Co-founded by Craven, an Australian, and his U.S.-born 31-year-old business partner, Bijan Tehrani, Stake offers traditional casino games like slots, blackjack, and roulette, as well as sports betting using cryptocurrencies.
With a gross gaming revenue of $4.7 billion last year despite crypto gambling being unavailable in the U.S., U.K. and much of Europe, Stake propelled Craven to Forbes’ 2025 youngest billionaire list, making him one of the only two self-made billionaires under 30 other than Scale AI’s 28-year-old founder Alexandr Wang.
“It’s the biggest player in the field, an absolutely massive crypto casino,” Brett Abarbanel, executive director of the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said of Stake, as quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s made a name not just for itself, but for crypto casinos as a whole.”
The site’s popularity has soared since the Covid-19 pandemic, partly due to livestreamers showcasing their gambling activities on the platform. Stake claims it accounts for around 2-4% of all Bitcoin transactions.
 |
|
Ed Craven, co-founder of online crypto casino Stake. Photo from Ed Craven’s LinkedIn |
The young billionaire’s journey, as he recalls, was set in motion by a bingo win during a family cruise when he was 12.
“It was flashing lights and quite incredible. We attended it ritually for the first five days,” Craven told Forbes Australia. “On the fifth day there was ‘the Snowball Jackpot’ and I won about $6,000.
“That’s when my fascination with the industry really took off.”
In 2010, when Craven was 15 and Tehrani 17, the two first connected through RuneScape, a fantasy role-playing game. They became regular chat buddies and together created a casino within the game, which led them to get kicked off.
The duo began experimenting with crypto three years later and, along with some friends, developed a game called Primedice, which allowed users to bet Bitcoin on a virtual dice roll. The coin was then valued at around $100. The game generated enough revenue to make it a full-time venture for the teenage entrepreneurs.
“I think we took over a million dollars in bets on our first day,” Craven said. “I was still in high school, and I remember telling some friends. I don’t think anyone believed me.”
As their ambitions grew, the duo opened an office in Melbourne in 2016 and established their company, Easygo, with 18 employees, before launching Stake the next year.
In 2020, Stake reported $105 million in gross gaming revenues, a key industry metric that reflects the amount remaining after payouts to winners. That figure skyrocketed to nearly $2.6 billion in 2022, according to the Financial Times.
Stake’s success, according to Nigel Eccles, founder of gambling firm FanDuel, lies in its aggressive marketing and position as the “first truly global, crypto-only” gambling platform.
Craven and Tehrani have leveraged their fortunes to promote Stake through high-profile sponsorships. Stake pays $12 million annually for a jersey sponsorship with an English Premier League team and has committed $100 million over three years for the naming rights to a Formula 1 team.
Its brand ambassador, hip-hop star Drake, embodies the company’s image as “a young, male sports enthusiast with a very high tolerance for risk,” Eccles says.
The duo’s success also came down to their willingness to operate in legal gray areas, as crypto operated in a largely unregulated space at the time and casinos could obtain licenses in offshore havens like Curaçao, where Stake is registered and tax rates are low.
“We’ve taken two of the most controversial technologies and industries and combined them,” Craven said. “So it’s always been an uphill battle for us to beat public perception of what the company may stand for.”
Regarding this, Eccles remarked: “In the gaming space it’s become a proven model, you start in the grey market and you grow to a huge size, and then you find a path to becoming more regulated,”
 |
|
Ed Craven (L) and Bijan Tehrani, co-founders of online crypto casino Stake. Photo courtesy of the company |
True to that trajectory, Craven now appears to be steering toward the straight and narrow, as reported by The Australian.
Though it started as a crypto-only gambling platform, around 70% of Stake’s bets are now made in traditional fiat currencies.
“We’re very confident that Stake doesn’t have as much room to grow in crypto as it does in traditional payment methods,” Craven said, adding that the firm has been pivoting from crypto over the last few years to tap into more opportunities.
Still, he noted that Stake remains committed to its crypto roots and will continue to monitor and protect that side of the business.
Craven and Tehrani have also started another tech startup in the form of Kick, a streaming service that stands as a major competitor to Amazon’s Twitch.
Kick, launched in late 2022, has quickly become a platform where millions of users stream everything from video gameplay, including Stake.com games, to daily life commentary, the Australian Financial Review reported.
The young entrepreneurs‘ goal for Kick is simple: to challenge and eventually surpass Twitch and, to a lesser extent, YouTube.
Although the task seems formidable, considering Twitch was valued at $46 billion in 2023, Craven remains confident that he can outplay these global behemoths, just as he has in the betting industry.
Stake is far larger than Kick in terms of revenue and profits and thus requires more of Craven’s attention. However, he is captivated by the streaming platform’s potential and is actively involved, hosting his own streaming show on Saturday nights.
Craven’s primary goal is to continue expanding both ventures while exploring what other avenues the business can pursue within the entertainment industry, potentially creating another global brand in his 30s and beyond.
“We’ve proven ourselves a couple of times now. So what other opportunities are out there? I think that’s super exciting,” he said.
1
20
20
