Crash games
A short history of crash games
The history of crash games starts in 2014, with a game announced on the BitcoinTalk forum and later renamed bustabit. Game developers adopted the format in 2018 and 2019 by their own dates, Pragmatic Play announced Spaceman in March 2022, and by April 2025 a regulator was describing the genre in a notice to operators.
Key takeaways
- The thread that is the earliest public record of a crash game was started on 25 July 2014 by Eric Springer; the game ran on moneypot.com before it was renamed.
- The first provably fair seeding event for bustabit was posted on 12 January 2015, less than six months after that thread.
- SmartSoft Gaming says JetX launched in 2018, and Spribe’s company timeline puts Aviator live in January 2019; we have no independent record of either date.
- Spaceman, announced on 24 March 2022, is a first only within Pragmatic Play’s own catalog: the announcement came more than seven years after the 2014 thread.
Timeline of crash games, 2014 to 2026
Where a source gives only a year or a month, so does the table.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 25 July 2014 | A BitcoinTalk thread started by the user “espringe” (Eric Springer) announces a game that ran on moneypot.com and was later renamed bustabit. | BitcoinTalk launch thread |
| 12 January 2015 | Ryan Havar (“RHavar”) posts bustabit’s first provably fair seeding event, for a chain of 10 million hashes. | BitcoinTalk seeding thread |
| 27 January 2018 | Havar announces the sale of bustabit, together with bustabit v2. | BitcoinTalk sale thread |
| 2018 | JetX launches, according to SmartSoft Gaming. No month is given. | SmartSoft Gaming’s JetX page |
| August 2018 | Spribe is founded. | Spribe’s company timeline |
| January 2019 | Aviator goes live. | Spribe’s company timeline |
| 2019 | Wang and Pleimling publish a statistical study of online gambling logs that includes betting data from two crash sites. | Scientific Reports 9, 14712 |
| 24 March 2022 | Pragmatic Play announces Spaceman and presents it as its first crash-style game. | Provider’s press release |
| 7 June 2022 | Version 1.5 of Spaceman’s Game Help records an “RTP update”. The earlier value is not recorded. | Game Help change log |
| February 2024 | The current bustabit hash chain, of 100 million hashes, dates from this month. | bustabit documentation; BitcoinTalk seeding thread |
| 10 July 2024 | Version 1.7 of Spaceman’s Game Help updates the Statistics section and removes the description of provably fair mechanics. | Game Help change log |
| 8 April 2025 | A UK Gambling Commission notice to operators on money-laundering risks describes crash games and calls them highly volatile. | UK Gambling Commission |
| 2 October 2026 | On the date of our check, Pragmatic Play’s Crash Games page lists Spaceman with High Flyer and Big Bass Crash. | Provider’s Crash Games page |
Note
Vendor dates are the vendors’ own; we have no independent record of JetX’s 2018 launch or Aviator’s January 2019 date. For Spaceman, 24 March 2022 is the date of the provider’s announcement, not a go-live date at any operator.
Crypto origins: MoneyPot and bustabit
The history of crash games begins on the BitcoinTalk forum. The thread started there on 25 July 2014 is the oldest public record of the format we found, and the game it announced, later renamed bustabit, is generally accepted as the first crash game. That account, the usual answer to who invented crash games, rests on the earliest available evidence; it is not a formally established claim.
The first provably fair seeding event, in January 2015, committed to a chain of 10 million hashes whose final hash was published before play, so each round’s result could be checked against a commitment made in advance. A second chain of 10 million hashes followed in 2018 and the current chain of 100 million in February 2024. How the chain is built and checked is explained on the provably fair page.
The published documentation for bustabit describes the elements that later titles share — a multiplier and a target chosen by the player — and states the game’s own house edge as 1%. The crash games overview sets out that common structure.
From crypto sites to game developers: JetX and Aviator
SmartSoft Gaming says JetX launched in 2018 and describes it as the first flying crash game. SmartSoft’s game page publishes neither an RTP (return to player) nor a maximum multiplier for JetX.
Aviator followed in January 2019, by Spribe’s company timeline. Spribe’s game page lists an RTP of 97% and describes a social multiplayer game with a rising curve that can crash at any time, with in-game chat and a display of live bets. Spribe’s own account of the genre, a vendor’s framing, is that the format originated in video gaming and became popular in crypto casinos.
The verification idea carried over: Spribe describes a provably fair scheme in which a hash of the next round’s server seed is visible before the round and client seeds come from players. Aviator’s in-game rules describe two bets at once through a second bet panel, along with Auto Bet and Auto Cashout.
How these titles line up is covered in Spaceman vs other crash games.
Pragmatic Play enters: Spaceman in 2022
On 24 March 2022 Pragmatic Play announced Spaceman, in a release that presented it as the provider’s first crash-style game and as a social, multiplayer RNG (random number generator) title.
The same release referred to provably fair mechanics. The change log of Game Help version 1.7, dated 10 July 2024, records that the description of those mechanics was removed; it does not say whether anything in the game was removed or only the description. This site draws no conclusion from that; the dated record, together with the provider’s licensing and testing statements, is on the Is Spaceman fair? page.
The provider’s Crash Games page, as checked on 2 October 2026, calls Spaceman the original Pragmatic Play crash game and says it introduced the 50% cashout feature, which is the provider’s wording. The game itself is described from What is Spaceman? onward.
Regulators and researchers take notice
Researchers came first. In 2019 Wang and Pleimling published a study in Scientific Reports of online gambling logs, including betting data from two crash sites; none of it came from Aviator or Spaceman. They described the crash point as distributed approximately as an inverse-square law. The same study simulated Martingale-type staking in crash and concluded that it increases a gambler’s risk of huge losses.
On 8 April 2025 the UK Gambling Commission published a notice for operators on emerging money-laundering and terrorist-financing risks — an anti-money-laundering notice, not a consumer guide. It describes crash rounds as lasting from a few seconds to a couple of minutes, and says crash games are highly volatile and can lead to significant losses for players. What volatility means in modeled numbers is covered under volatility and risk.
What the record does not show
- Early usage. We found no reliable figures for how many people used MoneyPot or bustabit in its first years, and publish none.
- The 2018 sale. The announcement and its date are documented. Its terms are not covered by our sources.
- Aviator’s ceiling. Spribe publishes no maximum multiplier for Aviator.
- Spaceman’s earlier RTP. The Game Help change log records an “RTP update” on 7 June 2022 without stating the value before it. The figures that are documented are on the page about Spaceman’s RTP figures.
Sources
- SmartSoft Gaming — JetX game page
- Spribe — Aviator game page
- Spribe — Provably Fair
- Wang and Pleimling, Online Gambling of Pure Chance: Wager Distribution, Risk Attitude, and Anomalous Diffusion, Scientific Reports 9, 14712 (2019)
- Pragmatic Play — Pragmatic Play blasts off with Spaceman (press release, 24 March 2022)
- Pragmatic Play — Crash Games page (as checked on 2 October 2026)
- UK Gambling Commission — Emerging money laundering and terrorist financing risks from April 2025 (notice for operators)
- BitcoinTalk — bustabit threads: 2014 launch, 2015, 2018 and 2024 seeding events, 2018 sale (cited by name, not linked)
- bustabit — published documentation, including its provably fair article (cited by name, not linked)
- Spribe — company timeline (cited by name, not linked)
- Spribe, Aviator in-game rules, as reproduced by licensed operators (cited by name, not linked)
- Pragmatic Play — Spaceman Game Help, version 1.7 (change log to 10 July 2024), as distributed to licensed operators (cited by name, not linked)