Crypto Casino Licenses: Curaçao, Anjouan, and the Red Flags

A licence is the first thing we check and the thing most casino pages get wrong. Of the 35 operators in our database, 11 publish a current Curaçao licence number, 10 publish an Anjouan number, one (Thrill) publishes both, two cite Panama, one cites a Canadian First Nation commission, one has no licence at all, one is a sweepstakes product with no gambling licence by design, and eight cite a regulator without publishing any number we could find. None holds a licence from the Malta Gaming Authority, the UK Gambling Commission for its main site, or any German, Austrian or US regulator. This page explains what each licence actually gives you, what changed in Curaçao, why so many brands moved to Anjouan, the red flags in the data, and how to verify a number yourself.

Why the licence sets the ceiling

Our trust score, 30% of an operator’s total, is capped by licence before anything else is considered: 7.5 for Curaçao, 7 for Anjouan, and lower where no number is published or no licence exists. A licence is the only external party with any power over the operator, and its value to you depends on whether you can confirm it exists, whether the regulator has ever been known to act, and whether you have a route to complain. The full method is on the how we rate page.

Curaçao: from master licences to the LOK

For two decades Curaçao gambling ran on a handful of master licences whose holders sold sub-licences to operators. The numbers 8048/JAZ, 1668/JAZ and 365/JAZ still appear in older reviews and in the historical fields of our data: BitStarz, Stake and FortuneJack once sat under 8048/JAZ, Cloudbet and Sportsbet.io under 1668/JAZ, Coins.Game and Bspin under 365/JAZ. A sub-licence meant the regulator had no direct relationship with the operator at all.

That system has been replaced. The Curaçao Gaming Control Board began issuing direct licences in the new OGL format in 2024, and the National Ordinance on Games of Chance, usually called the LOK after its Dutch initials, took effect at the end of 2024, establishing the Curaçao Gaming Authority as the regulator and ending the master-licence model. In our data the result is visible as a clean OGL number: BitStarz OGL/2024/165/0185, Stake OGL/2024/1451/0918, Cloudbet OGL/2024/328/0599 (granted 23 May 2025), Roobet OGL/2024/687/0427, Shuffle OGL/2024/1337/0628, Duelbits OGL/2024/1507/0838, Rollbit OGL/2024/1260/0494, Sportsbet.io OGL/2023/110/0072, Jack.com OGL/2024/1562/1139, and OGL/2024/1307/0748 held by Scores55 Tech B.V. for both mBit Casino and 7Bit Casino. Thrill holds OGL/2024/1052/0508 alongside an Anjouan licence.

What the reform changes for you is modest but real: the licensee is now the company you contract with, and the number can be checked in the authority’s register. What it does not change: Curaçao has limited enforcement capacity, player funds are not protected the way an EU regulator demands, and a complaint that goes nowhere has no appeal in your own country. The reform also raised costs and compliance demands, which is the background to the next section.

Five operators cite Curaçao without publishing a number: Thunderpick and TrustDice, and among the US-facing books Bovada, MyBookie and BetUS. For scoring purposes those are treated as unverified.

Anjouan: the licence most crypto brands moved to

Anjouan is an autonomous island of the Union of the Comoros, in the Indian Ocean. Its Gaming Board, operating through the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority, issues licences with numbers in the format ALSI-YYYYMMNNN-FIx. In our data they cover BC.Game (ALSI-202410011-FI1), FortuneJack (ALSI-202411021-FI1), Bets.io (ALSI-202410047-FI2), Wild.io (ALSI-202504044-FI2), Dexsport (ALSI-202508043-FI2), Rakebit (ALSI-202602030-FI2), Bitz (ALSI-202411066-FI2), Bspin (ALSI-092404013-FI2), Metaspins (ALSI-202606048-FI2), Thrill (ALSI-202506019-FI1) and 1xBit (ALSI-202409027-FI2). Vave, Coins.Game and Ignition’s US site cite Anjouan without a published number.

The migration pattern is the story. FortuneJack moved from a Curaçao sub-licence to Anjouan in 2024. BC.Game withdrew its Curaçao licence on 5 December 2024, after a Curaçao court declared its former operators bankrupt, citing an “increasingly hostile environment for operators”. Bets.io, Coins.Game and Rakebit all previously held Curaçao licences. Wild.io switched in spring 2026, Metaspins on 30 June 2026. The direction is one way, from the jurisdiction that reformed to the one that did not, and the reason operators give in public is cost and regulatory friction.

For players, Anjouan licences are verifiable by number and the seal on an operator’s site normally links to a validation page. Beyond that, the record is thin: we found no case in which the Anjouan regulator sanctioned a licensee, and the only external assessment in our data, a November 2025 compliance report on Rakebit, called that operator’s Anjouan licence “legal cover in name only”. That is one critic’s view of one operator, but the absence of any public enforcement history is why we cap Anjouan at 7 rather than 7.5. Validity periods are short: Bitz’s licence runs to 21 November 2026, Metaspins’ to 29 June 2027, Rakebit’s to 17 February 2027, and Thrill’s showed validity to 18 June 2026 in the source we fetched, so its renewal should be confirmed.

Malta and the licences none of these operators hold

The Malta Gaming Authority is the benchmark most comparison sites invoke and none of the 35 operators here meets. An MGA licence puts the operator inside an EU member state’s legal system, requires player funds to be held separately from operating money, imposes responsible-gambling obligations with audits, and gives players a formal complaints route and alternative dispute resolution. It also generally excludes the features that make crypto casinos attractive to their users: anonymous play, unlimited coin lists and aggressive bonuses. The same is broadly true of the UK Gambling Commission, Gibraltar and the Isle of Man. If you see a crypto casino claiming an MGA licence, check the register; in our data the claim would be false for every operator listed.

The UK example is instructive. Stake.uk.com was a white-label site under a third party’s UK licence; after a UKGC investigation it closed by 11 March 2025. Rollbit.co.uk runs under Grace Media (Gibraltar) Ltd with a UKGC account; rollbit.com does not. A regulated sister site tells you nothing about the .com domain you are actually using.

Panama, Tobique, Costa Rica and nothing at all

BetOnline and Wild Casino are Panama-registered companies (Blue High House S.A. and BOL-SB House S.A.) and cite Panamanian licensing without a number. Winna cites the Tobique Gaming Commission, a First Nation body in New Brunswick, Canada, with no number published. Betplay.io has a Costa Rica company registration and, in the words of one source, “does not have a license”; a Costa Rica registration is a corporate address, not a regulator. Stake.us has no gambling licence because it operates as a sweepstakes promotion. All of these are scored as unverified, below the Anjouan cap.

Red flags in the data

• A seal with no number. Eight operators in the set cite a regulator but publish no licence number. A seal image that does not link to a validation page, or links to one that shows a different company, proves nothing.
• A retired number still quoted. Reviews that cite 8048/JAZ, 1668/JAZ or 365/JAZ for an operator are out of date. BitStarz, Cloudbet, Sportsbet.io and FortuneJack all appear with old numbers on third-party sites.
• Licence holder and operator do not match. Jack.com is named as Data Link Digital B.V. by one source and Ryker B.V. by another. Wild.io’s privacy policy still named the old operator months after its licence switch. BetUS names no operating company at all. Mismatches are sometimes clerical and sometimes a sign that the entity you would sue does not exist: Belize’s financial regulator reportedly said exactly that about BC.Game’s new licence holder.
• Recent migration. A licence less than a year old at a jurisdiction with no enforcement record means the operator’s history under supervision is close to zero. Wild.io, Metaspins, Rakebit and Coins.Game all fall into this category in 2026.
• A regulatory action elsewhere. A licence in one place does not prevent action in another. Vave was fined EUR 3.08 million by the Dutch regulator in June 2026. TrustDice was banned from Sweden in April 2025. Thailand blocked Shuffle.com nationwide on 9 October 2026. Michigan, Washington and others have ordered Bovada, BetOnline and MyBookie out. Each documented action costs a point in our scoring.
• Expiry. Anjouan licences carry short validity periods; an expired date on the validation page means the operator is, at that moment, unlicensed.
• Dual claims that conflict. Vave is described as Anjouan-licensed by one source and Curaçao-licensed by another, with no number from either. When sources disagree and the operator’s own page does not settle it, we treat the licence as unverified.

How to check a licence in five minutes

1. Find the number in the terms, not the footer. The terms and conditions name the contracting company and should state the licence. Note both.
2. Click the seal. A genuine Curaçao or Anjouan seal links to a validation page on the regulator’s or validator’s domain. Check the domain in the address bar, not the look of the page.
3. Match three things. The company on the validation page, the company in the terms, and the domain you are on should all agree. If the validation page lists a different URL or company, the licence covers something else.
4. Check the status and date. Active, with an expiry in the future. For Anjouan licences, this is the field most worth reading.
5. Search the regulator’s own register. The Curaçao Gaming Authority maintains a public list of licensees; search by company name as well as by number, since some operators run several domains under one licence, as Bitz does with a sister site.
6. Search for enforcement. The operator name together with “cease and desist”, “fine” or “bankrupt” surfaces most of what we found. Our reviews summarise the results and the main ranking deducts for them.

A licence check tells you whether there is anyone to complain to. It does not tell you whether the bonus is worth claiming, which is covered on the crypto casino bonuses page and the no-deposit bonus page, or whether the operator will ask for your passport, which is covered on the anonymous crypto casinos page. For how licensing interacts with coin choice and withdrawal terms, start with the Bitcoin casinos comparison.

Last updated: October 30, 2026