Our Editorial Team

Our editorial principles

The CryptoCasinoHouse editorial team operates under 5 published principles that govern every review, every ranking decision, and every byline on the site. Independence sits at the top of that list. Casinos cannot pay to be ranked higher, to remove negative findings, or to delay updates that would change their score. We have refused 14 paid-placement offers since 2020 ranging from $400 per ranking slot to a $25,000 lump-sum proposal for top placement on a high-traffic comparison page. Every refused offer is logged in our internal register.

The 4 remaining principles are evidence over opinion, transparency, reproducibility, and named-byline accountability. Evidence means every claim traces back to a dated test artifact. Transparency means our scoring weights, our affiliate commercials, and our blacklist criteria are all published. Reproducibility means the 25-step process is documented to a level where any technically capable reader could replicate a test in 4 to 6 hours. Accountability means every review names the editor responsible, with a photo, a verifiable LinkedIn profile, and a contact email.

Hiring criteria

Editorial hires must meet 4 criteria before they touch a published review. First, at least 3 years of industry experience in iGaming, gambling regulation, payments, or a directly adjacent field. Second, a verifiable employment history we can confirm through 2 independent professional references. Third, no active commercial relationships with operators in our covered set, disclosed in a signed conflict-of-interest declaration. Fourth, a sample writing exercise scored blind by 2 senior editors against a published rubric.

We have hired 3 staff editors and 4 contributors in the last 36 months. We have rejected 47 applications during the same period, the majority on the conflict-of-interest screen because applicants either held active affiliate accounts with our covered operators or had previously taken paid work from those operators within the prior 24 months. The 24-month cooling-off period is deliberately conservative and we treat it as non-negotiable.

Probation and review

New editors complete a 90-day probation during which their first 3 published reviews are co-bylined with a senior editor and undergo line-by-line review against our 25-step protocol. The probation editor cannot make scoring decisions independently during this period, although they participate in scoring discussions and learn the protocol by doing. After 90 days, the senior editor signs a probation completion form and the editor moves to solo-byline status.

Conflict-of-interest disclosure policy

Every editor signs a quarterly disclosure form covering 4 categories: personal accounts at reviewed casinos, holdings in crypto positions that overlap with operator-issued tokens, communication with operator staff outside the review process, and any consulting income from gambling-adjacent businesses. The disclosure form is filed with our compliance lead and retained for 36 months. Disclosed conflicts are noted on the affected reviews and the implicated editor recuses from scoring decisions involving that operator.

We have recorded 9 disclosed conflicts since 2022. In 7 cases the conflict was a pre-existing personal account at a covered operator, and the editor was recused from the scoring committee for that review. In 1 case the conflict was a token holding overlapping with an operator's loyalty token, and the holding was sold within 14 days of disclosure. In 1 case the conflict was a former-colleague relationship with an operator's compliance officer, and the editor was recused from the next 3 review cycles for that operator. No undisclosed conflict has been identified by post-publication audit during the same period.

Named-byline policy

Every review on this site carries a named byline. We do not publish anonymous reviews, pseudonymous reviews, or AI-generated reviews. The byline policy has 3 components: the primary editor's name and photo appear at the top of every review, the verifying second editor's name appears in the review metadata, and the publication date plus the most recent update date are both visible on every page. The 30-day re-touch cadence on the methodology page is the schedule we hold ourselves to for keeping update dates accurate.

Combined bylines (such as "Editorial Team") are used for collaboratively produced features, breaking-news updates where multiple editors contributed in parallel, and statistical compilations drawn from our internal data without a single editorial author. We use the combined byline sparingly, and a combined-byline article still names every contributor in the page footer with their respective roles in producing the piece.

Photo and LinkedIn verification

Every named editor on the site is required to publish a current professional photo and a verifiable LinkedIn profile. Photos are not stock images and not AI-generated. The LinkedIn profile must be active for at least 12 months prior to onboarding and must show employment history consistent with the bio we publish. We verify the LinkedIn profile against the editor's CV at hire and re-verify the profile annually. If an editor's profile becomes inaccessible (closed, private, suspended), we ask them to restore public visibility or update the bio note to disclose the change within 30 days.

This level of verification is deliberately stricter than the industry norm. Many crypto casino affiliate sites use stock photos with fabricated names, AI-generated portraits, or no photo at all. We take the opposite position because reader trust depends on knowing that a real person stands behind the byline, and a real person whose professional reputation is publicly visible has a stronger incentive to write accurately.

Peer review process

No review is published without a second-editor signoff. The peer review is structured around a 4-item checklist: license verification confirmed against the regulator's registry, bonus terms validated against the live T&C page on the day of testing, withdrawal timing reproducible within a 20% margin against a re-test, and absence of unsupported claims. The signed checklist is archived for 36 months. We have re-opened 7 reviews in the last 24 months due to reader-flagged factual errors, and the archived checklists allowed us to trace exactly which editor missed which item in each case.

Peer review is not a rubber-stamp process. Approximately 14% of reviews require revision rounds before signoff, most commonly because the original editor used a bonus-EV calculation that the second editor disputed. Disputes are resolved by a third senior editor whose decision is final and is logged in the review's revision history. The revision history for each review is available on request via the editorial inbox.

External standards we reference

We benchmark our editorial standards against several external frameworks. The Malta Gaming Authority publishes operator licensing guidance that informs our license verification protocol. The iTech Labs testing standards inform our RNG audit verification. The Curacao Gaming Control Board publishes LOK-framework guidance that informs our handling of Curacao-licensed operators. The GambleAware framework informs our scoring of operator responsible-gambling tools. We do not claim that our process is equivalent to a regulator audit. It is an editorial process designed to surface the operational reality of an operator as a player would experience it.

Reader corrections and accountability

Our correction protocol is documented on the methodology page and operates as follows: a reader files a query, an editor not involved in the original review investigates, the original editor is invited to respond with evidence, and the correction or rebuttal is published with a dated note within 48 hours. We have processed 23 reader-flagged corrections in the last 18 months. Of those, 17 led to material text changes, 6 were rejected with explanation, and 0 were ignored. The full revision log for every review is available on request and includes the date of each change, the editor responsible, and the reason for the change.

Our 4 contributing editors

Beyond the 3 named editors profiled above, 4 additional contributors handle non-byline work. A Spanish-language editor based in Buenos Aires reviews and rewrites our LATAM-Spanish coverage every 60 days. A Portuguese-Brazilian editor based in São Paulo handles our PT-BR coverage in alignment with the 2024 Brazilian regulatory framework. A Russian-language editor based in Riga handles CIS coverage excluding Russia itself. A data analyst maintains the testing logs and runs the statistical reconciliation between our scores and third-party platforms such as Trustpilot, AskGamblers, and Casino.Guru. Each contributor is credited in the page footer of any review they touch.

How to reach the editorial team

For factual corrections, methodology questions, news tips, or operator misconduct reports, write to the editorial inbox. We respond within 48 hours during business days. For confidential tips, we accept PGP-encrypted messages with the public key published in our security.txt file. Press inquiries from journalists go to a separate press channel and receive responses within 48 hours. The full set of contact channels is documented on the contact page along with response-time expectations for each.

Editorial firewall and commercial separation

The editorial firewall is the rule that nobody on the commercial side of the business (the 2 affiliate-account managers handling tracking and payouts) has any input into review scoring, ranking order, or content corrections. The firewall is enforced through 3 mechanisms: scoring is committed by editors in a write-only log before commercial review, ranking changes require a 2-editor signoff, and the commercial team's monthly report does not include per-operator commission breakdowns at all. The 2 commercial staff can see total monthly revenue but not which operator generated which slice. The firewall has held cleanly for the 24 months ending April 2026 according to our annual internal audit, and any breach would trigger immediate escalation to the senior editorial committee.

Commission rates vary across the 15 operators we cover (10% to 70% RevShare is the typical range in this niche) but do not affect rankings. The full mapping of operator-by-operator commission against editor score is published in the affiliate disclosure. The mismatch between commission and score is the public check on the integrity of the firewall: our 4 top-ranked casinos pay below-average commission and 2 of our lowest-ranked casinos pay above-average commission.

Diversity, geography, and language coverage

The full team of 7 is distributed across 3 continents and operates from 3 primary locations: Tallinn, Lisbon, and Buenos Aires. Working language across the team is English, with handoffs to native-speaker contributors for the 9 other languages we publish. The team's combined cultural coverage spans European, LATAM, and East Asian markets, which informs how we evaluate operators targeting those regions.

Regional focus

The Spanish-LATAM contributor flags region-specific issues such as payment methods that exist in Mexico but not Argentina. The Portuguese-Brazilian contributor flags the 2024 Brazilian regulatory framework's effect on operator licensing. The Russian-CIS contributor tracks the regulatory differences between Russia (where we apply edge-filtering) and the CIS markets where our coverage is unrestricted.

Training and continuing education

Editors complete 8 hours of structured training per quarter covering regulatory updates, payment-method changes, and methodology revisions. The training is internal and is led by senior editors.

Conference attendance

We also send 2 editors per year to industry conferences for networking and continuing education, with the requirement that conference attendance is not paid by any operator in our covered set. Conference attendance and any related travel is funded from our affiliate revenue and is logged in our annual financial transparency report.

Editorial reading list

Every editor on the team reads 4 industry trade publications weekly and the major regulator publications on a rolling basis: MGA bulletins, Curacao GCB notices, UK Gambling Commission enforcement updates, and iTech Labs certification announcements. Responsible-gambling research is monitored via GambleAware.

Read more

For context on how the site is funded and how the editorial firewall is enforced, see our about page. The 25-step methodology describes how every casino is tested. The affiliate disclosure documents commission rates against editor scores. The 90+ blacklisted operators registry lists 91 operators that have failed our methodology badly enough to warrant a public blacklist entry. Our terms of use and privacy policy apply to all reader interactions with the site.

Editorial governance

The editorial firewall protects scoring decisions. The governance layer protects everything outside scoring: conflict-of-interest declarations, gift acceptance, correction protocols, and the public changelog that records every material edit to every page. The 3 governance rules below run alongside the 25-step methodology and are reviewed by an outside compliance counsel on a 12-month cycle. The last external review was in February 2026. None of the rules are aspirational; each has an enforceable mechanism documented in the internal handbook, and breaches trigger a structured escalation to the senior editorial committee.

Conflict-of-interest policy

Every editor signs a quarterly disclosure covering 4 categories: personal accounts at reviewed casinos, holdings in crypto positions overlapping with operator-issued tokens, communication with operator staff outside the review process, and consulting income from gambling-adjacent businesses. The form is filed with our compliance lead and retained for 36 months. We have recorded 9 disclosed conflicts since 2022, and in each case the implicated editor was recused from the affected scoring decision. The 24-month cooling-off period for editors who previously worked for or took paid work from operators in our covered set is enforced at hiring and is non-negotiable. 47 applicants have been rejected on the conflict-of-interest screen since 2020.

Gift policy: zero tolerance from operators

No editor accepts gifts of any kind from operators in our covered set. The $0 ceiling applies to physical gifts, branded merchandise, hospitality (meals, drinks, accommodation), conference passes, travel reimbursement, and consulting fees. The 5 paid speaking engagements David Chen declined in 2024-2025 ranged from $1,200 to $8,000 in offered honoraria; the decline list is in the internal register. Conference attendance is funded from our affiliate revenue, never from operator sponsorship. The 2 editors we send to industry events each year travel under the explicit condition that no operator covers any portion of the trip. Our affiliate disclosure documents the commercial firewall.

Correction policy with public changelog

Reader-flagged corrections route to an editor not involved in the original piece. The original editor responds with evidence within 48 hours, the correction or rebuttal is published with a dated note, and the change is logged in the page changelog at the foot of the affected review or guide. We have processed 23 substantiated corrections in the last 18 months. 17 resulted in material text changes, 6 were rejected with explanation, 0 were ignored. The 74% substantiation rate is the quality benchmark we hold ourselves to internally. Read the full protocol on the methodology page.