Duelbits goes offline after $7m hot-wallet breach
The crypto casino and sportsbook shut its site after attackers drained about $7 million from hot wallets across four blockchains, its co-founder said.

Key points
- Duelbits co-founder Joe confirmed the loss and said the site stays offline until the investigation ends and hot wallets are topped up.
- Attackers moved funds across BNB Chain, Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin, including 8.1 BTC from the company's Bitcoin wallet.
- The attacker received 836 ETH, about 593,000 USDT, 97,000 USDC, 31,500 DAI and 12.4 billion SHIB.
- Most tokens were swapped into ether and gathered in one address holding roughly 2,234 ETH, then valued near $6 million.
- News.bitcoin reported Duelbits lost $4.6 million in an earlier incident in February 2024.
Duelbits, a crypto casino and sportsbook, took its website offline after attackers drained roughly $7 million from its hot wallets, the platform's co-founder confirmed on Thursday. The breach spread across BNB Chain, Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin, according to Ambcrypto, which reported that the company is investigating and that funds held in user accounts were unaffected.
The co-founder, who posts as Joe, confirmed the loss in a public post. Ambcrypto reported that he said Duelbits would stay offline until the investigation was complete and its hot wallets had been topped up. The company has not said how attackers gained access or when the casino will reopen.
Blockchain security researcher Scam Sniffer first flagged unusual transfers, later followed by a loss of 8.1 BTC from the company's Bitcoin wallet. The attacker received 836 ETH, about 593,000 USDT, 97,000 USDC, 31,500 DAI and 12.4 billion SHIB. Most of the stolen tokens were swapped into ether and gathered in a single address holding roughly 2,234 ETH, then valued near $6 million.
Casino taken offline
The affected wallets were hot wallets, the online accounts a platform keeps funded so customer deposits and withdrawals settle quickly. That convenience makes them a target if login credentials fall into the wrong hands. Scam Sniffer suspects a private key was compromised, which would mean the attacker obtained the master credential controlling a wallet and did not need to exploit blockchain software to move funds. Duelbits has not confirmed that account.
Consolidating the proceeds into ether complicates any recovery. The companies behind USDT and USDC can freeze their tokens, but ether has no issuer that could halt or reverse a transfer, making the conversion a likely obstacle for anyone trying to reclaim the assets.
This is not Duelbits' first loss. News.bitcoin reported that the platform was drained of $4.6 million in February 2024, an incident security firm Halborn attributed to an exploited vulnerability in the project's hot wallet. The two outlets differ on the early accounting of this week's breach. News.bitcoin, citing Scam Sniffer and PeckShield, reported roughly $4.9 million leaving Duelbits hot wallets overnight, with $2.23 million in ether, $680,000 in bitcoin, $1.62 million in USDT, $160,000 in BNB and smaller amounts of TRX and SHIB. Ambcrypto's larger figure includes the 8.1 BTC loss detected later.
How the funds moved
Industry losses have climbed this year. Security firm TRM Labs counted 207 individual crypto hacks in the first half of 2026, the most in any six-month period it has recorded, totalling about $972 million, according to News.bitcoin. Most of those attacks exploited smart contracts behind decentralized finance platforms. For customers, the practical effect is a frozen platform: deposits and withdrawals stall while the investigation runs, and the company's assurance about account funds has not been independently verified.
