Each passing day makes it abundantly clear that legalizing gambling to a degree that every person essentially is carrying around a casino in their pocket was not a great idea. It is, in fact, actively ruining countless lives right now. And it’s not just adults, either.
A New York Times investigation shows that teenagers and young adults are being pulled into high-risk crypto gambling. It’s all happening via an expansive ecosystem of streamers, celebrities, and mostly unregulated platforms that make going bankrupt look normal and consequence-free.
One teenager, identified only as David in the Times piece, placed his first crypto casino bet at 14 after watching popular streamer Adin Ross and rapper Drake gamble away a fortune online without a care in the world. By the time he turned 18, David had converted $12,000 in childhood savings into cryptocurrency, briefly doubled it, then lost everything.
He secretly took out a $4,000 loan in a desperate attempt to win it back… and lost that too.
Teen Boys Are Getting Hooked—and Wiped Out—by Crypto Casinos
“I lost sight of what money actually is,” he told the Times, a sentence that encapsulates our era just as well as his individual predicament.
What happened to David is happening to mostly young men across the country. Legal online betting in the U.S. has exploded over the past decade, with sports betting revenue jumping from $6.6 billion in 2018 to nearly $150 billion last year.
The industry heavily targets young men and even partners with colleges to reach students. Crypto casinos push this further. Though illegal in the U.S., they’re easily accessible via VPNs, accept decentralized digital currencies, and often have weak age verification.
To hook users, crypto casinos rely on livestreaming platforms like Kick, a home for Twitch castoffs, where influencers broadcast themselves demonstrating that they’ve lost all sense of monetary value.
In August, stars like Adin Ross, xQc, Trainwreckstv, and Drake streamed a marathon betting session on Stake, the crypto casino that founded Kick. Twitch banned crypto casino promotion in 2022. Kick filled the vacuum, of course, as the whole operation seems squarely aimed at ruining men’s lives, signing streamers like xQc to deals reportedly worth up to $100 million.
The difference between a big-time gambling streamer and the average young guy at home watching on his phone, thinking that he might strike it rich if he cashes out his college savings and tosses it all into online casinos, is a seemingly endless procession of sponsors who don’t care about the damage all this is doing.
They’re going to have a nearly endless stream of money to burn. Top creators are paid six or seven figures outright. Then there’s the fact that, according to people with direct knowledge who spoke to the NYT, a lot of the big dramatic bets made on these streams were made with cash provided by the casinos, meaning the streamer risks nothing and keeps nothing.
The result is a generation watching what looks like easy money, played by people they trust, in a system designed to hide the real odds. But much of it is just an act. It’s all just the theater of extravagance that tricks people into thinking that they, too, can be just as carefree with money. But their losses will be real, and their money will actually be gone.
The post Teen Boys Are Losing Everything at Crypto Casinos appeared first on VICE.
