Published May 22, 2026 · By Editorial Team · 8 min read

Brazil's Crypto Gambling Ban at 18 Months: 51% of the Market Still Offshore

When Brazil's Secretariat of Prizes and Bets banned cryptocurrency as a deposit method for licensed sportsbooks and casinos on January 1, 2025, the regulator's stated objective was to channel demand into the new federal licensing regime. Eighteen months and 80-plus federal authorisations later, the offshore unlicensed market still accounts for between 41% and 51% of total betting activity in the country, according to filings from Anatel, the Ministry of Finance and industry monitor H2 Gambling Capital.

What happened

Brazil's federal sports-betting and online-casino licensing regime, established under Law 14,790 of 2023, opened for applications in mid-2024 and began granting full federal authorisations from December 2024. The Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas (SPA), housed within the Ministry of Finance, was given responsibility for both licensing and ongoing supervision. By May 2026, 80-plus operators hold federal authorisations, including international groups (Bet365, Flutter via Betfair, Entain via Sportingbet, FanDuel via partnerships) and a long tail of Brazil-founded brands.

The crypto prohibition was set out in SPA/MF Ordinance 615/2024, published on August 5, 2024, with effect from the January 1, 2025 commencement of the licensed market. The ordinance is unambiguous: licensed operators may not accept cryptocurrency as a deposit method, may not offer cryptocurrency as a withdrawal option, and may not maintain corporate cryptocurrency wallets connected to the licensed operating entity. Permissible payment methods are limited to PIX (the national instant-payment rail), Brazilian-issued debit cards, and bank transfers within the regulated banking system.

Enforcement against unlicensed crypto operators has been carried out primarily through Anatel, the national telecommunications regulator. Anatel published a continuous-update blacklist of unlicensed gambling and crypto-gambling domains; by year-end 2025, the regulator had ordered ISPs to block more than 18,000 IPs and 9,400 domains associated with unlicensed gambling operations, with periodic enforcement waves of 1,000-plus blocks per month through the first quarter of 2026.

The licensing regime itself has matured. Operators pay a R$30 million (approximately $5.5 million) licence fee for a five-year authorisation, are required to maintain a Brazilian corporate vehicle with a local director, must implement player-self-exclusion through the federal Sistema Nacional de Auto-Exclusão (SISNAE) database, and must contribute 12% of gross gaming revenue in dedicated taxes and social-fund payments.

Why it matters

The 41-51% offshore market share is the headline. Brazil's licensed market is, by gross gaming revenue, the largest in Latin America and one of the fastest-growing in the world: R$32-38 billion in annualised GGR through Q1 2026, depending on the source. That an offshore unlicensed cohort still accounts for nearly half of total activity, 18 months into the licensed regime, suggests that the crypto ban created a parallel market rather than collapsing one.

The reasoning is straightforward in retrospect. A meaningful share of Brazilian online gambling players, particularly in the 25-40 age cohort, were already comfortable with crypto-on-ramping through Mercado Bitcoin, Foxbit and Binance Brazil. For these players, the licensed market's PIX-only payment regime is a step backward: PIX deposits are reversible within the banking system's chargeback window, are visible to the player's bank, are taxable at withdrawal, and route through a regulated intermediary. Crypto deposits, by contrast, are non-reversible, are not visible to the player's primary bank, do not generate automatic withholding, and route through a player-controlled wallet.

The licensed operators have not been silent. The Associação Nacional de Jogos e Loterias (ANJL) filed a formal request in February 2026 to permit stablecoin deposits — specifically USDC and USDT — on a pilot basis, citing the offshore market share as evidence that the demand exists and that channelling it into the licensed regime is consistent with the ordinance's stated objective. The SPA's response, published in April 2026, declined the request and reaffirmed the cryptocurrency prohibition, citing AML, source-of-funds and Brazilian Central Bank coordination considerations.

The crypto-casino ecosystem outside Brazil has, predictably, leaned into the gap. Several large Curacao-licensed crypto-native casinos with mature Portuguese-language operations — Roobet, Stake (via Stake.bet variants), BC.Game, Vave, Trustdice — continue to accept Brazilian players, with marketing in Brazilian Portuguese, content partnerships with Brazilian streamers, and customer-support coverage on Brasília time. Anatel blocks the domains; the operators rotate to new domains; the cycle continues.

Who is affected

Licensed operators in the regulated regime are the clearest losers in commercial terms. The 80-plus federally-authorised operators have invested heavily — R$30 million licence fees, local-substance infrastructure, compliance programmes — and have grown a substantial regulated market. But their addressable population is the half of the Brazilian gambling demand that prefers (or accepts) PIX-only payment. The crypto-native half remains outside their reach by regulatory design.

Brazilian Treasury revenue is the second-order loser. The 12% tax on GGR, designed to capture meaningful federal revenue from a previously-untaxed sector, captures only the licensed portion. The offshore 41-51% generates no Brazilian tax. Industry estimates place the foregone tax revenue at R$1.8 to R$2.4 billion annually.

Brazilian players in the offshore segment carry the highest individual risk. Offshore operators are not subject to SISNAE self-exclusion, are not bound by the federal player-protection regime, and offer no domestic dispute-resolution pathway. Payouts, while typically prompt on the larger operators, are not legally enforceable in Brazilian courts. Player funds are not segregated under Brazilian banking law. The crypto convenience comes with structural protections only as strong as the offshore operator's licensing regime — generally Curacao OGL/2024 or OGL/2025.

Affiliates have benefited disproportionately on both sides. Affiliate sites serving the regulated market earn standard revenue-share on a high-deposit-volume but lower-margin licensed product. Affiliate sites serving the offshore market earn higher per-player revenue-share on the same Brazilian players, with no need to comply with federal advertising restrictions that have constrained the licensed-market marketing budget.

What players should do

Players who value the federal player-protection framework — SISNAE, licensed-operator dispute resolution, segregated player funds — should use the licensed PIX-rail operators. The 80-plus authorised list is published and maintained by SPA on the Ministry of Finance website; players should verify any operator's authorisation status before depositing.

Players who prefer crypto-rail operators should approach the offshore segment with explicit caution. The minimum verification is a current Curacao OGL/2024 or OGL/2025 licence (visible in the operator's footer and verifiable on the CGA register), a documented withdrawal track record on independent forums (LCB, AskGamblers, Brazilian-language equivalents), and an understanding that no Brazilian regulatory recourse exists. The Anatel blocking will continue to inconvenience access, often requiring domain rotation; this is not a sign of bad operator behaviour but a sign of the underlying legal environment.

Players should also factor in the tax dimension. Brazilian residents are taxable on gambling winnings regardless of where the gambling takes place. Crypto-realised winnings from offshore operators are reportable income at the time of conversion to fiat, and high-value transfers from offshore exchanges to Brazilian accounts are routinely flagged by the Receita Federal under the existing crypto-reporting framework.

Conclusion

Brazil's crypto-gambling prohibition has produced a clean, observable two-segment market: a federally licensed, PIX-rail, tax-paying licensed segment that captures roughly half of demand, and an offshore, crypto-rail, untaxed segment that captures the other half. The licensed regime is, by any conventional metric, a regulatory success. The prohibition is, by the metric the SPA stated when it adopted Ordinance 615, an evident failure. The half of the market the prohibition was designed to channel into the regulated regime has remained outside it. Whether the SPA reverses course on stablecoin deposits in the second half of 2026 is the question worth watching.