Lorien Pilling has nearly 20 years’ experience in the gambling sector and is the director at Global Betting and Gaming Consultants, which provides practical and insightful consultancy, data and market reports for the global gambling industry. specific coins. But the ability for law enforcement entities to track and seize cryptocurrencies could become a problem for crypto-gambling websites, affiliates and their customers. Nobody in the crypto-gambling value – operator, affiliate, customer - can know whether the coin has been earned as the result of criminal enterprise. A crypto-casino could be ordered to forfeit cryptocurrency deposits if a player has obtained the funds through criminal activity. Similarly, an affiliate could find their revenue share or commission payment being seized from their wallet at a later date if the coins paid out by the operator had previously been used to pay a ransom, for example. The appeal of cryptocurrencies and crypto-gambling is partly in their anonymity and privacy. Action against criminals and ransomware attackers in the U.S. has demonstrated that the anonymity and privacy is not absolute. Law enforcement’s ability to track cryptocurrency transactions and access the wallets where the coins end up will only improve over time. If a disproportionate number of illegally earned coins end up going through crypto-gambling sites, it could disrupt the business model and lessen the appeal of the sector for affiliates, if coins are frequently being seized as part of criminal investigations. CONCLUSION Gambling represents one activity that cryptocurrency holders can easily spend their coins on, with the added benefit that they might win more coins. Hundreds of gambling websites have launched to offer crypto-gambling services, catering for various coins. Many of these sites appear to hold no gambling license but the apparent privacy and anonymity they claim to offer, combined with the “provably fair” concept, is attractive to a certain category of gambler. Crypto-gambling’s growth is partly a reaction to the constant stream of new gambling regulation, which seeks to obtainmore andmore personal information about gamblers’ identity, income and behavior, and limit people’s spending until the information is provided. For this reason, VIP gamblers find crypto-gambling particularly suited to their needs. Anonymity is also helpful to customers based in jurisdictions where online gambling is not permitted, like in Asia. The traditional tier-one gambling operators do not appear to be promoting crypto-gambling at this stage. There could be a fear as to the regulatory and compliance risk of getting involved with cryptocurrencies. Governments in the major economies are still formulating their approach to cryptocurrencies – their regulation and taxation. What they decide will ultimately determine the future of cryptocurrencies and associated activities like crypto-gambling. 35 G P W A t i m e s . o r g
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