three days through October.
• Housebets put Roulette live in its House Games lobby as its first in-house game, with Plinko and Coinflip next.
• Qzino launched Mines, which the casino announced as its new Qzino Original.
• 500 Casino rolled out a redesigned Baccarat in its in-house lobby.

Third-Party Releases

• Pragmatic Play released Gates of Olympus 2500, multipliers up to 2,500x with four free-spins modes and a 25,000x max win, live on Duelbits and YEET.
• Hacksaw Gaming released two slots: Halloween-themed Le Vampire, with a max win of 15,000x, live on YEET, and Dr Zappo, set in Electric City, live on Chips.
• ValkyrieX Studio released Raven's Revenge, its first Roobet title, though Stake also labeled it Only on Stake, so exclusivity is unclear.
• MavSlots released Farm 51 as a Stake exclusive, live only on Stake.

Latest Drama

X sues Duel's operator, alleging a $300K bribe to revive the suspended Duel handle

X sued Duel operator Immortal Snail LLC in Texas federal court, accusing founder Ossi Ketola and associates of bribing X staff and taking over accounts since 2024. Nothing is proven, a Duel staffer denied it, and Snail has not formally answered.

• Snail says it paid $480,000 for Duel, @monarch on X and @castle on X and is in arbitration seeking their return.

@MitchJonez on X's Rainbet deal claimed to be worth $150M a year in fills

@DegenHigh on X: Rainbet raised @MitchJonez to "$420K DAILY in fills," sponsor-funded play balance worth about $12.6M a month. The figure is unverified, Rainbet has not commented, and fills are play balance, not cash pay.

• Rainbet: "How many $2 MILLION DOLLAR Keno wins does Mitch Jones have on his file by now?"
• Rainbet doubled its monthly race to $1 million on October 1.

Ben Lamb says the player calling YEET a scam ran 30+ accounts with fake KYC

A viral "And it begins: Yeet Edition" thread accused YEET of withholding a player's funds. Ben Lamb answered that the complainant had over 30 accounts and fraudulent KYC, and the player's side has not been independently checked.

• Ben Lamb: "YEET has never, and will never scam anyone. But we will fight scammers."

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

Industry & Trends

• Flutter halted all Brazil betting and iGaming, expecting about $70 million off 2026 revenue, and Entain cut its online net gaming revenue growth outlook to 4% to 6% the same day.
• Macau's September gross gaming revenue fell 1.2% year on year to MOP18.06 billion, or US$2.23 billion, its fourth straight monthly decline and lowest month of 2026.
• A leaked Curaçao contract reported by the Guardian shows SIS, part-owned by Ladbrokes, William Hill and Betfred owners, took 18% of racing and 13% of esports revenue from MyStake operator Santeda.
• Maverick Gaming filed layoff notices to close eight more Washington casinos by the end of November, putting 850 jobs at risk as its Chapter 11 retreat continues.

Regulation & Enforcement

• Brazil's Attorney General's office sued 17 betting operators holding about 80% of the market, seeking at least R$1 billion in collective moral damages plus reimbursement of public health-system costs.
• Nigeria's Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service declared Stake.com an unrecognized operator and ordered it to register, file returns and pay outstanding gaming taxes.
• Justice Luiz Fux was named rapporteur for the Supreme Court challenges to Brazil's betting ban, and Flamengo asked Fux to suspend it before the October 6 deadline for removing shirt sponsor logos.
• Cambodia confirmed 24 casinos stopped online gambling after the September 30 deadline, 12 of them in Preah Sihanouk, and promised legal action against any holdouts.

• The UK Gambling Commission finalized gaming-machine standards including breaks of 10 and 20 seconds, net position as the main money display and no celebration of wins below stake, with most taking effect in June 2027.
• New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs began auctioning 15 online casino licenses, with winners due to file full applications by October 23 and results not yet public.

Related News

• MetaMask Staking began exiting about 17,000 Lido validators holding about 523,000 ETH after a breach diverted about 0.36 ETH, with exits finishing by October 7 and wallets unaffected.
• NEAR Intents lost $3.8 million in an exploit and later said it recovered the full amount, including 34.59 BTC returned, according to a single aggregator report.

Prediction Markets

• Kalshi is in advanced talks to raise about $1 billion at a roughly $40 billion valuation, up from $22 billion in May, with Sequoia and Wellington set to lead.
• Polymarket added self-exclusion from 30 days to lifetime, US deposit limits and a Birches Health addiction-care partnership, and is expanding its Trust and Safety team.
• The CFTC sent the White House two rules defining event contracts as swaps and carving out casino-style gambling products, which together would put prediction markets beyond state gambling law.
• The CFTC is investigating former Rep. Adam Kinzinger over about 25 Kalshi trades on whether Biden would pardon the former congressman, netting $823, though Kinzinger denies having inside information.
• Federal prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that Polymarket's binary contracts count as swaps, defending their insider-trading case against Army Master Sgt. Gannon Van Dyke.

• House Oversight Chair James Comer widened the prediction-market insider-trading probe to Hyperliquid, Crypto.com and PredictIt, with records due October 13.
• Czechia's Finance Ministry added Kalshi to its blacklist of unauthorized gambling operators, ordering ISPs to block it by October 15, after blacklisting Polymarket in July.

Next week

Brazil's betting ban takes full effect, with player withdrawals closing October 5 and sites going offline and sponsor logos leaving football shirts from October 6. MetaMask's Lido validator exits finish October 7.

FairGambling Analytics Spotlight

Deposits across the casinos FairGambling tracks on-chain came to $998.1M for September 28–October 4, down 8.7% week over week.

Top 10 casinos by deposit volume

Stake took $498.7M, more than half of the top ten's $891.0M; Roobet was next at $72.8M. The biggest mover was Duel, down 40.4% week over week to $59.0M.

Chain dominance

Ethereum led with 35% of deposits, ahead of TRON at 31% and Solana at 19%.

Coin dominance

USDT carried 55% of deposits, USDC 22% and SOL 11%; ETH was the fastest mover, down 52.7% week over week to $67.4M.

FairGambling tracked 45.48M bets from roughly 382,200 players, $7.29B wagered in total.

Top 5 casinos by wager

Stake handled $3.46B, more than half of the top five's wagers; Stake.us was next at $1.09B.

Top games and biggest bets

Mines led the week at $678.3M wagered, 1.3x the runner-up Waylanders Forge at $503.3M. All five of the biggest bets were baccarat hands at Stake from one hidden player, between $2.6M and $2.8M; only one won, $2.8M on Privé Lounge Baccarat 5 paying $5.5M.

Biggest wins of the week

The top multiplier was 5,148,297× on Mines at Stake, turning a near-zero stake into $30K; all five landed at Stake. The biggest payout was $16.0M on Waylanders Forge from a $400K stake, one of four Waylanders Forge games paying above $10.0M this week.

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.