BLUFF Raises $21M to Revolutionize Next-Gen Betting Platform

The $21 million strategic investment round was led by global blockchain technology fund 1kx, with significant participation from Makers Fund, Maximum Frequency Ventures, Delphi Ventures Founders, and high-profile individuals including sports champion and tech investor Tristan Thompson. This diverse consortium of backers from the consumer, crypto, and cultural investment spheres underscores a shared belief in BLUFF’s vision to redefine the online betting landscape. The funding is earmarked explicitly for advancing the platform’s innovative features and launching it at scale.

BLUFF’s strategic advantage is further cemented by its founding team, which comprises former senior executives from industry titans like Stake, Bet365, William Hill, and Bodog. This collective experience in operating the world’s leading betting platforms provides BLUFF with a deep, nuanced understanding of player needs and platform mechanics. As Andrew Willson, Partner at Makers Fund, noted, the team combines this operational expertise with “an innovative approach to company building and platform design,” which investors expect will make BLUFF a disruptive brand.

BLUFF is architected to address the demands of a new generation of bettors who prioritize fast, high-engagement gameplay and real-time social interaction. The platform’s core tenets are speed, transparency, and player alignment. It offers instant onboarding, real-time settlement of bets, and provably fair games—a feature that leverages blockchain principles to guarantee verifiable game integrity. Furthermore, its reward systems are designed to allow users to participate directly in the value of the ecosystem they help grow, fostering a deeper sense of community ownership.

Moving beyond traditional iGaming and sportsbook models, BLUFF is building a unified entertainment hub. The platform aims to seamlessly blend conventional betting with live prediction markets, binary outcomes, and creator-led community events. This integrated approach creates a “single, continuous loop” where gaming, real stakes, and culture converge. To attract established players, BLUFF also offers a VIP matching program, providing market-leading bonuses and a 24/7 VIP concierge service to ease migration from legacy platforms like Stake, Shuffle, and Rollbit.

The substantial funding follows an exceptionally strong pre-release phase that has demonstrated significant organic demand. In just three months of beta operation, BLUFF attracted over 600,000 user sign-ups, sustained tens of thousands of daily active users, and processed a staggering 125 million bets. This early traction is a key metric that positions BLUFF as one of the fastest-scaling new entrants in the competitive betting market.

This rapid growth captured the attention of lead investor 1kx. Peter Pan, a Partner at the fund, highlighted “the speed of execution and level of organic demand we’ve seen from BLUFF is rare.” He added that the team is “building a category-defining platform with the potential to become the number one destination in betting and entertainment,” directly addressing what the next generation of users is demanding. The platform’s performance validates its mission to deliver novel content with a user-experience-obsessed, community-focused model.