Hackers drain $7m from crypto casino Duelbits

• Duelbits has taken its crypto casino offline after hackers drained roughly $7m from its hot wallets.
• The operator says it has identified the cause and expects the site back within about 15 hours.
• It is the operator’s second major breach after a $4.6m loss in February 2024.

Crypto casino Duelbits has taken its platform offline after hackers drained around $7m from its hot wallets on 24 September 2026. Co-founder Joe said the company has identified what happened and promised an official statement within 24 hours.

Duelbits has not yet disclosed how the attackers got in.

How it unfolded

Blockchain transactions are public, so outside monitors saw the money leave before Duelbits said anything. Blockchain security firm Scam Sniffer reported about $4.2m in outflows from Duelbits hot wallets on Ethereum, BNB Chain and Tron.

The assets moved included 836 ETH and 1.62 million USDT, according to Scam Sniffer. The firm later reported a further 8.1 BTC lost from the operator’s Bitcoin wallet, taking its estimate to about $4.9m.

Security firm PeckShield separately flagged about $4.3m in suspicious outflows on Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Duelbits’ official account reported a security incident and said the site had been taken offline as a precaution. That first statement gave no loss figure and no cause.

Duelbits co-founder Joe, who posts on X as @DuelbitsJoe, wrote:

“Confirming a ~$7M hack. Still investigating exactly what happened and how. Until we have clarity, Duelbits stays offline. User funds are safe.”

In a follow-up post, Joe said:

“We’ve identified what happened. An official statement will follow within 24 hours.”

He added that the site should return within about 15 hours. The team is rebuilding its deposit and withdrawal servers in the meantime, and Joe said a relaunch he called Duelbits 2.0 is close.

How the theft works

Crypto casinos hold player money in digital wallets, not bank accounts. A hot wallet stays connected to the internet so the operator can pay out withdrawals quickly. It works like a cashier’s till. Larger reserves are normally kept offline in cold storage, the equivalent of a vault.

Every wallet is controlled by a private key, a secret code that approves transfers. Anyone holding that key can move the funds. No bank or payment processor sits in between to block the transfer or reverse it afterwards.

Scam Sniffer suspects a private key compromise, based on how quickly the wallets were emptied. Duelbits says it now knows the cause but has not made it public.

Part of the haul was held in stablecoins such as USDT and USDC. These are tokens pegged to the US dollar, which many operators accept for deposits. Their issuers, Tether and Circle, can freeze tokens held at addresses linked to crime.

Ether, the native currency of the Ethereum network, has no issuer and cannot be frozen that way. The attacker swapped most of the stolen assets into ether and moved them to one address. That address held about 2,234 ETH, worth roughly $6m, and the funds had not moved at the time of CoinDesk’s report.

A repeat breach

Duelbits lost about $4.6m in February 2024. Blockchain security firm CertiK described that incident at the time as a possible private key compromise.

A guide on Duelbits’ own website, published in April 2026, describes the platform as operating since 2020 with no reported hacks or breaches. That guide appeared two years after the 2024 loss.

Players have a lot of money on the platform. Crypto casino tracker FairGambling counted almost $190.6m in deposits to Duelbits over the 12 months to 24 September, from more than 85,000 depositing addresses.

Duelbits is not the only platform exposed to this kind of attack. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs recorded 207 hacks in the first half of 2026. Stolen keys and other infrastructure breaches made up about 15% of those incidents. They accounted for roughly 76% of the $972m lost.

Duelbits’ promised statement is the next test. Depositors will want to know how the attackers got in and whether the operator can show independent evidence of its reserves.