Online gambling on casinos such as Stake, Roobet and Rollbit seems to start becoming main-stream on the live-streaming platform Twitch in 2021.
After seeing the amounts of money Twitch streamers like TrainwrecksTV are gambling with, the justified question arose, whether streamers on Twitch gamble with real money or fake money provided by the casinos they're promoting.
Are Twitch Gamblers Fake?
There is no general answer to the question whether Twitch streamers use fake or real money, as every individual streamers has different deals with their partnered casino.
Due to a rising doubt in the Twitch gambling community towards this topic, several live-streamers such as 'AyeZee' set an example by revealing their Crypto-address which allows viewers to trace their withdrawals and deposits in real time.
Along the way, livestreamers like Trainwrecks do their best to show every single deposit and withdrawal on stream to preserve transparency.
Yet, in certain individual cases Twitch streamers are not being fully transparent about the authenticity regarding their gambling deal, which requires a certain experience in order to determine whether they are gambling with fake money or not.
xQc Stake Sponsorship
As you may have noticed, xQc gambles regularly on the Stake casino that has a sponsorship deal with xQc which allows xQc to gamble with real money, even though it may be sponsored.
Because of his high viewership, xQc regularly gets paid real cryptocurrency money for gambling on Stake live. Hence, xQc does not necessarily always deposit money on his own as is it being provided by the Stake casino, yet his balance is withdrawable at any time as it is a payment for his sponsorship with Stake.
From what has been visible in many of xQc's livestreams, xQc sometimes deposits money to Stake on his own, which proves that he doesn't have a locked balance sponsorship unlike many other streamers on Twitch.
Trainwrecks Stake Sponsorship
It is known that the streamer Trainwrecks has a similar deal with the Stake casino that pays him 1 million USD monthly for gambling on the Stake casino live on stream. Hence, Trainwrecks also gambles with real and withdrawable money.
If one is familiar with casino deals, it seems very conceivable that Trainwrecks gambles with real money on Stake, as a monthly payment of $1.000.000 for content creators with such a big viewerbase as Trainwrecks is common in the online casino industry.
Trainwrecks has shown countless of times that his money on the Stake casino is withdrawable, as he often tips his friends 5 digit-amounts and gives away hundreds of thousands to private Bitcoin wallets of his viewers, which a locked balance would never allow for.
Many public figures on the other hand - mostly unfamiliar of the online casino industry - often accuse Trainwrecks of gambling with a fake balance, as it seems almost impossible for the Stake casino to profit from the $1.000.000 monthly payments to Trainwrecks, especially because Trainwrecks regurarly tells his viewers not to gamble and does not promote his promo-code on stream.
This is only partially true, as Trainwrecks already revealed earning 6-digit amounts from his small percentage of commission generated on Stake, which shows that the players that were referred by Trainwrecks to Stake already made Stake millions of profits.
Trainwrecks's viewers interest in gambling can also be seen in the increased traffic on the Stake casino, as well as related websites such as our's during Trainwreck's streaming times. Hence, Trainwrecks's monthly Stake deal payment of only $1.000.000 is definitely within the realms of possibility and not questionable at all, as Train earns the Stake casino a reasonable amount of money.
Twitch Fake Money Gambling
Many other Twitch streamers on the other hand have deals with limited withdrawal capabilites. If one looks at the balance of streamers that gamble occasionally, such as Greekgox, m0E_tv, Yassuo etc., it is conceivable that some of them gamble with a balance that can only be partially withdrawn.
These casino deals with limited withdrawal capabilites require the streamers to stream for a certain amount of time, and at the end allow them withdraw a portion of the generated profits using the fake balance.
These kinds of casino deals are quite common on livestreaming platforms, and per-se are a very common and legitimate marketing practice.
The only problem is, that many Twitch livestreamers do not transparently state whether they are gambling with fake money, which leaves their viewers with a false impression. Additionally, since certain streamers do not gamble with their own money, they really have nothing to lose, which makes them take above-average risks that would be considered irresponsible.
Note: A big casino win does not imply a fake money sponsorship, but it is exactly the content that goes viral and baits people into gambling.
Twitch Gambling Debate
The mostly mentioned aspect in the Twitch gambling debate is that live-streamers like Trainwrecks introduce gambling to a non-gambling audience, which provably has an interest in starting to gamble, as traffic of casinos spikes during the streaming time of these big live-streamers.
Furthermore, most live-streamers with smaller audiences get paid to play with huge amounts of money to accordingly achieve big, unrealistic wins and overreact on stream to promote gambling.
These unrealistic wins go viral on the internet and reach an even bigger audience that in the worst case gets the false impression that gambling can be seen as a way to earn money.
Yet, when criticizing live-streamers who play on casinos, one has to differenciate between streamers who are getting paid to hit unrealistic wins that go viral, and streamers who genuinely stream gambling their real money, such as TrainwrecksTV.
Conclusion
It is a fact that gambling, just as other bad habits, has its up- and downsides but cannot be stereotypically doomed when it comes to streamers like Trainwrecks gambling live on Twitch.
Even though Twitch streamers such as xQc and Trainwrecks gamble with a real-money balance, they present a very unrealistic approach to gambling to a wide audience which may partially start gambling after watching their wins.
Hence, as already proposed by streamers like Trainwrecks, Twitch launching some kind of adult-content watch party that only verified individual can watch, similar to their existing Twitch-Prime watch party, would be a step in the right direction.