Many young people that are chronically online have been enticed by crypto casinos, an expanding realm of online gambling where longstanding guardrails are often ignored.

The sites have spread across social media, taking advantage of the borderless nature of the internet. They offer hundreds of games, including blackjack, sports betting and flashy online slot machines. They operate with fewer restrictions for gamblers by obtaining licenses in small island nations.

And, although they are not legal in many countries including the United States, the casinos have become gambling havens where teenagers and problem gamblers play and even earn income by promoting the sites.

This flourishing industry has been built by operators willing to deploy an exploitative marketing system. Their strategies encourage reckless wagers, turn social media influencers into casino recruiters and lure in young people, one of the demographics most vulnerable to addiction.

The finances of crypto casinos, private companies licensed outside the United States, are not public. Stake told Forbes it earned $4.7 billion in gaming revenue in 2024, more than MGM reported earning from casino games at all of its Las Vegas properties. 

In the United States, Stake started Stake.us, which it says legally operates in most states. It circumvents the need to obtain a gambling license by calling itself a “social casino” where players use virtual currency instead of real money. However, lawsuits argue that Stake.us still functions as a casino by allowing players to purchase the virtual currency and withdraw it as cryptocurrency.

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Memecoins exist in a complex world of schemes and double crosses, baffling to outsiders. At the center is an obvious conflict. To lure traders, the coin creators generally promise they’ll sell a fixed number of tokens at a low price. But as soon as the price rises, they have an incentive to dump as many as they can. Common, if not necessarily ethical, tricks for getting people in the door include engineering fake trades to create the appearance of activity, or quietly paying influencers for what looks like organic social media hype. The dumping can also happen surreptitiously, if creators conceal that they’re the people selling. Regardless of how it all plays out, the only consistent winners are insiders who get in early.

No one involved seems particularly squeamish about whether memecoins are legal. A month after Trump’s inauguration, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced it won’t regulate them. Agency staff noted that other fraud laws may still apply—a scam is a scam, whatever the method—but so far other regulators and prosecutors haven’t waded in.

The shadiness of the memecoin market isn’t a big secret. All but the most gullible traders know the deal. But they still think they can profit by getting out before a coin’s inevitable crash. It’s like consensual scamming. The slimy salesmen depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street had to dial all day to trick retirees into buying their penny stocks. Now the suckers are actually seeking out pump-and-dump schemes.

The plans for Trump’s memecoin were hatched only weeks before its debut. His team was rushing to get it out before Inauguration Day. The assumption was that Trump would face stricter scrutiny after that.

The weekend the Trump coin went on the market was the busiest ever for memecoin trading. Its price soared from near zero to as high as $74. When Melania unveiled her coin two days later, it spiked, too, hitting $13. By the next day, though, both coins were crashing. Neither has recovered. As of Dec. 10, Trump’s coin was down 92% since its peak, to $5.90, and Melania’s was down 99%, to 11¢—almost a complete wipeout.