—TechRound does not recommend or endorse any financial, investment, gambling, trading or other advice, practices, companies or operators. All articles are purely informational—
The boundaries between industries are usually respected. Founders pick a lane. Investors demand focus. Empires are built vertically, not horizontally. You master casinos or you master cryptography. You optimise the house edge or you architect consensus mechanisms.
The two worlds, gambling and blockchain, have flirted for years, intersecting occasionally on payment rails and offshore platforms. But they have rarely answered to the same owner.
Gurhan Kiziloz appears intent on changing that.
The founder of Nexus International, a self-funded gaming group that closed 2025 with $1.2 billion in revenue, has spent the past year extending his reach into cryptocurrency infrastructure. His vehicle is BlockDAG, a Layer-1 blockchain project built on Directed Acyclic Graph architecture. The move has drawn attention not because of its novelty, gambling operators have embraced crypto payments for years, but because of its ambition. Kiziloz is not integrating someone else’s blockchain. He is building his own.
With a personal net worth now estimated at $1.7 billion, derived from his BlockDAG holdings, the Spartans.com brand, and his existing stake in Nexus International, Kiziloz has accumulated the capital to pursue both industries simultaneously.
If the bet succeeds, he will control both the consumer-facing platforms and the settlement layer beneath them. It is a level of vertical integration rarely attempted in either industry.
The Operator’s Foundation
To understand the BlockDAG expansion, one must first examine the business that funds it. Nexus International is not a typical gaming company. It was built without venture capital, without private equity, and without institutional backing of any kind. Kiziloz financed growth through operating cash flow, a constraint that imposed discipline but also granted independence.
The group comprises three platforms: Megaposta, the Brazil-focused sportsbook that established Nexus’s regulatory credentials; Lanistar, which bridges fintech and gaming across European and Latin American markets; and Spartans.com, the crypto-native casino that has become the group’s flagship brand.
Nexus closed 2025 with $1.2 billion in revenue, short of its initial $1.45 billion target, with profits dipping 7 percent against expectations. The miss reflects the cost of aggressive expansion rather than operational failure.
Spartans.com absorbed significant investment during the year, including marketing commitments and infrastructure buildout. The shortfall, while notable, has not altered the underlying trajectory: Nexus has grown from $400 million in 2024 revenue to $1.2 billion in 2025, a threefold increase in twelve months.
Spartans.com: The Flagship Bet
Spartans.com exemplifies Kiziloz’s approach to brand-building: high-impact, operationally complex, and designed to generate attention that money alone cannot buy.
The platform recently launched a giveaway for the MANSORY Jesko Spartans Edition, a one-of-one hypercar custom-built by German tuning house MANSORY using a Koenigsegg Jesko as the base. The vehicle features forged carbon fiber bodywork and a bespoke interior. Its value runs into the millions.
Entry requires a deposit on Spartans.com. The winner is selected through a provably fair, blockchain-recorded random number generation process, audited by third-party legal counsel. Every entry carries equal weight. The giveaway launched on January 15, 2026 at 6:00 PM GST, and Spartans.com has confirmed it will not be repeated, extended, or replaced. When the draw closes, the opportunity ends permanently.
The mechanics matter as much as the prize. By anchoring the giveaway to blockchain verification, Spartans.com reinforces its positioning as a crypto-native platform where transparency is structural rather than promotional. The hypercar serves as marketing spectacle; the provably fair process serves as brand architecture.
The Infrastructure Thesis
For most gambling operators, cryptocurrency is a payment method, a faster alternative to bank transfers. Kiziloz views it differently. He sees blockchain as potential settlement infrastructure for the entire betting economy: a layer that could process wagers, verify outcomes, and clear payments without the friction of traditional financial rails.
The obstacle was that existing blockchains did not meet his requirements. Ethereum’s transaction costs fluctuate unpredictably. Bitcoin’s throughput is insufficient for high-volume applications. Newer chains offered speed but raised questions about security and decentralisation.
BlockDAG represents an attempt to build what the market did not offer. The protocol uses Directed Acyclic Graph architecture to enable parallel transaction processing, theoretically allowing higher throughput without sacrificing the security properties associated with proof-of-work systems. Whether the technology delivers on these claims remains to be demonstrated at scale.
A Different Kind Of Governance
Kiziloz’s management of BlockDAG has already diverged sharply from crypto-industry norms. Earlier this year, he removed the project’s chief executive and senior leadership team, a move that startled observers accustomed to the consensus-oriented governance typical of blockchain foundations.
The decision reflected a clash of cultures. In gambling, accountability is immediate and binary. Performance is measured against concrete metrics. Failure to deliver results in replacement. In cryptocurrency, leadership often operates with longer horizons and softer accountability.
Kiziloz imported the expectations of the casino floor into the blockchain boardroom. He eliminated what he viewed as a management layer more focused on narrative than execution, and reasserted direct founder control. The intervention signalled that BlockDAG would be run with the same operational intensity as his gaming platforms.
The Vertical Integration Question
If BlockDAG develops as intended, Kiziloz would control an unusual vertical: consumer-facing gambling platforms generating transaction volume, and underlying blockchain infrastructure processing that volume.
Such integration offers potential advantages. Kiziloz would not need to court external adoption for BlockDAG; he could supply transaction volume from his own platforms. Network effects that rival chains spend years cultivating could be accelerated through captive demand.
The risks are equally apparent. The concentration of control raises governance questions. Dependence on a single founder creates succession vulnerabilities. And the technical challenges of building a secure, scalable Layer-1 blockchain are substantial regardless of the capital behind the effort.
The Wager
Gurhan Kiziloz is attempting something that industry boundaries typically prevent. He is betting that gambling and cryptocurrency infrastructure can be unified under common ownership and common operational standards, and that he is the founder capable of executing both.
The 2025 revenue miss and profit dip suggest the path is not frictionless. But the trajectory remains steep. A founder who has taken a gaming company from $400 million to $1.2 billion in a single year, while simultaneously building a Layer-1 blockchain and accumulating a $1.7 billion personal fortune, is not operating on ordinary terms.
Whether the thesis proves correct will depend on execution rather than narrative. BlockDAG must demonstrate that its technology works at scale. Nexus must continue generating the cash flow that funds expansion. And Kiziloz must sustain the operational intensity that built both.
The outcome remains uncertain. But the ambition is now visible: to rule not one industry, but two.
—TechRound does not recommend or endorse any financial, investment, gambling, trading or other advice, practices, companies or operators. All articles are purely informational—
