Best betting sites that take Bitcoin in 2026 — and what that really costs you

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

A bookmaker accepting Bitcoin in Great Britain is, first and foremost, a bookmaker that needs a Gambling Commission licence — the licence has nothing to do with which coins the cashier accepts and everything to do with who is allowed to take bets from people in England, Scotland and Wales. That one fact reshapes what this page is for, and what follows is built on it. Every operator ranked here is on the Commission’s public register. None of the seven names below is the only licensed brand, none has been chosen for accepting Bitcoin over any other licensed peer, and a reader comparing them should read the comparison as a survey of what licensed brands cost, not as a buyer’s guide to the cheapest way to gamble.

Currency stamp: data current as of 27 October 2026, verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own published terms.

Why “best Bitcoin betting site” is a question the licence answers first

Search terms around Bitcoin and sports betting carry a quiet assumption that the coin changes the deal. In a regulated market it doesn’t, at least not on the side of the deal that matters: who supervises the brand, who hears the complaint, who blocks the player who asks to be blocked, and what is owed to the customer if the brand folds. Those answers are written into the Gambling Act 2005 and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice that licensed brands operate under — the LCCP — and they are not optional. Crypto changes the payment rail; it does not change the regulatory perimeter.

What “licensed in Great Britain” actually means

A remote bookmaker serving customers in Great Britain needs an operating licence from the Gambling Commission regardless of where the company sits. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain must hold a Commission licence wherever it is incorporated — a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar registration is not a substitute. There is no state monopoly and no cap on the number of licences; the Commission maintains a public register of every holder, searchable by company name, trading name, domain or account number. That register is the only definitive test of whether a brand is licensed. A .com domain proves nothing: licensed brands use both .com and .co.uk interchangeably, and the test is what the register says, not what the URL ends in.

The seven brands reviewed here all sit on that register with a remote general betting standard (real events) licence. Several of them are owned by groups that also run other licensed brands — Ladbrokes and Coral, Paddy Power and Betfair, are well-known examples elsewhere on the register — and when two listed brands share a licensee, they are not independent competitors for the reader’s purposes. The Commission issues one licence per licensee; the brands are trading names.

Identity checks happen before the first bet

Every GB-licensed remote operator verifies a customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit can be made and before gambling can begin — a rule in force since 7 May 2019, and it applies even when the first wager is a free bet or bonus credit. A reader drawn to Bitcoin because it sounds anonymous is reading the wrong paragraph of the rules. Verification means a passport or driving licence, a recent utility bill or bank statement, and a live check against commercial databases; that has been the front door of every licensed site for years and was not relaxed when crypto became a marketing theme.

This is the part of the deal that does not change because the cashier accepts coins: licensed means identified, which means the bet is tied to a verified human being, which means there is no anonymous play at any of the brands below.

What changes — and what doesn’t — when a deposit is in Bitcoin

A licensed cashier that accepts Bitcoin still runs the same anti-money-laundering controls. The Commission classes cryptoassets as a high-risk payment method and expects licensed operators to treat crypto-funded play as a high-risk indicator triggering enhanced customer due diligence. The operator’s job is to know where the funds came from, not just where they came from last; that obligation is identical in form to what it has been on bank transfers, and the rail underneath does not exempt the brand from knowing its customer.

Where the rail does change things is in cost and speed. Onchain Bitcoin transactions carry miner fees that move with network congestion — cheap on a quiet Tuesday, painful during a market-wide rush — and confirmation times stretch from minutes to hours depending on fee paid and mempool state. Some licensed operators credit deposits after one confirmation, others wait for two or three, and a reader moving a stake mid-weekend should expect to wait. Once credited, the bet behaves as any other: same markets, same margin, same payout in sterling, same withdrawal back to whatever rail the operator supports for paying out.

The British crypto regulatory frame: three regulators, three jobs

Three regulators have something to say about Bitcoin in the United Kingdom, and each touches a different part of a bet. None of them has banned Bitcoin deposits at licensed bookmakers, and the gap between those silences is what the marketing reads as a green light.

The Gambling Commission on crypto-funded gambling

The Commission’s published guidance treats cryptoassets, including Bitcoin, as a high-risk payment method and expects licensed operators to apply enhanced customer due diligence when a customer funds play that way. That is a supervisory expectation, not a rule against deposits, and no Commission rule prohibiting crypto deposits at a licensed operator has been published. A licensed brand is free to accept Bitcoin, free to refuse it, and bound — when it does accept it — to take extra steps to understand where the funds came from.

The Commission’s wider consumer-protection regime is unchanged by the payment rail: GAMSTOP for self-exclusion, mandatory affordability and vulnerability checks once the deposit pattern crosses the thresholds in the LCCP, the 10x wagering cap on bonuses, and the credit-card ban that already removes one rail from the cashier’s options.

The FCA on cryptoasset businesses

The Financial Conduct Authority became the anti-money-laundering supervisor of UK cryptoasset businesses — including Bitcoin exchanges and custodian wallet providers — on 10 January 2020, under Regulation 8L and Regulation 9 of the Money Laundering Regulations. A cryptoasset exchange provider or custodian wallet provider operating in the UK must register with the FCA before starting business.

The FCA’s own published numbers tell a particular story about how many have come through the door. Since supervision began, the FCA has received 417 cryptoasset registration applications; of those it has determined, 68 (17%) have been registered and 263 (67%) have been withdrawn. The remaining share is split between refused applications and applications still being assessed. None of that directly governs a bookmaker’s cashier — the bookmaker is the FCA’s neighbour, not its subject — but it speaks to how thin the registered UK cryptoasset sector is, which matters when a reader’s deposit path goes exchange → wallet → bookmaker and any one of those three can be the weak link.

HMRC on what a crypto win actually is

HMRC treats cryptoassets held by individuals as subject to Capital Gains Tax on disposal: selling, swapping, spending or gifting them are all disposals for CGT purposes. Receiving crypto as non-cash employment income, or as mining or staking rewards, attracts Income Tax and National Insurance. The gambler who wins in Bitcoin and later sells, swaps or spends the Bitcoin has made a disposal and may have a gain to declare.

The general rule for British betting still applies on top of that: a punter pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain, full stop, regardless of how the winnings are paid out. A reader who wins in Bitcoin and holds it is sitting on an asset whose sterling price has moved; a reader who wins in Bitcoin and converts it has a CGT event to consider. Neither outcome is the bookmaker’s problem to report, but the reporting is the reader’s. General information, not tax advice; a professional gambler, or anyone whose crypto dealings outgrow the occasional punt, should ask HMRC or an adviser.

What a reader gives up at an unlicensed crypto sportsbook

The honest framing of unlicensed offshore brands is the one most marketing avoids: a bookmaker that does not appear on the Commission’s register has no obligation to do any of the things a licensed brand does, and a customer has none of the protections the licensed brand provides.

No GAMSTOP, no Commission complaint route

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. An unlicensed brand is not part of GAMSTOP. A reader who has self-excluded and then opens an unlicensed account has self-excluded from the licensed market only and remains a customer of the unlicensed one. The Commission has no jurisdiction over the unlicensed brand and will not hear a complaint about it.

The approved dispute-resolution bodies — the Independent Betting Adjudication Service (IBAS) being the familiar name — handle complaints against licensed brands under rules set by the Commission. An unlicensed brand is not signed up, and the Commission has no power to make it sign up.

No consumer redress if funds are withheld

If a licensed brand withholds funds in breach of its own terms, the customer can complain to the brand, escalate to IBAS, and as a last resort complain to the Commission. If an unlicensed brand withholds funds, the customer’s remedies are private — a chargeback, a small-claims action, whatever the home jurisdiction of the brand allows. There is no British consumer redress. The brand’s location governs the dispute, and most offshore brands are incorporated in jurisdictions where enforcement of a £200 dispute against an unlicensed operator is theoretical at best.

No bonus cap, no affordability check, no source-of-funds pressure

The 10x wagering-requirements cap that took effect on 19 January 2026 is a Commission rule and binds licensed operators only. An unlicensed brand can offer a 50x wagering requirement, can offer mixed-product promotions that a licensed brand cannot, and can run any bonus structure it likes. The freedom is real, and so is the cost: the reader pays it through the requirement, not through any charge the unlicensed brand adds at the till.

The financial vulnerability check that applies to licensed remote betting when deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days (since 28 February 2025) is a Commission rule. An unlicensed brand is not bound by it. A reader who would be asked uncomfortable questions at a licensed site after a £500 month has no comparable backstop at an unlicensed one — which is sometimes sold as a feature, and is sometimes the opposite.

The reader’s offence, and the brand’s

No offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site was found in primary legislation. The offence is the operator’s: providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Gambling Act 2005 requires is an offence under section 33 of the Act, carrying up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment, a fine up to level 5, or both (six months in Scotland). Enforcement runs through disruption — cease-and-desist notices, referrals to search engines, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers — and the Commission has been given, or is about to receive, court-order DNS blocking powers. ISP blocking is not yet in operation. The reader is not the target of enforcement; the reader is the party who bears the cost of enforcement failing.

Bitcoin in plain terms: enough to read the cashier

A reader who has never owned Bitcoin needs enough of it to follow what a betting cashier does with it, not enough to mine it. Three sentences cover the ground, and the rest is detail the cashier handles.

Bitcoin is a decentralised ledger — a public record of every Bitcoin transaction ever made, maintained across thousands of computers rather than by a single bank. The ledger’s first block, the genesis block, was mined on 3 January 2009 by a person or persons writing under the name Satoshi Nakamoto; the Bitcoin white paper, the design document that preceded the network, had been published on 31 October 2008. The creator’s real-world identity has never been verified.

Transactions are validated through proof-of-work — specifically SHA-256 hashing — and a new block is added to the chain roughly every ten minutes on average. The reward for mining a block halves every 210,000 blocks, a mechanism known as “halving”; the reward started at 50 BTC per block. Total supply is capped at 21 million coins, with full issuance expected around the year 2140.

That is the lot of it the cashier cares about. The pseudonymity of the address and the publicness of the ledger are the two properties that, together, explain why Bitcoin is both marketed as anonymous and supervised as high-risk by the Gambling Commission. An address is a string; the transactions on the ledger are forever. Enhanced due diligence at the cashier is the licensed operator’s way of bridging that gap.

Responsible gambling in a crypto context

The payment rail does not change the help available, and it does not change the licence conditions that require the operator to surface it.

GAMSTOP is the mandatory self-exclusion route for online licensed operators. Self-exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the minimum period, the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate service. Self-exclusion is most effective when it is the first port of call; a reader who has slipped past their own set limits and is now deciding what to do has the option of registering with GAMSTOP, after which every licensed online brand on which they try to play will refuse them.

Financial vulnerability checks under LCCP condition 3.4.4 (in force since 30 August 2024) apply to licensed remote betting when deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days (the threshold has applied since 28 February 2025). The check is a public-record check — bankruptcy, county court judgments, the public bits of a person’s financial history — not an income check and not a credit reference check. It is not the same as the financial risk assessments the press calls “affordability checks”: those have been announced in a staged plan, with no start date as of the Commission’s article of 7 July 2026.

Deposit limits are the customer’s tool, and the LCCP requires that operators offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame; the first changes have applied since 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether it is in force on the day a reader deposits is not settled. There is no state-set ceiling for either deposits or losses: limits are the customer’s choice, and the operator’s job is to enforce what the customer has chosen.

Help lines: GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and research. NHS gambling clinics operate in person. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support groups. None of those services depends on which currency the reader uses.

The seven licensed brands reviewed here

Each brand below carries a Commission remote licence, with the categories on the public register covering remote general betting standard (real events). The set and order are fixed by the public register; the comparison fields are the operator’s own published terms and the Commission’s register entry. None of the seven is the only licensed brand; the table does not include every licensed brand; and the order is a survey, not a ranking of who is best.

The row that does not change is the second one in the right-hand column. None of these seven licensed brands, on the version of their terms published at the time of writing, lists Bitcoin among their deposit methods. That is the central fact about “best Bitcoin betting sites” in Great Britain: a reader who wants to deposit Bitcoin has, today, a near-empty licensed shortlist to choose from. The reader’s choice is between accepting the licensed cashier’s published rails and looking outside the licensed market — with the loss of protection that carries.

The fields that do change — minimum deposit, withdrawal speed, in-play offering, free-bet structure, acca insurance, ante-post availability — are what the operator reviews below go into, because they are what the reader’s day-to-day betting actually looks like once the cashier question is settled.

QuinnBet

QuinnBet runs on Commission account 61011 under licensee QuinnBet (Gibraltar) Limited, with categories covering real-event remote general betting standard. The brand’s published free-bet terms state that free bets are valid for seven days from credit, usable on any market at fractional odds of 1/2 (decimal 1.50) or greater, with maximum odds of 50/1; straight accumulators are allowed, but Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not. The terms are precise and short, which is what a reader wants from a free bet, and the maximum-odds cap means a reader cannot shovel a free bet into a five-leg acca at 200/1 and have it cleared in one stroke. The seven-day clock is the binding limit; free-bet value that sits unused for a week is the reader’s loss.

The deposit methods the brand publishes are conventional rails — debit cards and a handful of e-wallets — and no cryptocurrency is named in the cashier as published. The Commission licence, the GAMSTOP membership, the seven-day free-bet clock, the 1/2 minimum price — those are what the reader gets; the Bitcoin angle is not on the menu at QuinnBet.

The verdict: QuinnBet is a clean, narrow licensed book with a tight free-bet regime that suits a reader who bets in single, small accas and wants the terms stated simply. A reader drawn by crypto marketing will not find what they came for.

Spreadex

Spreadex is dual-regulated: the Financial Conduct Authority for spread betting and the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting (Commission account 8835). The dual regime is rare on the high street of online bookmakers and reflects the brand’s history as a financial spread-betting firm that added sports spread betting and then a fixed-odds product. Spread betting losses can exceed deposits, and the brand states that prominently on its homepage — a feature of the financial-spread product class, not a quirk of this brand.

The Commission’s remote licence covers the fixed-odds sportsbook. The cashier and the in-play offering are licensed; the financial-spread product is FCA-regulated. A reader who wants a sportsbook with a credible spread-betting arm does not find many licensed competitors in Great Britain; a reader who wants a clean crypto deposit finds the same lack of crypto on the cashier page that the rest of the licensed set shows.

The verdict: Spreadex suits a reader who already understands spread betting, or who wants one account with a financial product and a sportsbook attached. The brand’s published terms make the loss-can-exceed-deposits risk explicit because they have to; a reader who has not been on the FCA side of the deal should read it twice before punting on the financial product.

Geoff Banks

Geoff Banks runs on Commission account 54095 under licensee GB Sports Advisors Limited, and the brand’s app shows live in-play prices alongside ante-post prices on future events. The book is small relative to the high-street names, and that shows in the markets offered: ante-post on horse racing, in-play on the sports that move enough to support a price, and a tighter fixture list than the bigger books.

The deposit methods the brand publishes are the conventional set, with no cryptocurrency listed. The brand’s promise — and it is a niche promise — is the ante-post and in-play combination, which is where the smart money on a smaller book can find an edge before the bigger books move.

The verdict: Geoff Banks is a smaller book whose value is the ante-post and in-play combination, not the cashier. A reader who shops there for Bitcoin finds the same lack of crypto the rest of the licensed set shows.

DAZN Bet

DAZN Bet runs on Commission account 48756 under licensee DZBT Limited. The brand’s published deposit terms set the floor at £5 for debit card, Apple Pay, Paysafecard, Trustly and Skrill, and £20 for PayPal, with no processing fees. That minimum structure is a feature: £5 is the right floor for a small-stake punter testing a new book, and the absence of processing fees on every rail is the part of the deal a reader cares about most.

The DAZN-branded offering hangs off the DAZN sports-broadcasting platform, which the brand leverages into its in-play pricing and market range on broadcast events. The sportsbook is the side of the deal the licence covers; the broadcast side is a commercial tie-in that does not affect the regulatory status.

The deposit methods the brand publishes are five conventional rails plus PayPal, with no cryptocurrency listed. A reader who wants the £5 deposit floor and no processing fees finds them; a reader who wants to deposit Bitcoin does not.

The verdict: DAZN Bet is a small-stake-friendly licensed book with a low minimum deposit and no processing fees, suited to a reader who bets in ones and twos and does not want to pay for the privilege of funding the account. DAZN Bet does not offer a Bitcoin deposit option.

Fitzdares

Fitzdares runs on Commission account 400 under licensee Fitzdares Limited, with categories covering real-event remote general betting standard. The brand’s published deposit methods include Apple Pay, Mastercard and Visa; Visa withdrawals are usually same-day, while Mastercard withdrawals can take up to 48 hours. The asymmetry between the two card rails is the practical detail: a reader who needs the money back the same day picks Visa at withdrawal time.

The brand’s positioning is a premium book — a smaller customer base, a curated fixture list, an emphasis on horse racing and a tighter sport-by-sport offering than the multi-sport giants. The smaller scale shows in the cashier’s shorter list of payment rails and the absence of crypto.

The verdict: Fitzdares is a premium small book for the reader who wants a curated book on racing and a few sports, with same-day Visa withdrawals as the speed advantage. Bitcoin is absent from the cashier’s published list.

LiveScore Bet

LiveScore Bet runs on Commission account 56859 under licensee LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited. The brand’s published deposit methods include debit cards (Visa and Mastercard), Apple Pay, PayPal, Pay by Bank (Open Banking) and Revolut Pay. Pay by Bank is the open-banking rail — a direct bank-to-bookmaker payment from the customer’s current account — and Revolut Pay is the Revolut wallet rail; together they give a reader who does not want to use a card an alternative path.

The brand’s positioning hangs off the LiveScore scores-and-stats platform, and the sportsbook borrows the in-play feel of a scores app: live event tiles, fast markets, and a fixture list built around the events the scores product follows most closely. The licence is the same.

The deposit methods are five published rails, none of them crypto. A reader who wants a Pay-by-Bank option alongside a card and an e-wallet finds it; a reader who wants to deposit Bitcoin does not.

The verdict: LiveScore Bet is a licensed book with a scores-product feel and a deposit set that includes Pay by Bank and Revolut Pay, suited to a reader who bets live and wants a non-card rail. The Bitcoin angle is not on the menu.

Kwiff

Kwiff runs on Commission account 44448 under licensee Eaton Gate Gaming Limited, and the brand describes itself as a trademark operated by Spryme Ltd; the app carries a 17+ age rating on the GB App Store. The brand’s marketing leans on “supercharged” odds — randomly boosted prices on selected markets — and the licence covers the sportsbook that delivers those boosted prices.

The cashier, on the version of the terms published at the time of writing, lists conventional rails and no cryptocurrency. The brand’s value to a reader is the boosted-odds mechanic, not the cashier; the licence is the licence.

The verdict: Kwiff is a licensed book for the reader who likes the boosted-odds feature and wants the brand’s quirky pricing alongside a normal sportsbook. The Bitcoin angle is not on the menu.

How to read the comparison without a Bitcoin column

The table above has no Bitcoin column because none of the seven licensed brands publishes a Bitcoin deposit method on the version of its terms at the time of writing. A reader who came to this page with a Bitcoin deposit in hand has, today, no licensed cashier to deposit it at among this set. That is the central finding, and it is not a finding the table has to dress in hedging language to deliver.

A reader who is willing to use a card, an e-wallet or Pay by Bank has a normal licensed set to choose from, and the differentiator is everything other than the rail: QuinnBet’s tight free-bet regime, DAZN Bet’s £5 minimum and zero fees, Fitzdares’ same-day Visa withdrawal, LiveScore Bet’s Pay-by-Bank and Revolut Pay rails, Spreadex’s dual FCA and Commission regulation, Geoff Banks’ ante-post and in-play, Kwiff’s boosted odds. Each one has its own narrow value proposition and none of them are interchangeable.

A reader who is not willing to use a card, an e-wallet or Pay by Bank has the offshore market, and the offshore market has the cost that the licence removes: no GAMSTOP, no Commission complaint route, no approved dispute resolution, no British consumer redress. That cost is real and it has to be paid in the currency the reader cares about — winnings that do not arrive, complaints that have no forum, and self-exclusion that does not cover the brand on which the punter is playing.

Verifying a Gambling Commission licence yourself

The Commission’s public register is the only definitive test of whether a brand is licensed, and checking it is straightforward once a reader has the brand name.

The register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. A reader who knows the brand’s Commission account number from a footer or an About page can confirm the licence in two clicks. A reader who only has a URL can search by domain, although licensed brands use .com as well as .co.uk, so the domain search has its limits. The register entry itself lists the licence number, the categories covered, the licensee name and the trading names operated under that licence — useful for spotting the moment two “competing” brands turn out to share a parent.

If a brand does not appear on the register, the brand is not licensed for Great Britain, regardless of what the homepage says about pages or licences in other jurisdictions. The register is the test, and the absence of an entry is the result.

What the reader’s first deposit looks like at a licensed brand

The first deposit at any of the seven brands reviewed here has the same shape: identity verification before the deposit is accepted, then the deposit, then the bet. The verification step is the one a reader drawn to Bitcoin is most likely to underestimate.

Verification means a passport or driving licence, a recent utility bill or bank statement, and a live database check. The check confirms the customer’s name, address and date of birth against commercial and public records, and it has to complete before the first deposit and the first bet — even when the first bet is a free bet or bonus credit. The Commission made verification before gambling a licence condition on 7 May 2019; it has applied to every remote brand on the register since.

Once verified, the deposit is the published rail: a debit card, an e-wallet, Pay by Bank, sometimes Apple Pay, sometimes Trustly or Skrill, depending on the brand. The brand’s published minimum applies (DAZN Bet’s £5 floor is the lowest of the set), and any processing fee the brand publishes applies (none of the seven publishes a fee). The deposit is credited, the bonus or free bet is credited alongside if the brand is running one, and the bet is on.

A reader with Bitcoin in hand does not have a licensed cashier in this set to deposit it at; that fact is the one to weigh first, before the brand-level comparisons.

Promotion rules a reader should know about

Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x — a £10 bonus at 50x requires £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap, no more than £100 of qualifying bets is required. The cap is a Commission rule and binds licensed operators only; it does not bind an unlicensed brand.

Mixed-product promotions are banned at licensed operators. An offer that requires gambling on two or more product types — betting on football to get free spins, for example — is a breach of the Commission rule. The rule is the line between a betting promotion and a casino promotion, and the licensed brands have moved to keep their offers on one side of it.

The credit-card ban has been in force since 14 April 2020: credit cards cannot be used for gambling in Great Britain, and credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet are also covered. Debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered; a reader funding a deposit with a debit card is on the right side of the rule.

The 10x cap is on wagering requirements. Whether the cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition, and any cap on the money value of a bonus, are not established in the Commission’s published guidance. The cap binds the requirement amount, not the offer type, and a reader who reads the small print should look at what the requirement is, not what the offer is called.

Tax, duty and what a winning Bitcoin bet pays back

The British punter pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain. That is the general rule and it has not been altered by the rail. A reader who wins £500 on a sportsbook pays no income tax on the £500, regardless of how it is paid out.

What the rail does is the CGT event on the other side of the win. A reader who wins in Bitcoin and holds the Bitcoin has an asset whose sterling price has moved; a reader who wins in Bitcoin and converts it has a disposal for CGT purposes. The CGT event is on the conversion, not on the bet, and the gain is the difference between the acquisition cost of the Bitcoin and the sterling value at disposal.

General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax, currently 15%, on the operator’s gross profits from general betting. From 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within the General Betting Duty regime, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at 15%. Whether operators pass the duty on through odds is not established; never write that the player is charged duty. Spread betting has its own rates — 3% on financial spread bets, 10% on other spread bets — and that is a different product class from a sportsbook.

Frequently asked questions

Can you bet against Bitcoin?

Bet against Bitcoin, in the financial sense of taking a short position on the Bitcoin price, is offered by FCA-regulated firms such as spread-betting providers, and Spreadex among the seven reviewed here is dual-regulated for that purpose. Spread betting is a leveraged product whose losses can exceed the deposit, and the brand states that prominently. The same wager at the same brand’s sportsbook is a Commission-regulated fixed-odds bet, with deposit-bounded losses. A reader who wants to take a price view on the asset does so on the FCA-regulated side; a reader who wants to bet on a sports event using Bitcoin as a funding rail has no licensed cashier among the seven reviewed here.

Can you lose on Bitcoin betting?

A licensed sportsbook bet can lose; the stake is at risk regardless of how the account was funded. A spread bet on the Bitcoin price can lose more than the stake because spread betting is leveraged and the brand states losses can exceed deposits. Lost on a crypto-funded bet is the same as lost on a debit-card-funded bet from the operator’s perspective; the Commission’s consumer-protection framework applies on top of any payment rail. A reader who funds an account with Bitcoin and bets on football is betting on football, with the same margin, the same markets and the same stake at risk as a debit-card reader.

Can you use Bitcoin in betting shops?

Betting shops in Great Britain are licensed separately from remote operators and run on the shop licence regime under the Gambling Act 2005. None of the seven brands reviewed here is a betting-shop brand; the licensed remote set is online. A reader who wants to place a bet in cash on a betting-shop counter is in a different market from the one this page surveys, and the payment options at the counter do not extend to Bitcoin. Crypto at a betting-shop till has not been established in primary legislation or in the shop operators’ published terms.

What does a player lose by betting on a site without a Gambling Commission licence?

The losses stack up and none of them is theoretical. There is no national self-exclusion coverage at an unlicensed site, so GAMSTOP does not apply. There is no Commission complaint route and no approved dispute-resolution body. There is no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and the brand’s home jurisdiction governs enforcement of any small claim. The 10x wagering cap, the credit-card ban, the £150 financial vulnerability check threshold, the ban on mixed-product promotions — none of those Commission rules bind an unlicensed brand, which is sometimes sold as freedom and is sometimes the absence of the backstop a reader needed. The reader is not the target of criminal enforcement, which targets the operator, but the reader is the party that pays the cost of the operator not being on the register.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register is the only definitive test. Search by business name, trading name, domain or account number. A brand’s footer or About page usually carries the Commission’s account number, which makes the search a two-click job. The register entry lists the licence number, the categories covered, the licensee name and the trading names operated under that licence — useful for confirming that two apparently separate brands share a parent. If a brand does not appear on the register, the brand is not licensed for Great Britain, regardless of what the homepage says about pages or licences in other jurisdictions. The register is the test, and the absence of an entry is the result.

Which payment methods do GB-licensed bookmakers accept, and are credit cards allowed?

Payment methods are set by each licensed operator and published in its terms. Across the seven reviewed here, the published deposit set includes debit cards (Visa and Mastercard), Apple Pay, PayPal, Trustly, Skrill, Paysafecard, Pay by Bank (Open Banking) and Revolut Pay. No cryptocurrency is named in any of the seven cashiers. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020 (LCCP condition 6.1.2), and credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet are also covered by the ban. Debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered. A reader who wants a Bitcoin deposit has no licensed cashier among this set; a reader who wants a card, a wallet or a bank-based rail has the published list above to choose from.

Content created by the «Grey Hound» team