Eighty-three percent of active U.S. bettors say they want to fund their sportsbook accounts with cryptocurrency once their state allows it, and 64% already own some crypto to begin with, according to a 2026 survey of 2,550 bettors that Paysafe commissioned from Sapio Research. That is not a niche curiosity. That is most of the addressable market telling operators, in plain numbers, that the cashier is broken.
My read on where this goes: the interesting fight isn’t “crypto versus cards.” It’s stablecoins quietly becoming plumbing that most bettors won’t even think of as crypto, while volatile coins and no-KYC platforms stay a smaller, messier, more heavily policed corner of the market. Regulators in half a dozen jurisdictions are trying to draw that line right now, and how they draw it will matter more than any single wallet integration.
The number that explains why sportsbooks suddenly care about wallets
Withdrawal speed, not deposit convenience, is the thing actually driving this. Card refunds can take days. Cross-border bank transfers arrive net of fees a player never agreed to. A stablecoin payout, by contrast, settles on-chain in seconds, at any hour, with no weekend delay and no surprise deduction between what the cashier promised and what lands in the account.
The Paysafe data backs that up with a harder edge than most industry talk about “player experience” usually has: 85% of surveyed bettors want the option to withdraw winnings in crypto (not yet permitted in any U.S. state), 71% say transacting in digital assets would improve their overall betting experience, and – this is the number operators should actually worry about – 71% say they would abandon a sportsbook after a poor crypto payment experience. In New York that churn risk rises to 80%. Brand trust still tops the list of what makes someone choose a sportsbook (36%), but seamless crypto withdrawal and deposit options aren’t far behind, at 29% and 26%.
Payments platform Fluid put it bluntly in its 2026 operator guide: stablecoin payouts settle with “no weekend or holiday delays and a final amount that matches what the cashier displayed” – a sentence that is really an indictment of how bad legacy rails have gotten at that one job.
Two crypto gambling markets that barely talk to each other
It helps to stop treating “crypto in betting” as one thing, because it is currently two quite different businesses wearing the same marketing language.
The first is crypto-as-a-payment-rail: licensed operators under Malta’s MGA, the UK’s Gambling Commission, or similar regimes, adding stablecoin deposits (usually converted to fiat instantly) alongside cards and bank transfers. The second is the crypto-native casino – Stake, BC.Game, Shuffle, Rollbit and similar brands – built around on-chain wagering, provably-fair game verification, and licences from lighter-touch regulators, overwhelmingly Curaçao.
| Dimension | Crypto-as-payment-rail (licensed operators) | Crypto-native casinos |
|---|---|---|
| Typical licence | MGA, UKGC, or domestic regulator | Curaçao (CGA), Anjouan |
| How crypto is used | Deposit method, converted to fiat at intake | Native wagering currency, often stablecoin-denominated |
| KYC depth | Full identity verification before play | Often deferred to withdrawal threshold (“no-KYC” segment) |
| Crypto withdrawal | Not yet permitted in most regulated markets | Standard feature |
| Compliance trajectory | Tightening under MiCA/AML rules | CGA’s own crypto policy guideline, phased to mid-2027 |
Sources: Paysafe/Sapio Research (2026), Curaçao Gaming Authority crypto policy guideline (2026), track360.io crypto gambling statistics (2026).
Nobody actually agrees on how big this is
Here is a fact that should make anyone cite a crypto-gambling headline number more carefully: analytics firm Yield Sec estimated crypto casino gross gaming revenue at $81.4 billion in 2024, roughly five times the 2022 level. Conservative trackers that count only verifiable, licensed-market activity put the same year’s figure at $15 to 25 billion. Same industry, same year, a 4x gap – because the high-end number folds in offshore and no-KYC volume that conservative counts deliberately exclude.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, working from actual wallet-level on-chain data rather than operator self-reporting, found on-chain gambling volume reached $51 billion in 2025 and held at roughly $14 billion a quarter into early 2026 – before prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi overtook gambling for the first time in that same quarter, at $36.6 billion. That overtaking is itself a useful, underreported data point: crypto speculation is migrating toward “will this happen” markets faster than toward traditional betting products, which tells you something about where the next wave of on-chain product design is actually headed.
I’d argue the $81 billion figure gets quoted constantly precisely because it’s the more dramatic one, not because it’s the more defensible one. Anyone using crypto-gambling market size to justify a payments decision should ask which methodology produced the number before repeating it.
Why stablecoins, not Bitcoin, are winning the deposit box
Bitcoin used to be the default entry point into crypto gambling; it no longer is. Stablecoins, mostly USDT and USDC, now account for an estimated 35–40% of crypto casino deposit volume, ahead of Bitcoin’s 25–30%, according to Track360’s analysis of operator and payment-gateway disclosures. The reason is almost embarrassingly simple: nobody wants their bankroll to lose 8% to a market dip between depositing and cashing out. A dollar-pegged token removes that anxiety entirely, and it’s why the total stablecoin market has pushed past $320 billion.
Regulation is catching up to that shift, not resisting it. The U.S. GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, created the first federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoins, requiring 100% reserve backing and monthly public disclosures from issuers – the kind of transparency a compliance officer at a licensed sportsbook can actually point to. In the EU, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation’s transitional period closed on 1 July 2026, meaning any crypto-asset service provider in an operator’s payment chain now needs full CASP authorisation rather than an informal assurance. As Mykyta Kim of compliance firm Key2Law put it in a recent interview, “under the post-transition MiCA regime, relying on assurances is no longer enough” – regulators are now examining the entire payment chain, “who converts crypto-assets into fiat, who holds the assets, who performs AML checks.”
The regulatory patchwork, market by market
There is no single global answer to “is crypto betting legal,” and pretending otherwise is where most explainer content on this topic goes wrong. The honest picture is a patchwork, and it’s moving on different clocks in every jurisdiction.
| Market | Current status (mid-2026) | What changes, and when |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Crypto deposits explicitly permitted only in Colorado and Wyoming; most states silent or restrictive | GENIUS Act reserve rules already in force; state-by-state expansion likely, timeline unset |
| European Union | MiCA transitional period ended 1 July 2026; CASP authorisation now required in the payment chain | EU-wide AML rulebook (Regulation 2024/1624) applies to gambling operators from 10 July 2027 |
| United Kingdom | No crypto deposits at UKGC-licensed operators; Gambling Commission scoping a pathway | FCA cryptoasset regime expected to take effect 25 October 2027 |
| Ireland | Existing AML duties since 2018; crypto deposits not separately standardised | Closed-loop payment rule and crypto source-of-funds standard due Q2 2027, per the national AML strategy launched 13 August 2026 |
| Curaçao | Crypto widely accepted at CGA-licensed operators | Detailed crypto policy guideline phased in through mid-2027 |
| Chile | No dedicated online betting law yet; crypto unaddressed in the pending bill | Tax authority (SII) began requiring foreign platforms to register for digital VAT in June 2026 |
What Chile’s tax scramble reveals about the real fight
Chile is a useful, small-scale illustration of how this actually plays out on the ground, because its regulator moved on taxes months before it moved on the underlying legal question of whether these platforms should exist at all.
Chile has no law specifically authorising online betting; the only entities with express legal authorisation to run online games are the state lottery, Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, and the horse-racing operator Teletrak. A separate bill to license and regulate online betting operators (Boletín 14838-03) has been working through the Senate for roughly four years and, tellingly, does not mention cryptocurrency as either an authorised or prohibited payment method – the drafters left it for future regulation, an acknowledgment that the crypto question is genuinely unresolved even in markets actively writing new gambling law.
While that bill sat in committee, Chile’s Servicio de Impuestos Internos didn’t wait. A June 2026 resolution required foreign platforms serving Chilean bettors to register and pay 19% digital VAT. By mid-July, 25 platforms had registered voluntarily – Jugabet among them – while ten others, including Bet365, PokerStars, and Roobet, had not, triggering a “change of subject” mechanism where the payment processor itself withholds the tax instead. It’s a strange, backwards way to formalise a market – taxing an activity before deciding whether it’s legal – but it shows regulators reaching for whatever lever they can pull first, payments, when the legislative one is stuck. You can see how one of the compliant operators presents itself to that same regulatory backdrop at https://juegobets.cl/, for a sense of what a registered, locally-facing platform looks like in a market still waiting on its actual gambling law.
Where the honest disagreement sits
It would be dishonest to write this piece as a straight adoption story without naming the strongest counterargument. The American Gaming Association estimates Americans lose roughly $67 billion a year to illegal and offshore gambling, and crypto is repeatedly named as a primary payment rail for that offshore slice – precisely because pseudonymous, fast-settling assets are also excellent for moving money somewhere a licensed bank account can’t follow. Ireland’s new AML strategy and Curaçao’s own crypto policy guideline exist because regulators, not just critics, take that risk seriously.
My own position is that both things are true at once and get conflated far too often: stablecoin adoption inside licensed, audited operators is a legitimate payments upgrade that fixes a real withdrawal-speed problem; and the same technology, deployed through no-KYC offshore platforms, is a genuine and growing money-laundering vector. Treating “crypto in betting” as a single trend obscures the fact that these are different risk profiles requiring different regulatory tools – which is exactly why Ireland’s closed-loop rule and the EU’s CASP authorisation requirement target the payment chain rather than the coin itself.
So which would a regulator rather have: a licensed operator running fully-reserved, audited stablecoin rails with source-of-funds checks, or the status quo where players who want crypto simply route to whichever offshore site takes it, checks be damned? Every jurisdiction listed in the table above is, in its own way, betting on the first answer – cautiously, and on a timeline stretching well into 2027.
Quick answers before you deposit
Can I withdraw betting winnings in crypto? Not through any U.S.-licensed sportsbook as of mid-2026, even in the two states (Colorado, Wyoming) that permit crypto deposits. Crypto-native offshore casinos support it as standard, which is part of why regulators watch that segment closely.
Is betting with crypto legal? It depends entirely on where you are and which operator you use – a licensed operator’s crypto policy and a jurisdiction’s gambling law are two separate questions, as Chile’s own unresolved bill demonstrates.
Why are stablecoins overtaking Bitcoin at the cashier? Price stability. A dollar-pegged token removes the risk that a flat betting session still leaves you down purely because the market moved, which is precisely the friction that kept casual players away from Bitcoin gambling for years.
How this article was put together: Figures on bettor payment preferences come from Paysafe’s March 2026 survey of 2,550 U.S. bettors conducted via Sapio Research. Crypto-gambling market-size estimates were cross-checked against both a high-end methodology (Yield Sec) and a conservative one (Track360, TRM Labs’ on-chain data), and the gap between them is reported deliberately rather than smoothed over. Chilean regulatory details were sourced directly from Servicio de Impuestos Internos releases and Senate committee coverage, checked on 19 August 2026. Figures tied to 2027 regulatory deadlines (UK FCA, EU AML rulebook, Ireland, Curaçao) are all forward-looking commitments as of this writing and warrant rechecking as those dates approach.
