IS CRYPTO GAMBLING LEGAL IN FRANCE?
France's Gambling Framework: the ANJ and a Casino Ban
France regulates online gambling through the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), the national regulator created in 2020 to replace ARJEL. The defining feature of the French system for anyone interested in crypto play is simple: online casino games are not licensed at all. The ANJ issues licences for only three online verticals — sports betting, horse-race betting and poker. Slots, roulette, blackjack and live-dealer tables cannot be offered online to French players under any licence.
That makes every online crypto casino a French resident can open — Stake, BC.Game, Roobet and the rest — unlicensed in France by definition. They are typically licensed in Curaçao or similar jurisdictions, which has no bearing on their status under French law. Land-based casinos are separately licensed and supervised, but the online prohibition on casino games is the rule that matters here.
The ANJ is also an active enforcer. It reported blocking 1,127 illegal gambling domains in 2025, a 34% increase year on year, and it can petition French ISPs to block sites at the DNS level. It has reminded French banks and fintechs that facilitating deposits to unlicensed gambling operators can breach anti-money-laundering obligations. This is not a regime that ignores offshore play; it simply concentrates on operators and payment rails rather than chasing individual bettors.
The JONUM Experiment: Decree 2026-60 Explained
The most important recent development — and the one most often misreported — is JONUM. Decree No. 2026-60 of 4 February 2026, in force from 7 February 2026, operationalised the experimental framework for Jeux à Objets Numériques Monétisables ("games with monetisable digital objects") that had been provided for in Articles 40–41 of the 2024 SREN Law.
JONUM is a three-year experiment aimed at Web3 games that blend video-gaming and gambling-like mechanics around tradable blockchain assets. The decree defines six permitted categories — action, fantasy sports, adventure, racing, breeding and management games — and requires each to keep a real gaming dimension: a progression system where players improve their skills, plus interaction between players or between the player and the game.
Two design choices keep JONUM firmly outside gambling. First, it runs under a prior-declaration regime, not the prior-authorisation (licensing) regime that governs gambling, deliberately to encourage innovation. Second, and decisively, operators cannot award cash prizes similar to those offered by licensed gambling products. Rewards are monetisable digital objects — NFTs or utility tokens players may resell on secondary markets — not a withdrawable cash balance.
For a crypto gambler the takeaway is blunt: JONUM is not a back door to legal online casinos. It is a controlled test of whether tokenised games can be regulated as a distinct category, and its no-cash-prize rule is precisely what separates it from the casino play that remains banned.
Prediction Markets and the Polymarket Block
France's hard line on unlicensed real-money play is well illustrated by Polymarket. In November 2024 the ANJ took the view that Polymarket's event contracts could amount to unauthorised gambling, a position sharpened after a French trader reportedly won more than $80 million on the 2024 US election. In December 2024 Polymarket geoblocked French users under ANJ pressure.
In February 2026 the ANJ issued a fresh public statement reiterating that all prediction-market platforms are illegal in France, warning that betting on elections or geopolitical events can create incentives for real-world harm. Under French law, online betting is limited to sports, horse racing and poker, and betting exchanges and non-sports betting are prohibited outright — which is why prediction markets and crypto casinos sit on the same wrong side of the line.
Tax and Crypto: MiCA Asset, Unlicensed Gambling
Cryptocurrency itself is legal to hold and trade in France and is regulated under the EU's MiCA framework, with French crypto-asset service providers supervised by the AMF. The legality of the asset is not in question; the legality of gambling with it at an unlicensed site is.
On tax, winnings from a licensed French gambling operator are generally not taxed in the player's hands because the operator bears taxation at source (sports betting and other licensed verticals carry their own levies). For offshore crypto-casino winnings there is no licensed framework, and the cleaner risk to understand is on the crypto side: gains realised when you dispose of cryptocurrency can fall under France's flat 30% prélèvement forfaitaire unique. Keeping a clear record of every deposit, withdrawal and conversion is the sensible course.
How French Players Actually Fund Offshore Play
If a French resident uses an offshore crypto casino despite the legal position, the mechanics are worth understanding — not as encouragement, but because the payment layer is exactly where French controls bite. Players typically buy USDT, Bitcoin or Ethereum in euros on a MiCA-registered exchange such as Binance, Kraken or Coinbase, then send the coins to the casino's deposit address. USDT on the TRON (TRC-20) network is the usual choice: it confirms in a minute or two for around a dollar and avoids price swings, whereas Bitcoin can take 10 to 60 minutes depending on congestion.
The friction is deliberate. French banks are obliged to watch for transfers to known gambling operators, and the ANJ has explicitly reminded banks and fintechs that facilitating deposits to unlicensed gambling platforms can breach anti-money-laundering obligations. Crypto on-ramps are popular precisely because they sit outside that card-and-SEPA gambling-block layer — but that is a payments work-around, not a change in legality, and it does nothing to make the casino licensed in France.
The single most expensive mistake is a network mismatch: sending TRC-20 USDT to an ERC-20 address, or vice versa, can lose the funds. Anyone moving crypto should send a small test amount first and make sure the network selected on the exchange exactly matches the one shown on the casino's deposit page.
Enforcement Reality for French Players
In practice, the ANJ's enforcement energy goes into operators, domains and payment rails, not individual punters sitting at home. There is no pattern of French residents being prosecuted simply for placing bets at an offshore crypto casino. But "rarely enforced against players" is not the same as "legal": the activity is unlicensed, banks are told to watch for it, and access can disappear overnight when a domain is blocked.
If you choose to play offshore from France, the protections you keep are technical rather than legal. The strongest of those is provably-fair gaming, which lets you verify each result mathematically rather than trusting the operator. That is the single safeguard that survives the fact the site is unlicensed at home — and it is the reason we test it on every casino we list.
Key Takeaways
- • Online casino games (slots, roulette, tables) are illegal in France — the ANJ licenses only online sports betting, horse-race betting and poker.
- • JONUM (Decree 2026-60, February 2026) is a three-year ANJ experiment for Web3 games with monetisable digital objects, but those games cannot pay cash prizes — it is not a crypto-casino licence.
- • The ANJ actively blocks illegal gambling domains (1,127 in 2025) and forced Polymarket to geoblock French users; it reaffirmed prediction markets are illegal in February 2026.
- • Holding and trading crypto is legal under MiCA; crypto gains can fall under France's flat 30% tax on disposal.
- • Enforcement targets operators and payment rails, not individual players — but offshore crypto-casino play remains unlicensed, so the legal risk sits with the player.