⚡️ From Botswana to Brazil: The Most-Discussed Market News

Hey everyone! While some countries are opening new markets, others are pushing for tighter industry control. Here's the week's key iGaming news.

📌 New Markets = New Opportunities
— Botswana has issued 10 licenses for online bookmaking. Six operators have already launched operations.

📌 Counting the Money
— Authorities in the Congo are preparing a unified gambling monitoring system. By some estimates, the industry generates up to $1.7 billion per year, yet the government receives only around $1 million in tax revenue.

— Revenue from Russian casinos grew to ₽34.1 billion in 2025, up from ₽29.6 billion the year prior.

— The UK gambling industry's gross yield reached £4.5 billion in Q4 2025, marking a 2.27% increase.

📌 Brazil Back in the Spotlight
— The federal prosecutor's office has launched a review of the current online betting regulatory framework. The focus covers not only the effectiveness of oversight but also problem gambling measures.

📌 Unexpected Stats
— Spain will include iGaming spending in its Consumer Price Index calculations. Authorities want to track how inflation affects population gambling expenditure.

— Projections for a future pan-European iGaming tax have been revised downward: instead of the anticipated €28 billion over seven years, the figure now stands at €13.3 billion.

— 64% of American bettors already own cryptocurrency, and 83% say they are willing to use it for betting.

📌 Crime Blotter
— In the Philippines, police discovered approximately 1,400 fragments of human remains. The investigation links the case to organizers of illegal cockfighting and gambling operations.

📌 Scandal of the Week
— Moloco carried out a mass blocking of advertisers operating in grey iGaming. Ad accounts and campaigns were shut down almost simultaneously, with access to accounts lost entirely. The market is connecting the situation to the company's possible IPO preparations and a move to reduce regulatory risk. A separate question remains the fate of suspended funds, on which there has been no official comment yet.

While some are dealing with the fallout — others are already adapting. Moloco continues to work with compliant products. So if you've been thinking about СUPIS, legal Brazil, and other white-label offers — now is the time. In-app buyers are actively looking for alternatives, and the requests are already coming in.

👉 Looking for an alternative? The 3S.INFO company catalog features CPA networks, advertising platforms, and other services for working in iGaming.

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🔥 Crypto Payments in iGaming: Trends and Forecasts

Crypto in iGaming stopped being a niche tool for tech enthusiasts a long time ago. In 2026, it's already a fully functional payment layer with its own risks, AML requirements, and regulatory pressure.

📌 The market broadly splits into two layers:
— full crypto casinos with deposits and withdrawals exclusively in crypto: maximum risk and maximum flexibility;
— traditional casinos with a crypto option: a compromise between regulation and demand for USDT deposits.

Crypto is also far more deeply integrated into casino and betting than into poker or lotteries.

The leading coins in iGaming right now:
— BTC as the "showcase" coin;
— USDT as the primary working currency;
— ETH and USDC as an additional layer.

📌 How the Regulatory Stance Is Shifting
The defining trend of 2026–2027 is that crypto is moving out of the "grey zone" and gradually becoming a standard financial instrument with full AML/KYC requirements.

Regulators are tightening oversight of the chain: player → wallet → casino → exchange → bank. At the same time, the market has no intention of banning crypto entirely. If anything, the direction is the opposite: integrating it into the existing financial system.

📌 Why the Market Is Moving Toward Stablecoins
BTC remains a strong brand, but USDT and USDC are becoming the industry's primary working currency.

The reason is simple: operators don't want to become crypto traders.

If a player deposits 1 BTC and the price drops 15–20% within a week, the casino automatically takes an economic hit. Stablecoins partially solve this problem and provide a more predictable financial model.

📌 DeFi and Web3 Casinos
DeFi and Web3 casinos are experimenting with on-chain betting, DAO governance, and tokenized mechanics. For now, this remains a niche for crypto-native audiences and traders rather than mainstream players.

That said, some Web3 mechanics are gradually making their way into conventional iGaming: on-chain transparency, fast payouts, and tokenized bonuses.

📌 CBDCs and Their Impact on iGaming
CBDCs — central bank digital currencies — could potentially become a fully controlled and traceable payment method for regulators.

For iGaming, this creates a dual scenario: in some countries such currency could be prohibited for gambling transactions, while in others it may become the primary channel for licensed operators. Either way, the spread of CBDCs will reshape user expectations around digital money and push the market toward more formalized KYC/AML compliance.

Key Crypto Payment Trends for 2026–2027 👇
— Growing share of stablecoins in deposits and withdrawals.
— Tighter regulation of crypto PSPs and stablecoin issuers.
— Convergence of AML/KYC requirements for crypto and fiat payments.
— Decline in the number of anonymous crypto casinos in the legal segment.
— Rising demand for hybrid payment stacks (fiat + crypto + local APMs).
— First pilot use cases of CBDCs in gambling in select jurisdictions.
— Growth of Web3 mechanics as a competitive differentiator.

📌What This Means for Operators and Affiliates
The winners won't be those who "added Bitcoin to the landing page" — they'll be those who properly built out:
— AML processes;
— risk management;
— PSP relationships;
— blockchain analytics;
— a hybrid payment stack.

And if crypto payments used to be a competitive advantage, for some GEOs they are now simply baseline market hygiene.

📌 Read also:
— Crypto Payments in iGaming 2026: Risks and Regulation
— The Legality of Crypto Payments in iGaming: A Jurisdiction-by-Jurisdiction Breakdown

💸 How to Run MyBid Traffic on 3SNET Offers: A Step-by-Step iGaming Guide

MyBid is an ad network with 5+ billion impressions per day, 200+ GEOs, and a set of formats that perform well with gambling and betting. In this new guide, we broke down the MyBid + 3SNET setup from registration through to first tests.

✔️ What the guide covers:
— how to register in MyBid and 3SNET
— when to use a smartlink and when to go with a direct offer
— which GEOs and offers work for Popunder and In-Page Push
— how to set up postbacks via BeMob
— how to run your first tests and analyze results
— which mistakes most commonly block volume and conversions

📌 We also took a separate look at working with Brazil, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia, plus a step-by-step first-test strategy with a $30–50 per offer budget.

🎁 Starter bonus:
+15% on your first deposit in MyBid from $100 to $3,000 using promo code 3SNET15.

🔹 Read the guide
🔹 Register with 3SNET and choose an offer
🔸 Create an account on MyBid

💾 If you're looking for new volume sources for iGaming — this breakdown is worth saving.