Two official Curacao registers disagree about the same licence numbers, and one register marks all 1,491 of its records valid. Here is the check we run by hand, step by step.
By Alex Ivers, Casino & Crypto Gambling Expert at CasinoRevizor. Written after checking the licence records of 30 crypto casinos by hand in August 2026, using the regulators’ own registers rather than the badges printed in casino footers.
Almost every crypto casino puts a licence line in its footer. Usually it names Curaçao, sometimes Anjouan, occasionally Malta. The line looks like a fact, and it is treated like one by most review sites. When we sat down in August 2026 and checked 30 of those footers against the registers that issue the licences, the picture came apart quickly: two official Curaçao sources disagreed with each other about the same licence numbers, and one register marked all 1,491 of its records as valid, including roughly 290 whose expiry date had already passed.
None of that requires special access. Every register described below is public, opens in a normal browser, and takes a few minutes per casino. This guide is the exact sequence we use, including the places where the sequence gives you an answer you cannot fully trust.
Why the footer badge is not evidence
Contents
A licence badge is an image file. It can be copied from another site, kept after a licence lapses, or point to a certificate page hosted by the casino itself rather than by the regulator. The badge tells you what the operator wants you to believe. The register tells you what the regulator currently records, which is a different thing and occasionally the opposite thing.
There is a second problem that badges hide. A licence belongs to a company, not to a brand. One company frequently runs several casinos under different names, so a dispute at one brand is a dispute with the company behind all of them. Dama N.V. has operated 7Bit and KatsuBet. Hollycorn N.V. has operated Wild Fortune and Bitdreams. Uno Digital Media B.V. has operated CryptoLeo and Nine Casino. If you check the brand you learn very little. If you check the company you learn who you would actually be arguing with.
Our working rule: the licence number is the starting point of the check, never the result of it. A number that returns nothing in a register is worse than no number at all, because someone chose to print it.
Step 1: Collect three pieces of information, not one
Scroll to the casino’s footer and to its terms and conditions page. You are looking for three things, and all three are usually present even when the site tries to keep them quiet:
- The licence number, in one of the formats described below.
- The operating company, usually written as a name ending in N.V., B.V., or Ltd, with a registration number beside it.
- The registered address, which tells you which court would hear a claim if things went badly.
Curaçao numbers come in two shapes and the shape matters. The old format looks like 8048/JAZ followed by more digits. Those were sublicences sold by a master licensee that also acted as its own supervisor, and that arrangement produced most of the non-payment stories the industry is known for. The newer format looks like OGL/2024/ plus a number and belongs to the Curaçao Gaming Authority regime introduced after the supervision system was rebuilt. Newer is better here, though it still guarantees nothing on its own.
Step 2: Curaçao, where two official sources contradict each other
Curaçao publishes its licensing information in two places, and this is the single most useful thing we learned all month. The two places do not agree.
The certificate portal
The portal at cert.cga.cw is indexed by domain name and company name. Type the casino’s domain and you either get a Certificate of Operation, which shows the company, the company number, the licence number, the issue date and the current status, or you get a plain refusal. A domain that has been taken off the register returns the message that it has been removed. A licence that has been withdrawn is headed Revoked, which is unambiguous and worth knowing before you deposit.
One limitation trips people up: the portal cannot be searched by licence number. If all you have is a number from a footer, you have to work backwards through the domain instead.
The PDF register
The Curaçao Gaming Authority also links a PDF register from its own site, reissued every few days. It lists licence number, company, B2B or B2C type, company number, issue date, expiry date and status. It has no domain column at all, so it cannot answer the only question a player actually has, which is whether this particular website is covered.
| What you get | Certificate portal | PDF register |
|---|---|---|
| Search by domain | Yes | No column for it |
| Search by licence number | No | Yes |
| Date shown for the same licence | Original issue date | Bulk re-registration date |
| Status shown for the same licence | Active | Assessment in progress |
| Field that matched across both | Company registration number | |
Read the bottom half of that table again, because it is the practical takeaway. For the same licence numbers, the portal showed Active while the PDF showed Assessment in progress with an expiry date that had already gone by. Both documents are official. Only the company registration number matched cleanly between them. This is why the phrase “licence verified” means nothing unless the writer says which register they opened, and most of them never do.
Step 3: Anjouan, which lists domains but marks everything valid
Anjouan, in the Union of the Comoros, became the mass replacement for Curaçao while the Curaçao regime was being rebuilt. Its public register is genuinely better in one respect: each record carries a list of domains, so you can confirm that the exact site you are looking at is covered rather than guessing.
The weakness is the status column. When we pulled the register in August 2026 it held 1,491 records and every single one was marked valid, including approximately 290 whose expiry date had already passed. A field that says the same thing about every record carries no information. Use Anjouan’s register to answer “is this domain listed”, and ignore it entirely when asking “is this licence current”.
There is a second Anjouan detail that matters more than the status column, and almost nobody prints it. The standard Anjouan licence conditions name Austria, Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands as prohibited jurisdictions, citing their state monopolies. That creates a routine contradiction you can check yourself in about a minute: the operator’s own published list of restricted countries often does not mention Austria or Germany, while the licence it operates under forbids both. When those two documents disagree, the safe assumption for a player in one of those countries is that a dispute would be resolved against them.
Step 4: UK Gambling Commission, and the White Label footnote
If a site claims a British licence, the UK Gambling Commission public register settles it. Business detail pages open directly, as do the subpages listing domain names, trading names and regulatory actions taken against the licensee. That actions page is the most valuable one and the least visited: it records what the regulator has already done about this company.
Watch for the White Label marker in the domain list. It means the site runs on somebody else’s licence. The brand you are dealing with, the company holding the licence and the company answering your support ticket may be three different entities, which changes who is responsible when a payout stalls.
Malta works similarly through the Malta Gaming Authority’s licensee register. Malta and the UK are both stricter than Curaçao or Anjouan on player funds and complaint handling, which is a genuine difference, though it comes with tighter identity checks and far fewer crypto options.
What a valid licence still fails to tell you
A clean register entry is a floor, not a ceiling. Two well-documented episodes show the gap clearly.
In June 2024 a Curaçao court opened bankruptcy proceedings against Dama N.V. on claims brought by German and Austrian players totalling more than 800,000 euros. In August 2024 that status was reversed and the case materials were removed from the public register. Whatever the merits, the register that looked clean afterwards had recently looked very different.
In November 2024 BC.Game faced bankruptcy proceedings in Curaçao with player claims reported above 2.5 million dollars, and surrendered its licence the following month. A player checking the footer badge in October 2024 would have found a licence that was, on paper, entirely in order.
The register tells you whether an operator is permitted to take your money. It does not tell you whether the operator will give it back. Those are separate questions and only the second one matters on the day it goes wrong.
The five-minute version
If you want the compressed routine, this is what we run before any casino goes on this site:
- Copy the licence number, the company name and the company registration number out of the footer and the terms page.
- Search the casino’s domain at cert.cga.cw for Curaçao, or in the Anjouan register for Anjouan. Confirm the domain itself appears, not just the company.
- Compare the status against the second source where one exists, and treat any disagreement as the real answer.
- Search the company name, not the brand, for bankruptcy and enforcement history.
- Open the restricted countries clause in the terms and check whether your country appears there or in the licence conditions.
- Read the verification clause and note whether documents can be demanded before a payout at the casino’s discretion, which is the usual wording.
Step six is the one that predicts trouble best. In our own testing the moment of difficulty has never been the deposit. It has always been the first withdrawal, and specifically the identity check attached to it.
Where this method runs out
Being straight about the limits is part of the method. Four of them are worth stating plainly.
Registers describe the present. They change without notice, and so do restricted country lists, which operators edit quietly and often. A check performed today is evidence about today.
Access is uneven. Several operators publish their terms only inside a single-page application that will not render for a plain HTTP request, so the document has to be read in a real browser. Some sites will not open at all from certain networks, which is why a check that fails from your connection is not proof of anything about the casino.
Counting is easy to get wrong. “Holds a licence from this regulator” and “has a licence number that returns a live status in that regulator’s register” are two different questions with two different answers, and mixing them produces confident numbers that fall apart when somebody rechecks them. We keep them separate on purpose.
Finally, a licence check is not a payout test. We deposit our own money at the casinos we cover and request withdrawals, because the register cannot tell us what a cashier does at three in the morning. Those two sources of evidence answer different questions and neither replaces the other.
Questions people ask us
Is a Curaçao licence worth anything?
It is worth more than nothing and less than its reputation. A current entry under the newer Curaçao Gaming Authority regime means an authority has records on the company and a route for complaints. It does not create the segregated player funds or the independent adjudication that the UK and Malta frameworks require. Treat it as one input among several.
The casino’s number is not in any register. What now?
Check that you searched the right way first, since the Curaçao portal indexes domains rather than numbers and a search by number will always come back empty there. If the domain genuinely is not listed, our answer is to walk away. Plenty of operators do appear correctly in a register, so there is no reason to accept one that does not.
Does a licence mean my winnings are safe?
No. It means the operator is permitted to run the games. Whether you are paid depends on the verification clause, the bonus terms, the restricted country list and how the cashier behaves under pressure. Our own experience shows both outcomes: several casinos paid us within minutes, and at one of them around 900 dollars stayed inside after a verification round we could not complete.
How often should the check be repeated?
Before your first deposit at any new casino, and again before a withdrawal that is large by your standards. Statuses shift, licences are surrendered, and companies change hands. The check costs five minutes; the alternative cost is the balance.
Our verdict
Check the register yourself, in the source that indexes domains, and read the restricted countries clause in the same sitting. That combination catches most of what a badge hides, and it costs less time than reading a single review. We recommend doing it even for casinos we have written favourably about, because our test was on our account, on one date, with one set of terms.
If you would rather start from a shortlist where the licence, the operating company and the country admission have already been checked line by line, our crypto casinos by country section groups operators by the market they actually accept, and the Bitcoin casinos list covers the operators we have deposited into ourselves.