Crash gambling: how the multiplier works and the math behind it
How a crash round works, the chance of reaching any multiplier, instant busts, auto cash-out, and how each round's crash point can be checked.
Fact-checked 18 October 2026 · 5 sourcesIn crash, a multiplier climbs from 1.00× and stops at a random point. Cash out before it stops and you get your stake times the multiplier on screen; still be in when it crashes and the stake is gone. The crash point comes from a formula fixed before the curve starts, and one line of math tells you how likely any multiplier is.
How a round works
Each round opens with a short betting window. Then the multiplier starts at 1.00× and grows faster the longer it runs: on the curve cs2.casino uses, it takes about 11.6 seconds to reach 2×, 38 seconds to reach 10× and 77 seconds to reach 100×. You can cash out by hand at any moment, or set an auto cash-out before the round starts, a target from 1.01× up that the server applies for you.
Crash started as a bitcoin game in 2014 and spread to other crypto casinos from there. A 2026 study in the UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal traced that history, worked out the expected value of crash bets and found no way to beat the game in the long run, whatever multiplier a player aims for.
Where the crash point comes from
Every round has a round hash, a long hexadecimal string (how it's made is further down). The game takes its first 13 hex digits, a number h between 0 and 2⁵² − 1, and turns it into X = h / 2⁵², a value spread evenly between 0 and 1. The crash point is then:
crash point = floor(100 × (1 − edge) / (1 − X)) / 100, and never less than 1.00×.
The core of it is 1 / (1 − X). When X is 0.5 that's 2; when X is 0.875 it's 8. Big values need X very close to 1, which is rare. For 1 / (1 − X) to reach m, X has to land in the top 1/m of its range, so the chance is exactly 1/m. Multiplying by (1 − edge) shrinks every crash point a little, and the chance of reaching m becomes (1 − edge) / m. Statisticians call this shape a Pareto distribution; in practice it means every doubling of the target halves your chance.
At a 1% edge, for example, a hash starting 8000000000000 gives X = 0.5 and a crash point of 1.98×. The chances look like this:
| Multiplier | Chance the round reaches it | About 1 round in | |---|--:|--:| | 1.5× | 66.0% | 1.5 | | 2× | 49.5% | 2 | | 3× | 33.0% | 3 | | 5× | 19.8% | 5 | | 10× | 9.9% | 10 | | 100× | 0.99% | 101 | | 1,000× | 0.099% | 1,010 |
Half of all rounds end below 1.98×. The formula caps the crash point at 1,000,000×. The game page shows the edge in force, so put that number in place of the 1% to redo the table.
Instant busts
Some rounds end at 1.00×, before anyone can cash out. That happens when 100 × (1 − edge) / (1 − X) comes out below 101, and its chance is 1 − (1 − edge) / 1.01. At a 1% edge that's 1.98%, roughly one round in 50. Even with no edge at all, rounding down to the cent would produce 1.00× in about 0.99% of rounds.
The study describes crash games with built-in hard stops: a set share of rounds that crash at 1× and take every bet. In the formula above there's no separate rule like that. The edge is built into every crash point, and instant busts are simply its lowest outcome.
Cashing out: why the target hardly matters
The expected return of a cash-out target t is its chance times its payout. With a reach chance of (1 − edge) / t, that's t × (1 − edge) / t = 1 − edge, the same for every target. Aiming at 1.5× or 50× changes how often you win and how much, not what you keep on average. House edge and RTP explains why that average wins out over many rounds.
There's one catch at the low end. A cash-out has to happen before the crash: if the round crashes at exactly 2.00×, a 2.00× target doesn't pay. Crash points move in steps of 0.01×, so a target t only pays when the round reaches t + 0.01×, a chance of (1 − edge) / (t + 0.01). That step is a bigger share of a small target:
| Auto cash-out | Reaches the target | Cash-out pays | Average return | |---|--:|--:|--:| | 1.01× | 98.02% | 97.06% | 98.03% | | 1.5× | 66.00% | 65.56% | 98.34% | | 2× | 49.50% | 49.25% | 98.51% | | 10× | 9.90% | 9.89% | 98.90% | | 100× | 0.990% | 0.990% | 98.99% |
All figures are at a 1% edge. Every target returns a little under 1 − edge, and the gap is largest at low targets. Auto cash-out runs the same math as clicking, minus your reaction time, and changing stakes from round to round doesn't help either, as Martingale and other betting systems works through. Whatever the multiplier, a single bet can't pay more than the game's maximum win, listed with its limits.
Patterns that aren't there
Each crash point comes from its own hash, so a run of low rounds says nothing about the next one. Runs are common: at a 1% edge, about half of all rounds end under 2×, and three in a row under 2× happens 12.9% of the time. The study notes that crash games can lead players to see patterns in random results, such as expecting a big round after several quick crashes. The gambler's fallacy covers why streaks don't change the odds.
How each round is fixed and checked
Crash is a shared game: everyone in a round plays the same result, so it can't use your personal seeds. Instead the game has a hash chain. A random secret is hashed with SHA-256 over and over, the last hash (the terminal) is published before the first round, and rounds use the chain backwards, so each round's seed hashes to the previous round's seed. Nobody can swap a seed later without breaking the chain.
A chain alone would let the house know every result ahead of time. So each seed is mixed with a beacon from drand, a public randomness network whose quicknet chain publishes a new value every 3 seconds. The beacon used is one published only after betting closes: round hash = HMAC-SHA256(seed, drand randomness). Drand explained covers why nobody, the house included, can know that value in advance. Round pages recompute the crash point in your browser, and the provably fair page lists each game's terminal hash.
That lets you check the result wasn't picked after the bets came in. It doesn't change the math above: the edge is in the formula, and the crash game shows it next to the bet limits.
