Crypto Casinos and India: What the 2025 Online Gaming Act Actually Banned

India banned online money games nationally on 22 August 2025. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 replaced a state-by-state patchwork with a central prohibition, and its definition of an “online money game” is wide enough to cover crypto casinos. It also creates a separate offence of advertising such games — which is why this page carries no casino links, and why visitors in India see none anywhere on this site.

If you read a guide dated before September 2025 saying India has no national law against offshore online casinos, that guide is describing a position that no longer exists. Our own earlier version of this page said exactly that. This is the corrected version.

This is not legal advice. It is a description of published law, read on 8 September 2026. Consult a qualified Indian lawyer for your situation.

What the Act prohibits

The Act was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 20 August 2025, passed both houses within two days, and received presidential assent on 22 August 2025. The implementing Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules were notified in 2026.

Three prohibitions matter here:

• Offering an online money game (section 5). No person may offer, aid, abet, induce or otherwise engage in offering an online money game or online money gaming service. Penalty: imprisonment up to three years, a fine up to ₹1 crore, or both.
• Advertising one (section 6). No person may make, or be involved in making, an advertisement in any media that directly or indirectly promotes or induces any person to play an online money game. Penalty: imprisonment up to two years, a fine up to ₹50 lakh, or both.
• Facilitating payments for one. Penalty: imprisonment up to three years, a fine up to ₹1 crore, or both.

The offering and payment-facilitation offences are cognizable and non-bailable. Authorised officers may enter and search premises — including electronic records and what the Act calls virtual digital spaces — without a warrant, and may arrest a person found during that search. The central government may order blocking of information relating to online money gaming services.

Section numbering and penalty figures here follow PRS Legislative Research’s summary of the Bill and SCC Online’s analysis of the Act; the official text is linked in the sources.

Why the definition catches crypto casinos

An online money game is defined as an online game in which a user pays money or other stakes expecting monetary or other enrichment. Two features of that definition do the work:

1. Skill is irrelevant. The definition applies whether the outcome turns on skill, chance, or both. The skill-versus-chance argument that carried Indian fantasy sports and rummy operators through a decade of litigation does not survive this drafting.
2. “Other stakes” includes tokens. The Act’s stakes concept extends to credits, coins and tokens that are equivalent to, or convertible into, money. A deposit in Bitcoin, USDT or a casino’s own token is a stake convertible into money. Denominating the game in crypto does not take it outside the definition — if anything, it is the case the drafting most obviously anticipated.

So an offshore crypto casino accepting Indian users is offering an online money game within the meaning of the Act. The question of whether Indian authorities can reach a Curaçao-licensed company with no Indian presence is a practical enforcement question, not a legal-status one. The blocking power and the payment-facilitation offence are how the Act is designed to bite without needing the operator in the room.

Who is actually at risk

The Act’s penalties are aimed at three groups, and players are not one of them:

Who	Exposure
Operators offering the game	Up to 3 years, up to ₹1 crore; cognizable, non-bailable
Payment facilitators	Up to 3 years, up to ₹1 crore; cognizable, non-bailable
Advertisers and promoters	Up to 2 years, up to ₹50 lakh
Players	No penalty under the Act

That last row is genuinely important and widely misreported. The Act does not criminalise the user. It criminalises the supply chain around them, which is a different and far more enforceable design.

For a site like this one, the row that governs behaviour is the third. Legal analyses of section 6 read it as reaching referral codes, affiliate links and influencer promotion, because those induce a person to play. We treat that as settled enough to act on: since 8 September 2026 no affiliate link renders for a visitor whose connection resolves to India. Our reviews stay readable as information. See our affiliate policy for how we handle this in every restricted market.

What the old state patchwork means now

Before August 2025 the answer to “is this legal in India” depended on where you lived. The Public Gambling Act 1867 targeted the keeping of gambling houses rather than individual players; Sikkim and Nagaland ran licensing regimes; Goa permitted land-based casinos; Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana had banned online gambling outright, with Tamil Nadu’s prohibition surviving repeated constitutional challenge.

That map still governs offline gambling, and state police remain the enforcement arm in practice. But for online money games the central Act is now the operative prohibition, and it applies uniformly. Guides that answer the legality question by listing states are answering a question the law stopped asking in August 2025.

The tax position did not go away

A prohibition does not create a tax exemption, and none of the relevant provisions were repealed:

• Section 194BA of the Income Tax Act taxes net winnings from online games at 30%, with deduction at source, in force since 1 April 2023.
• Section 115BBH taxes gains on virtual digital assets at a flat 30%, with a 1% TDS under section 194S, in force since 2022. Losses cannot be set off against other income.
• 28% GST on the full face value of deposits for online money gaming has applied since 1 October 2023.

Anyone unwinding a crypto position that passed through a casino is dealing with both regimes at once, and with a paper trail that exchanges report.

What Indian readers can still use this site for

Everything except the links. The mathematics does not change with jurisdiction:

• House edge of every major casino game, measured over 44 million simulated bets.
• What a casino bonus is actually worth, from 1.3 million simulated claims.
• Provably fair explained — how to verify a result rather than trust a claim.
• Online casino legality by country for readers outside India.

If you are an Indian resident abroad, the law that applies to you is the law where you are physically located, not your passport. That is a question worth asking a lawyer rather than a website.

Bottom line

India did not tighten its online gambling rules in 2025. It replaced them. Online money games are prohibited nationally, the definition is written broadly enough that crypto denomination is no escape, and advertising them is its own offence with its own prison term. Players are not the target, but everyone who supplies or promotes to them is.

We would rather lose the traffic than write the sentence that section 6 prohibits.

18+ only. Gambling involves real financial risk. Play only where it is legal in your jurisdiction.