Bitcoin Forum

If you're from that State and you haven't heard this yet,
- https://www.coindesk.com/wyoming-accepts-crypto-bets-sports-gambling

That "in lieu of greenbacks" means the USD value will be reflected in user's balance correct? That will probably disappoint crypto users there but it still good that they don't have to sell their crypto for fiat themselves so they can gamble on sportsbooks. Some platforms here does that too anyway.

It's good news for Bitcoin holders, slightly strange that they needed to pass a law to accept these funds - maybe that helps with money laundering requirements. I wonder if the betting sites will be forced to offer a mechanism for people to exchange any potential winnings into a fiat cash payment, or they are simply saying that any convertible-to-cash currency will be allowed (including ones that you need to exchange outside of the gambling site). Step by step Bitcoin is taking over and it is much less susceptible - having a fixed amount - to monetary inflation than the US government printing money whenever they want to hand out checks.

It's not like that. The law was about authorizing online sports wagering and part of the accepted payment method is cryptocurrencies.

I'm also thinking of the process. Perhaps someone more diligent to read the entire ACT can explain to us if platforms will allow users to convert it back to crypto upon withdrawal.

"so long as those cryptos can be converted to cash"

I didn't understand this part. So does that mean it is still not allowed if the casino doesn't let you convert your crypto to USD? That means the casino will have to set up a banking account since it is going to deal with USD and it is not going to be possible to establish a crypto only casino, am i correct? If the casino has a bank account, the government can  check the ingoing/outgoing transactions, ask questions etc etc. I guess it is a good thing.

Good news for those who do lived in Wyoming! At first I was bit curious on where this place is located and found out that this is a least populous state of the United States.

So its expected that USD value would really be displayed on in spite of your crypto deposits but well this isn't really that much of a big issue as long we can make out conversions
of those balance back to crypto.

It might be on a different view while you play but well this is much better than make out those conversions first on other services or platforms before you can able to play.

This is good news but I still prefer if websites would accept betting with Bitcoin and other crypto coins instead of converting to fiat.
All betting websites from Wyoming would still requiere from users to pass kyc verification and there is no way to preserve privacy so I would prefer full crypto alternative is possible.

But if nothing else, this will be a good introduction for some of their residents to real crypto casinos. When they find out that there are crypto casinos that don't require KYC, I think, they will prefer on this one. But right now, they need to learn how to transact with crypto, and later on, they will understand how real crypto casinos work.

You just need to deposit in crypto to your account and the exchange will show the equivalent value in USD. They are mandated to do that.

They can also partner with a third party like Bitpay to handle crypto transactions.

The new law just added online sports gambling and allowed  crypto deposits. Not a bad thing to me if you gamble on a casino whose in a jurisdiction that regulates casinos to begin with.

Still good news, unlike some other place that doesn't allow it.

For those gamblers in Wyoming that have been gambling with fiat. They'll start to hear out cryptocurrencies as they gamble with those sportsbooks.

Those who don't want to spend cash and yet they have crypto, it's an ease for them.

Wow that's a big news for the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the United States. It can be a new step toward the availability of cryptocurrencies in bricks and mortar casinos of North America, but it will also certainly convert some current old school gamblers into crypto ones.
Nonetheless I don't think current cryptogamblers will leave their favorite online casinos to register onto US ones, because KYC will still be mandatory despite using cryptocurrencies.

I'm not disappointed with this, it's actually a good news and we have to get used that when we talk about government, anything is always paired with fiat. Gambling only makes crypto as a tool in gambling, so it's a great news as it will increase the adoptoin on crypto gambling which is one of the biggest contributor why crypto is more popular now.

Also, this regulation makes gamblers to be confident that their money will not be confiscated anytime, so a green signal when regulatrs accept crypto, maybe they already see the opportunity now.

This is another great news that uplift Bitcoin's reputation and I seen that demand and adoption would tend to increase in coming days. Because of this, fiat would not be an issue for everybody due to people prefers cryptocurrency instead of using physical money for their betting on several sportsbooks.

This could be the start and its good that Wyoming formally legalize the online sports betting using “digital, crypto and virtual currencies”.

Those gamblers who wish to gamble using their cryptocurrency are now free to use it, and it can also be converted into fiat money which can be more easy for gambler to withdraw their funds legally, this is indeed a good news and a step closer for a more States/Country to legalize the usage of cryptocurrency.

As Elon said when fiat currency show 0% interest only a fool won't look elsewhere and for the Wyoming 33rd Governor to legalized cryptocurrency for online sports bet he totally understands the better the integration will give to his state that why he legalized it and if we think about some restriction gamblers experience in the US, I think Wyoming legalized crypto for gambling site a reasonable settlement.

The state government played it really smart and this isn't as much good news for the community as we think it is. Since they have legalized cryptos, they would expect you to pay taxes on your gambling earnings which wasn't the case before. They wouldn't even wait for you to convert your winnings into fiat, they could simply ask you to pay taxes in cryptos which is another level of centralization.

Wasn't online sports betting always legal in the States as long as the betting company is registered in the US?

Still the gambling site needs to register in the US to be able to accept bets in cryptocurrencies. As long as the government gets the money they do not have problems with what you do with your money, be it gambling or anything else  :D.

Need to know more about the situation as many sites restrict players from the US and i do not think this news will make any difference to those restrictions that are imposed but it is a start.

Americans are georestricted on many gambling platforms, so they can't easily gamble with their cryptos. At least with this new regulation, they will be able to spend and to use their funds in cryptocurrencies somewhere. This can be a good news for the markets, because if americans lose their cryptos on gambling sites, they will need to buy more on the market and to increase the amount of bid orders and demand.

We have a lot of crypto related casino's that reflected USD so I guess this is non-issue for most of us.

Quite surprising coming from Wyoming, but I guess the governor and his advisors are into crypto so it's a win-win for us. Wonder though which state will be next, as this could really explode crypto related gambling specially if most US states will allow it. And there could be more crypto sites on the horizon because of this news.

Not really a disappointment. If the gamblers can deposit crypto, bet with crypto, and withdraw crypto, it is good enough acceptance of crypto.

I don't think "in lieu of greenbacks" necessarily means the crypto balances are to be computed into fiat. It might simply mean crypto itself could be used for betting rather than converting it to fiat first. The only condition is that the crypto used is convertible to fiat.

But if that phrase means the users are using crypto with built-in fiat computation, I hope it won't be instantly converted by gambling sites. The problem is found right there. The conversion rate might not be fair.

That is good but I wonder if people are going to be able to withdraw their capital in bitcoin and what happens when the capital they want to withdraw is higher than what they deposited in the casino, but overall it is a good news even if it is a news that it is going to benefit only those that live in that state, but this is just the beginning, mainstream adoption is coming and governments all around the world will have to adjust to this reality, if they do not then they are bound to leave a lot of money over the table that they could have gotten in the form of taxes.

Wyoming Governor played an important roles by making cryptocurrency part of the currency accepted by the Wyoming online sport betting site because the state will make more revenue through online gsmbling site because the crypto integration will increase the number of traffic for sport betting site within the state.

Good news I suppose, it's basically a legalized crypto sportsbook, I don't see any issues here. Even if crypto was reflected via fiat, I doubt it'd pose THAT much of an issue, I just hope that the reflection is accurate with the market price, especially with the volatility that some coins have, though some casinos are already doing it so as long as they don't do it half-assedly, they should be fine.

I mean, wouldn't their casinos automatically tax them, even if it was crypto-based before? And was there even one before the law was legalized?

Right from the beginning no online gambling site that is not registered with the US government is allowed to provide service to the US customer and it not the gambling site alone because the same thing applied to other businesses.

The news will make some difference since the US have the highest number of cryptocurrency users in the world and the legalization of crypto for an online betting site may increase the number of betting site providing service to the US.

How I wish every lawmaker in every city in every country have this kind of thinking if we have this in every country we will have a fast adoption of Cryptocurrency, we have proven again that gambling is one of the catalysts in Crypto adoption, gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the Cryptocurrency technology is making it's way to gambling and it's taking this industry.

That is his job anyways,. i would be mad if he wasn't involved because that means that he is wasting the taxpayers money. This will definitely increase the profits in gambling since there are options and people love options, the only problem is whether the gambling houses are going to adopt real fast on this bill.

I really think this is a very clear example of why it is going to be impossible to ban bitcoin, the market is worth two trillion dollars and countries are going to want to have some of that economic activity going through them so they can tax that activity, so even if many governments are against it if bitcoin keeps getting bigger then we're going to get more news like this one in which politicians try to revive their local economies with the adoption of bitcoin.

In online gambling world, most sites don't want to run from US due to their insane tax rates which even take almost 30 to 40% as tax from the winning rewards depends on the state where it is located and that is also another reason why people who are US residents are not allowed to gamble on most of the gambling sites.

This is a huge step forward to the path that will lead to the institutionalization of crypto gambling too! The market is growing too much too leave the space to crypto gambling platforms only and now incumbents will adjust accordingly. Will be interesting to follow how this evolves and, thanks for sharing it as I missed it.

Yeah right, more and more crypto gamblers will comes up and make more transactions as legalities are now being
provided by the state, win win for both sides.

Implementations up to the next office takers, it should provide intact laws regarding to this to make sure that the
flow of this rules will continue.
More and more might comes up and good news regarding to crypto usages will be addeded.

Of course and it's all because of the development or the majority because many Cryptocurrency users in the region make the main leaders support and adopt it and besides understand Cryptocurrency.
Wyoming passed a new law legalizing online sports betting in Cryptocurrency based states and this is a great idea and example for certain states and will be a boon for it, and I also hope that in my city the leaders have good ideas. like him.

Any bill or laws would be definitely needing lots of discussions and arguments if a certain thing would be accepted or not but though this will vary on what kind of government does a country had.

Each of them would have different views towards crypto, some might like it some would not basing up on neither their personal opinions or as a group that had been agreed upon.

So in talks about acceptance and integrations then it all matters to their point of view if it would be beneficial or would be a threat to them.

With the first statement of the website there is an open indication that the website will accept the waggers from gamblers in cryptocurrencies which is the very best anyone would wish at the moment. Here is the quote from the website - "Wyoming has legalized online sports betting with a new law that also allows gamblers to place their wagers in crypto". It's a new development for the community that are close to this area and we wish them well as well.

This is just one of the earliest steps for crypto to become legally accepted in gambling sites in the US. This is overdue actually. Gambling sites which are registered somewhere outside US territories have been accepting crypto for some time already and yet the US is still prohibiting it. It is about time the US will accept the role of cryptocurrency in gambling. Gamblers want privacy and a certain amount of anonymity. That's something they can get from crypto.

The condition seem not necessary anymore as no one would really use crypto if they can't convert it to cash. As a gambler, using crypto is only a vehicle to gamble easier and retain being anonymous if we want to hide, so this news is really positive as the highligh on this news really is that they are already accepting crypto in sports betting.

not reflected but converted in fiat .
its useless because you are still gambling with fiat and not by crypto  .
there was one gambling site in bitcointalk that do exactly like this ,
 you depo crypto and your crypto will be converted to fiat but i forgot if they allow you to withdraw your money in a crypto form but it should be working this way for the idea to be helpful somehow for non crypto and crypto gamblers on that state .

As others said, that is good news for crypto users, especially for gamblers who often use crypto to gamble. I guess the government wants to know who was using crypto to gamble and make a new regulation related to that news. Maybe the government wants to control online sports betting from their State. I think a gambler needs to do KYC on the online sports betting website and I think their bank account will be monitor by the government. I wonder how much the taxes that the gambler should pay regard to that news.

They just want to benefit on the popularity of crypto, as they legalize sports betting, they know that huge money will come from crypto space, so with that, they regulate and they make money at the same time. They cant' control anything that is not owned by the state, but they can always monitor them to comply with the law, especially on correct tax remittance.

It could be like that because maybe they see that the crypto is used in gambling and it can bring them profit since the crypto becomes more accessible and acceptable in many countries. If they can regulate it and cooperate with the local banks, they will know how many of their people often used crypto to gamble, and they can implement the new regulations related to the crypto. They can apply the taxes to people who use crypto to gamble, which means they will get another income from the gambling business.

The tax rate is the same as in most other states where sports betting is legalized. 10% on gross revenue. While searching this info I came over a table of tax rates in all states. In Delaware, if you open an online sports betting company, 50% (entire HALF) of your gross revenue will go to taxes and later will be played out as the state lottery. That's what we call monopoly.

I guess that's really unreseasonable, why are they dedudcting from Gross revenue? IMO, it shoudl be in the Net revenue, and if they'll deduct in gross revenue, it should not be 50%, I'm just wondering, are there sports betting business survive in this kind of taxation requirement?

^ With this law, if you are going to think carefully and close, and read the description of how lawmakers consider it. It seems like they want to make the people that cryptocurrency is a prepaid one. This statement will support my opinion “ bets in lieu of greenbacks – so long as those cryptos can be converted to cash.” Cryptos being converted to cash is like having a prepaid that you can convert to cash in case you need it. And the essence of cryptocurrency is to becoming an independent store of value. I hope this will work still, in the future.
Nevertheless, I had like to check what would be the result of this new law and I hope it will affect the cryptocurrency community positively.

Nice, it's always good news to see new jurisdictions open to online gambling and betting. I hope that eventually all US states will follow this example and legalize iGaming.

As for the questions about converting crypto to cash and then back to crypto, I think that would be possible. I'm just stating this from my experience of online casinos that accept bitcoin deposits and withdrawals. I think that you deposit let's say $50 worth of bitcoin or other crypto and those get to you account as $50. You play with the USD and then if you choose to cash out in crypto, you enter the funds, let say you were lucky and need to withdraw $100. In this case, you will receive $100 worth of bitcoin minus fees to your crypto wallet.

I guess it's not the perfect scenario, especially for those who want to play with crypto and want to avoid exchange fees. But it's better than nothing. Anyway, good job Wyoming!  8)

I doubt the word "independent" is happening in crypto although that's really the purpose. Crypto could be independent due to its decentralization (most of crypto assets) but in general, the moment we ask for regulation or acceptance by the government, we should also accept that we loss that independence as everything relies on the regulation and everyone of us will have to follow the regulation.

That's great, one more casino adopting crypto! And I, personally, don't think that conversion to USD on the account balance is bad, it's actually convenient in a way. If you gamble regularly and don't instantly withdraw all your winnings - it's good to get them fixed to USD, because with rapidly changing BTC price you actually risk losing money while it's on the website.

It may be his job but if he doesn't legalize the use of crypto in sports bet and payment of wagers there's nothing you or anyone can do about it but it all good he does legalized crypto payment though.

Yes, the Wyoming governor makes a good example but even if Bitcoin did not get bigger it impossible for any government whatsoever to ban Bitcoin because they can only ban something that's within their system.

In Arizona just this week the governor also signed a bill legalizing sports gambling. More and more states are seeing an opportunity for money to be made and are now doing away with restrictions.

We are in the 21st century and gambling is not a public safety threat so it seems like common sense that they would begin to allow it. The demand is big enough that it is certain to bring in big revenue.

The gambler can convert their USD into BTC and send it to the exchanges or other wallets to hold or sell at once. Having the conversion to USD will allow us to see how much money we have to make a plan about how much money we will use to gamble. But that will not work if that gambler can not manage his money. We can wait for the next update from that and hopefully, that can also attract many gamblers to back playing on that place.

If taxes was the only thing against the US jurisdiction then I am sure that many casinos will still open their doors there, what happens is that the US regulations are so insane that casinos choose to avoid it completely and in the case of fiat casinos there are some fiat casinos that in their desire to avoid the US laws they avoid accepting any US clients at all as they do not want to bother to fill reports to the US government, but still I believe this is a step forward in the right direction.

It depends from how the gambler can limit their expenses while inside the gambling house, whatever currency you are using without limitations
you'll find yourself losing a lot.

Better in the sense that you know how much money you are using since crypto keeps changing in value,
with USD you'll be able to know if you already exceeding from your budget.

You can convert vice versa and it's all about how you understand everything.

I do believe that it is a fine law indeed. Honestly the conversion of cryptos to fiat is something which is inevitable there is honestly no way that you can use BTC and other cryptocurrencies everywhere, plus lightning network is still not a good idea. Therefore I do think the law was good and we should focus more on the betting being legal. I do think Government is trying to get funds from taxes and online sports betting is something which is over the top. They are already having an incoming war crisis so better keep their sources open.


It's something that is already being done without such long process most sites show the users their bet value in BTC and also the balance too. If a gambler is using BTC or USD for sure he knows the conversion.

The state of Wyoming has probably realized that it is not possible to ban online gambling. Online sportsbooks can be set up with very minimal effort and in very short time period. If the authorities ban one such online site, then the promoters can easily make a clone available in less than 24-hours. The government needs to admit that rather than prohibiting such activity, a mutually beneficial route would be to legalize and regulate them. Now Wyoming has taken this route and I hope the other states where online gambling is not legal will follow.

I believe Silberman was right because taxes issue want not the main reason why some casinoes restricted the US resident/citizen and the last time I checked the UK seems to have high tax rate than the US but the reason is the lengthy and complicated laws of the US government not in gambling alone cause the same thing happen to other setting of business that operates in the US

Exactly.Anything thing coming from the governments cannot really be good for cryptos.As long as they force people to convert the amount of crypto to fiat and require kyc this is not good news.The good news would be if they passed a bill for permitting playing with crypto anonymously but this will never happen if any government is involved.

I think it's actually nice that Wyoming specifically included the "In lieu of greenbacks" statement in the clause. Personally, it's better if I know how much my money or earning is worth in fiat since that is what we use on the daily basis anyway. I think it's a nice feature that most gambling sites should add in theirs too. Although I think it's actually counterproductive for crypto that they'd have to cash in with fiat instead of crypto.

I think it's great that more and more governing forces and authorities are acknowledging crypto gambling as another form of gambling. But I don't think it's actually nice that they are specifically asking these gambling sites operating within their vicinity to cash in using fiat, "greenbacks" as they say, and then convert it into bitcoin or any other form of cryptocurrency right on to the site.

I wonder how a state could possibly even ban a private company from accepting a particular currency?

Makes absolutely zero sense to me. If a person/company wants to accept marbles as a form of payment, would there be any legislation that bans them from doing so?

The important part is the legalisation of online sportsbooks here. Not necessarily the fact that sportsbooks are allowed to accept cryptos - because there is virtually nothing barring them from doing so even without explicit consent from the government.

It's not as simple as that, everything has to be registered and legalized, that's how regulators work. If they will regulate the sportsbook, they should also know the transaction inside, everything that goes in and out as they can always do an audit if the certain sportsbook is really complying with the rules they issued.

If a site accept an illegal drugs as a bet, would the government just allow that? no, because although sportsbook is legal but they are accepting illegal drugs which the word itself "illegal".

The US regulations are so bad that this is not only happening to casinos but to almost any institution that manages money, there are many banks that do not accept citizens of the US anymore precisely for the very same reasons, and there are many investment firms, international lawyers and accounting firms and even companies that keep your gold have stopped accepting US citizens as customers and it is easy to imagine that casinos are following the same trend.

The private company can accept anything, including marbles, in exchange for their service if they want to but are they recognized as "legal tender"? Read about that.

In simple words, regulators will not accept company financial reports that are priced in currency other than fiat or legally accepted payment methods hehe. It would be funny if the casino would pay their taxes in marbles or illegal drugs to renew their license since all their customers never paid in fiat or crypto.

Everything under the law needs to implement once you've applied for legalization of your business, and I agree that any time the regulator can audit and ask for legal documents to see if the sportbook is complying with the laws.

Every process are important which means that everything should follow  by  the book, accepting and regulating the business and all those payment forms are require to follow the rules.

Your example is simple but direct to the point,.

You proof your point, to us their rules and regulations is bad/burden but it seems to actually work for them despite it limit their chance of getting more tax from some companies which ought to operate on their soil and I think they need to ease the rules now that every countries are experiencing economic meltdown through the covid-19.

Its up to them if they would really decide to stick out with their rules or laws that had been imposed about total ban or prohibition out of those casinos specially that we are on a crisis where tax and revenues

could really be that relevant or much needed for todays situation.For making out some change of mind decisions then its a bit ideal rather than on sticking on the previous laws just because of some

useless ego or the people around arent still convinced on what are the pro's on accepting those neither online or physical casinos.They should be mindful on what are the potential

benefits that they could possibly get on such changes.

I believe they already understand what the potential benefit of the States will be if they diminish their rules and regulations concern private and self-sufficient businesses but like you said their ego seems to always be their priority.
I read that Biden is planning to increase the tax rate this year.

Many gamblers can not limit their expenses while they are playing gambling. If they see they lose and the money is not much, they will deposit some amount and continue playing gambling. If a gambler can limit their money, and let say, they will only use $20 every time they gamble and convert it into btc or altcoins, and they will use a limit that no matter if the coins amount still available on their wallet or not, they can stop gambling.

I think something similar, their rules and regulations made sense when their economy was strong and there was no pandemic but if they keep pushing businesses to comply with their complex tax code then not only they are not going to get any tax from those companies but many that were dealing with them before could realize that it is not longer worth it for them and will just move on as many other companies did before them reducing the taxes the US government receives even further.

You make a good point and this is already the situation happening there (in the US), some companies have moved to New York City, etc to state with ease tax payment while some companies moved from the US to the Asian countries with ease tax payment.

Which is why the Biden administration is not only looking to increase taxers but it is also looking for most countries around the world to do the same, that way businesses will have no other option but to comply and pay more to the government, but since that is basically impossible and there will always be a country out there willing to offer low taxes to whoever opens a company there we are bound to see more capital fleeing the US during the next years.