The Fake Betting Epidemic

• Falsely generated trust. Huge fake balances being gambled makes players believe the website is trustworthy (their favorite streamer is betting millions on it, after all). That trust-by-proxy only works if the money is actually real. Since the money is fake, it lulls players into a false sense of security, exposing them to unfair losses when the casino eventually leaks their data, locks withdrawals, or straight up exit scams.

• Misleading odds of winning. Fake balance gambling generates hundreds of clips of people winning millions. This is only possible on demo balances. In reality, people don’t win millions that often. It’s pretty rare. Flooding the internet with fake clips of average-seeming people winning millions of dollars warps players’ perception of gambling odds, making it seem much more likely that they too can win big.

• Shifting the Overton window on amounts that are considered “normal” to gamble. Ultimately gambling is about having fun and making a bit of money, and most people gamble their pocket change or disposable income. By shoving fake million dollar bets down people’s throats, it completely shifts their perspective on what’s reasonable to be gambling, making them gamble bigger and bigger sums to mimic what they saw and reach the vicarious high they felt while watching the fake streams. Overall it leads to a much higher incidence of problem gambling and life-wrecking losses. Sure, we don’t mind you losing, but being trolled into literally ruining your life based on information that is entirely false is a bridge too far.

• In 2022, a การสืบสวนบล็อกเชน found that Rollbit had regularly been topping up AyeZee’s wallet to gamble with — it wasn’t his own money. The video was eventually taken down after multiple copyright claims.

• In 2019, Stake streamer Roshtein accidentally switched to demo mode and had the same balance as his real money account. He quickly closed the tab.

• In 2022, Kick streamer xQc admitted that many streamers get “filled” balances and have their losses covered by the casino.