Crypto casinos in India
are now banned

Is crypto gambling legal in India?

No. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (PROGA) passed both Houses, received Presidential assent and was notified in the Gazette on 22 August 2025. The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha as Bill No. 110 of 2025 and passed there on 20 August 2025, and the Rajya Sabha passed it on 21 August 2025 (PRS Legislative Research bill record). The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology then finalised the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, which came into force on 1 May 2026, making the ban fully operative and constituting the Online Gaming Authority of India to enforce it. The Act sorts online games into three buckets:

Two definitions settle the crypto question. First, the stake does not have to be rupees: “other stakes” means “anything recognised as equivalent or convertible to money” and includes “credits, coins, token or objects or any other similar thing, by whatever name called and whether it is real or virtual” (section 2(1)(j)). A balance of Bitcoin or USDT, or casino credits bought with them, sits inside that wording. Second, the place the casino is run from does not matter: under section 1(2) the Act “extends to the whole of India and also applies to online money gaming service offered within the territory of India or operated from outside the territory of India”.

By collapsing the skill-versus-chance line for anything played for money, the Act sweeps in real-money fantasy sports, rummy and poker alongside slots and table games, which is why much of India's domestic real-money gaming industry shut down or pivoted. Because the law targets the activity rather than the payment method, paying in Bitcoin or USDT changes nothing: a crypto casino accepting Indian players is a prohibited online money game service. This replaces the old grey-area framing built on the colonial-era Public Gambling Act, 1867, and it is why this page no longer ranks casinos. Presenting a "play now" list would imply the activity is permitted, and it is not.

What the Act prohibits and penalises

Chapter III of the Bill contains three prohibitions and section 9 attaches a penalty to each. The amounts are maximums for a first conviction and a band with a floor for a repeat conviction.

• Arrest and bail (section 10): “offences under section 5 and section 7 shall be cognizable and non-bailable”. That covers offering and payment facilitation. The advertising offence under section 6 is not named in that section.
• Companies (section 11): where a company commits the offence, every person who was in charge of and responsible for that part of its business is liable alongside the company.
• Blocking (section 14): if sections 5, 6 and 7 are not complied with, information hosted in relation to an online money gaming service “shall be liable to be blocked for access by the public” through the Information Technology Act, 2000.
• Investigation (sections 15 and 16): officers authorised by the Central Government may “enter any place, whether physical or digital, and search and arrest without warrant any person found therein who is reasonably suspected of having committed or of committing or of being about to commit any offence under this Act”.
• Players: section 9 penalises the person who offers, the person who advertises and the person who handles the payment. Notably, the Act creates no explicit, separately worded offence for the ordinary individual who plays. That is the kernel of truth behind people still calling this a grey area, but it should not be overstated: the activity is banned and the operator and the payment processor are committing offences. We treat the player position as legally uncertain, not safe.

Section numbers and quotations are from the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025 as introduced in the Lok Sabha (Bill No. 110 of 2025, text), as of 13 November 2026. The commencement date is left to notification by the Central Government (section 1(3)).

The courts and the states

In 2026 the Supreme Court upheld the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka laws banning online money games, overturning the High Courts, and held there is no fundamental right to bet or gamble. On 27 May 2026 a bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan separately upheld the 28% GST on the full face value of real-money gaming bets, retrospective to 1 October 2023, rejecting the skill-versus-chance distinction for tax purposes; reported demands across the sector run to well over one lakh crore rupees. State laws still govern land-based gambling: Goa licenses casinos under its 1976 Act, Sikkim (Online Gaming (Regulation) Act 2008, amended 2024) and Nagaland (2016) once licensed intra-state online skill games, and Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Haryana enacted restrictive laws, all now overlaid by the central ban. The Act itself is under challenge: petitions from opposition-governed states and industry, arguing that betting and gambling is a State subject, were consolidated before the Supreme Court in September 2025 and are being heard. Until the Court rules otherwise, the ban stands. This is general information, not legal advice; for the global picture see our worldwide legality guide.

Crypto is legal to hold, and heavily taxed

Two questions must be kept apart. Is crypto legal to own? Yes. Is using it to gamble online legal? No. Cryptocurrency is legal to buy, hold and trade in India, though not legal tender; the Supreme Court struck down the RBI's banking restriction in 2020 in Internet and Mobile Association of India v RBI, and crypto is regulated as a "virtual digital asset" through tax and anti-money-laundering rules. Exchanges such as CoinDCX, CoinSwitch, WazirX and ZebPay must register with FIU-IND and run KYC under the PMLA; the RBI remains sceptical and has launched the Digital Rupee, but has not banned ownership. The 2025 Act's definition of an online money game expressly includes stakes paid in tokens or anything convertible to money, so staking a lawfully held wallet at a casino is precisely what is prohibited, and the fact that a wallet-to-wallet transfer bypasses Indian banks is a point about payment friction, not legality.

Tax obligations do not vanish because an activity is prohibited, and they are heavy:

• 30% on crypto gains (Section 115BBH) since the 2022 Union Budget: a flat rate plus surcharge and 4% cess on all income from transferring a VDA, no deductions except cost of acquisition, no set-off of losses, regardless of income slab.
• 1% TDS on transfers (Section 194S) above INR 10,000 a year (INR 50,000 for specified persons). Indian exchanges deduct it automatically on sell orders; for P2P and foreign-platform transfers the burden falls on the transferor.
• 28% GST on the face value of real-money gaming bets, upheld in May 2026, sits on top.

Buying crypto through an Indian exchange creates a reported, traceable record that the tax department can cross-reference against filings, so non-payment is a separate legal risk beside the gaming ban. Keep meticulous records and consult a chartered accountant. Our crypto gambling tax guide and tax calculator model the layers.

What casino terms say about India

Because the Act reaches services “operated from outside the territory of India”, an offshore operator's own country list does not decide whether its offer is lawful in India. The lists matter for a narrower reason: they are the operator's statement of what happens to an account opened from a place it excludes, or from a place where gambling is unlawful. Seventeen of the operators we review publish such a list in their terms or help centre (as of 10 and 11 November 2026; Sportsbet.io's list as of 6 October 2026). One of the seventeen names India for casino play.

Stake, 1win, Thunderpick, Lucky Block, Rainbet, FortuneJack, Bluff and Bustabit are not in the comparison, because no current restricted-country list of theirs is cited on this site; nothing is stated for them here. The full comparison for all 43 countries is on the country index.

Read together, the clauses point one way. Sixteen of the seventeen lists do not name India, but most of the same documents exclude anyone in a jurisdiction where online gambling is unlawful, and under the 2025 Act that describes India. A player there is outside those terms whether or not the country is printed in the list. What the operator may then do is in the same documents: mBit, BitStarz and Wild.io say they cannot guarantee withdrawals or refunds to a player who breaches the country policy; Thrill's terms give “immediate suspension or termination of your account, including forfeiture, reversal of winnings and/or funds” as the consequence of breaching its location rules; Gamdom says an account “may be restricted”. Hiding a location is a separate breach in its own right. Shuffle's clause 8.4 reads: “Any attempt to conceal your true location through the use of a VPN, proxy, or similar service or through the provision of incorrect or misleading information about your place of residence or location will constitute a breach of these Terms of Service.”

The offshore reality and why it is not a workaround

Every online crypto casino that accepts Indian users now operates outside the law that governs India, so all of them are offshore, unlicensed-to-supply platforms, and section 1(2) puts services run from abroad inside the Act. Enforcement has focused on blocking and the supply side: by late March 2026 authorities had actioned more than 8,300 betting and gambling URLs, several thousand of them after the Act took effect. Section 14 is the power behind those blocks. Blocking is leaky. A CUTS International study in the Delhi region reported that usage rose after the ban (from roughly 68% to 82% of those surveyed) as players shifted to offshore sites rather than stopping. We report that finding for clarity, not as encouragement, and we do not recommend trying to circumvent the ban. The risks stack:

• No legal protection — offshore operators are unlicensed to supply India and outside its consumer protection; withheld or disputed withdrawals leave you little recourse, and a site can vanish behind a block overnight.
• The operator's own terms — as the table above shows, most terms exclude players in places where gambling is unlawful, and several reserve the right to refuse a withdrawal or close the account on that ground.
• Payments are an offence — facilitating payments for online money games is criminal under sections 7 and 9(3), banks and processors are barred from handling them, and accounts flagged for gambling-related flows can be frozen under AML rules.
• Tax exposure remains — the 30% tax, 1% TDS and 28% GST apply regardless, and exchange records are traceable.
• The law can tighten — enforcement is expanding and parts of the Act are before the Supreme Court.

The old advantages of these sites, no KYC, anonymity and instant withdrawals, are exactly what leaves a player unprotected when something goes wrong. Provably fair tooling can verify an individual bet; it cannot make an operator pay out or keep a domain online. The lawful side of the line is the stake-free play the Act recognises: e-sports and free social or skill games with no money wagered and nothing won. If gambling has stopped being fun or feels hard to control, free and confidential help is listed on our responsible gambling page.

INR rails and what the law allows

It is worth being precise. Buying and holding cryptocurrency is legal and happens through UPI and bank rails every day; what the Act changed is the end use. Section 7 is written for the payment chain, not for the wallet: no “bank, financial institution, or any other person facilitating financial transactions or authorisation of funds” may process a payment “towards payment for any online money gaming service”. The wording is not tied to a payment method, so it applies in the same way to UPI apps, IMPS, NEFT and RTGS bank transfers, cards and wallets.

• The penalty sits on the facilitator: up to three years, or a fine of up to one crore rupees, or both (section 9(3)), rising to three to five years on a repeat conviction, and the offence is cognizable and non-bailable (section 10).
• Domestic exchanges (CoinDCX, CoinSwitch, WazirX, ZebPay) sell crypto in INR under KYC and are registered with FIU-IND; 1% TDS applies on transfers and gains are taxed at 30%. A purchase there is lawful and recorded. What the Act prohibits is the gaming service the money is later sent to.
• A wallet-to-wallet transfer does not pass through an Indian bank, which is a point about payment friction, not legality: the definition of an online money game already covers stakes paid in “credits, coins, token or objects”.

Banks and UPI providers may block or reverse payments they associate with gambling. None of this removes the legal risk the Act creates, and this page does not describe ways of funding a casino account from India.