Why should a billionaire like him play with his own pennies? That's small time. He can't reach his goals with baby steps. He's got millions of his own personal money to squander in casinos. Not only that, he also has access to the billions of money that his clueless customers deposited in his exchange. He must have thought he could use them to try recovering what he lost after Terra collapsed. And yes, he actually used Stake as one of his gambling platforms of choice.
He feels that he can do whatever he want, without having to face any consequences. He was conducting an interview after the collapse of FTX from Bahamas, and this was his facial expression:
That is the classic definition of egotistical individual, manipulative the most and think that they can do anything and get away with it, including billions from it's customers and then he can repay them back by just gambling their money again. It's good though that he was exposed this early and not drag more people and suffer the worst in the coming months. Anyhow, he is in jail and there are news that there are death threats as well but we are not sure how reliable that news it. Maybe they wanted to spin it around and shows that he is the victim here, classic manipulation.