Is Crypto Gambling Legal in Australia?

What the Interactive Gambling Act prohibits — and who it targets

The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth) prohibits the provision of 'prohibited interactive gambling services' — online casino games such as pokies, roulette, blackjack and poker, plus in-play sports betting — to customers physically located in Australia. Section 15 carries the core offence; section 15AA adds unlicensed regulated services such as online wagering offered without an Australian licence. The prohibition applies to any provider serving Australians, whether based onshore or offshore.

The decisive point is who the offence falls on. The Department of Infrastructure and ACMA both state plainly that the Act targets the providers of interactive gambling, not their customers. There is no offence in the Act for an individual in Australia who uses an offshore casino, and we found no case in which a player has been penalised for doing so.

ACMA enforcement: blocking the sites, not the players

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) enforces the Act against operators with formal warnings, infringement notices, civil penalties — and the tool players actually notice, website blocking. Since its first request in November 2019, ACMA has directed Australian internet providers to block illegal offshore gambling sites at the DNS level; well over a thousand sites and affiliate domains have been blocked under the program. Hit one and you see a notice that the service is illegal.

Two honest caveats. The blocking is aimed at the service, never the user. And it is DNS-based, so it is circumventable and is better understood as friction and a warning signal than an absolute barrier.

The June 2024 credit-card and crypto ban — what it does and doesn't cover

This is the most misreported part of Australian crypto-gambling law, so be precise. The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Credit and Other Measures) Act 2023 received assent on 11 December 2023, and its payment ban took effect on 11 June 2024. It stops licensed interactive wagering operators from accepting credit cards, credit-linked digital wallets, and digital currency — that is, cryptocurrency — from customers in Australia, with a carve-out for very small providers under an A$30 million annual wagering-turnover threshold.

Tax: winnings versus crypto

Two separate questions again. For a recreational player, gambling winnings are not assessable income in Australia — the ATO treats them as a windfall from a luck-based activity (rulings IT 2655 and IT 2584). The exception is the rare case of someone carrying on a business of betting or gambling, which the ATO says is unusual precisely because chance dominates the outcome.

Crypto is treated differently. A crypto asset is a CGT asset, and disposing of it is a CGT event: selling it for dollars, swapping one crypto for another, gifting it, or using it to pay all count as disposals. If you win crypto, the ATO disregards the gain on receipt and sets the cost base at its market value at the time you won it — but disposing of that crypto afterwards is a CGT event. So the winning can be untaxed while later moving the crypto is taxable.

What's changing in 2026 (and what isn't)

In April 2026 the federal government announced a major gambling-harm package: a ban on wagering advertising around live sport broadcasts commencing 1 January 2027, a strengthened BetStop self-exclusion register, and more enforcement against illegal offshore operators. Keep these in the right box — they are advertising and harm-reduction measures. They do not change the legality of online casinos (still prohibited to provide) or the player’s position (still not the target of an offence).