While just a week ago we were surprisingly hit with the positive news coming from the UK’s gambling regulator, it still does not tell us that a similar pattern will happen in other European countries. Just a few days ago Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has stated its opinion on bitcoin gambling – it is not welcomed by the authority. Unlike the United Kingdom Gambling Commission, that allowed online gambling portals to freely accept any type of crypto currencies as a mean of deposit, MGA seems to stay way behind the innovation. There are a few pro and against reasons for this.
Why bitcoin gambling should be allowed?
The answer this question actually is actually another question. Why it shouldn’t be allowed? If the governments of the world see the bitcoin as either the currency or a commodity, why people cannot be allowed to use this currency for bitcoin gambling online? Why should buying poker chips be any different from buying a cup of americano?
Next to this, currently European Union looks into developing its infrastructure of the payments. This is the main purpose of the Payment Services Directive II (PSD2). It is designed to make the payments across the EU faster, safer and more competitive. Well, this is exactly what bitcoin is all about. It is an anonymous, secure and very fast way to make transactions.
Finally, another interesting thing about bitcoin gambling is that it can be operational whether it is regulated or not. A legal entity can always establish a daughter company that is not regulated in any way, yet allows gambling with bitcoins. As seen on one of the largest German bitcoin portals http://bitcasino.de/, it is regulated by the government of Curaçao under a regular gaming licence. That’s right, due to the lack of regulation, a gaming portal that targets European players has to be regulated elsewhere. In other words, avoidance of bitcoin gambling regulation does not prohibit the casinos to serve European players, it simply prohibits the European-regulated companies to compete with poorly regulated rivals.
Why bitcoin gambling should NOT be allowed?
Apart from tons of the advantages, there is one disadvantage. The lack of transparency. There is no KYC required to open up a bitcoin wallet and accept funds of any limit. In other words, one can get 100,000 USD worth of bitcoins without revealing his or hers identity. This way the funds could be used for money laundering, terrorism financing and so on.
When fiat currencies are used to perform a deposit in an online casino, it can be certainly agreed that the taxes from these funds are paid and the funds are clean. However, this is not the case with bitcoin gambling.