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The new brazilian law (https://www.in.gov.br/web/dou/-/portaria-normativa-spa/mf-n-615-de-16-de-abril-de-2024-554928583) that regulates online betting excludes the use of payments with cryptocurrencies, bank slips, cash or any alternative deposit payment method that could hinder the origin of resources and government fiscal control over the platforms and customers of the casino.

This could encourage clandestine betting on foreign platforms that accept crypto, outside the reach of national regulation.

The rules are exclusive to casino companies operating in Brazil. Therefore, casinos outside this territory will not be affected and Brazilian users who have accounts in these casinos abroad can continue using these platforms, as regulations cannot stop them.

Once again the brazilian government is going against innovation and proving to be stupid.

For more details, access the full article here (https://bitcoinblock.com.br/2024/06/10/lei-que-regula-apostas-onlines-ignora-tecnologia-e-estimula-a-clandestinidade/).

Most countries don't bother to regulate crypto casinos at all. They just ban them outright by blocking then. But it is very easy to circumvent these blocks and eventually most people that were going to avoid the blocks do it anyway. And it's impossible to give consequences to hundreds of thousands of people for something as trivial. At least it would be very tyrannical to try.

But I am sure Brazil has better issues to focus resources on. So I am not surprised. Most countries treat gambling the same. And interestingly the crowd of people that don't even know how to change DNS also are the majority so this regulation works.

You have to also understand that lots of fraud go through casino and its not a wrong idea for them to regulate it a little, I believe they must be a reason behind this new rule that they brought out l, it can't totally be to stop crypto casinos from excelling in the country, who knows it might be task related.

Instead of adapting to reality, officials are trying to draw water with a sieve. Nothing new. It is strange that local casinos were unable to lobby for a softer version of the law, since it is obvious that a significant part of the audience will go to foreign/crypto casinos and local businesses will be left without profit, which in turn will be the reason that they will not be able to provide clients with more favorable conditions. And this will lead to additional customer churn and so on. Officials are cancer, they make everything worse.

It seems that the more you poke around in shit, the more it attract flies, look how absurd, seriously the brazilian government has been going overboard for a long time.

Researching further, I find this other news giving this deadline for casino companies:


The government's only concern is to parasitize society, it uses these arguments to justify its theft. Believe me, everything the brazilian government sets out to do, it doesn't do or if it does, it's done poorly.

Now laws to complicate the lives of citizens or even to tax to obtain increasingly exponential gains, in this they are extremely efficient.

You have a point!

Yes, we understand that, and maybe that's what the government of Brazil doesn't want, but we all know that crypto based casinos are asking KYC (Know Your Customer), personal information like drivers license and passport so that they will know who they dealing with and prevent such cases as money laundering.

So it doesn't make sense for the Brazilian government to make a total ban on cryptocurrencies.

This is the new technology and we all know that if you look at the other way, there could be advantage of it like blockchain that they can implement as we all know that everything is recorded and immutable. So why not the government take advantage of it instead of going backwards?

'cause the government does not want competition, it wants to sell its own solutions (or imposes on force through threats of sanctions) so that it has more control over the financial lives of the parties involved in any negotiation.

The government here barely knows how blockchain technology works and is not interested in knowing unless it gives them an advantage in making it easier to track people's records and documentation.

As far as that law applies to casinos that operate in Brazil then online players should not worry about such laws. If I'm not wrong then most of the online casinos are operating from placed that's not under the territory of  Brazil and by keeping that in mine the online players can play at their favorite betting sites without any issues.

That's just the internet for you. People will always find a way to bypass certain government restrictions and if it's just a casino ban they can probably tweak their IP via some VPN.
Without trying to be rude , I still don't see why some countries place ban on crypto related stuff like I don't really feel like it's necessary. Of course they may have their reasons but crypto currencies are undoubtedly the future of cash system and placing these bans only slow down the whole process.
With respect to the illegal issues, any cash system can be used for fraud weather directly or indirectly. Before crypto became popular, people still defrauded via fiat and other means.

Well, If Brazil regulators have chosen to go backwards towards to the stone age, then by all means, we should let them. In the world today where crypto payments are the new norm even for country-centric casinos, they're taking the backwards path. I don't think this is not going to take a lot of time before they make a U-turn when many of their citizens evade the rules and play at crypto casinos. This is as expected because crypto is being preferred to national currencies now and governments are just doing their bids to stop it.

It's similar to how the centra bank of my country is edging towards the narrative that crypto is net negative because most citizens no longer care about the National currency and I do think it's win.

I highly believe that sooner or later, their government will change stance on this matter. Once they uncovered that their people found a way how to deal with online casinos using their crypto and other means, they probably launch new protocols on this area. Would be hard to ignore technological developments because we are living into this digital age era.

With those regulations Brazilian users will get on a blacklist, in the same way as we see countries banned like Russia, Corea, or even USA.

But i agree with OP, this is totally retrograde move from the Brazilian gov, is fun how they are creating new laws and ignoring the technology, that's a dumb move because at some point they will have to create new laws and rules for online gambling with cryptos.

Probably all countries. As crypto casinis still fall on the countries' casino regulations/laws. That's why we see casino casinos accepting different kind of deposit/withdrawal method, those who are crypto only casino are unique and sometimes doesn't have any license/unregulated.

The decision of Brazilian government is something a controlling government will do, well, since this is their first online gambling law from being banned for how many years, it could be a first step for them but probably won't be the last as someone will revised it for sure.

That's what I am also thinking. Is it being stupid or there's a deeper reason why Brazil is trying to regulate gambling?

I didn't see anything after pressing the link OP has provided so I have to look at it myself. I am not sure though if this is what OP is talking about.
https://next.io/news/brazil-issues-online-gambling-technical-regulations/
Brazil has issued new technical regulations and requirements for gambling operators looking to launch in its upcoming regulated market.

I think they are just trying to tighten things up in the gambling sector and maybe they just don't want anyone getting away from the legality of their business.
There's a lot of money in the gambling industry and maybe they are focusing on taking advantage of all that tax money so that they can improve more.
It is said that they also increased the tax percentage but I doubt that will hurt a gambling platform because of how big the industry is now.

Those people will not playing gambling on casino companies operating in Brazil. They will prefer to search for the other casino that is out of Brazil jurisdiction because they don't wants to gets a problem. They can use many ways to playing gambling on other platforms, including they can use VPN to visit on the casino out of their country.

They may use crypto to change their fiat to place a bet or playing gambling. People who often playing gambling on online casino will search for other ways to keeps playing gambling and they will gambling by secretly so their government can't track their gambling activity.

Well, it's true that if there's a will, there's a way. As long as people who want to gamble want to gamble, they will find other ways to do so; they could even go against the government, and for sure they can't be stopped. And you are right, there are many ways to access different casino sites outside of the country you are in, and one of the examples is the usage of VPN. But of course, do mind that before doing that, you need to know if the casino site you will access accepts the usage of VPN because there might be a problem if you encounter a casino site that prohibits that, and for sure your account will be locked or banned right away. So make sure to know the rules and regulations of a certain casino site first before getting into it, because some sites may even implement a strict rule about foreign rules.

But isn't that to protect national economic interests? because a country has the right to protect their interests and prohibit anything other than their currency from being used in various industries, and especially in the gambling industry, so there is nothing too problematic about their decision. Moreover, such regulations do not really affect online casinos, since they only limit casinos operating in their territory, while the majority of casinos are based in Curaçao or other countries outside Brazil and Brazilians are still free to use online casinos that support crypto.

In any country casinos, no matter physical or online ones, operate under state approval and endowed with some rights commonly limited ones. Those rights are always depend on politics, economics, gambling  social impact, etc.. relevant to specific country.  I found interesting material that analyzes "global spectrum of gambling regulation". (https://www.theworldorbust.com/navigating-gambling-laws-how-different-countries-regulate-casinos/). It seems that Brazil has beaten both Singapore and Norway in this respect.  ::)

For a change, a law that looks more like a botched job made by politicians who do not understand what they are regulating. We know enough about that in Europe. I bet they will come up with another regulation in a few years, when they realise how much they are missing with users playing on cryptocurrency platforms.

You can't put doors on an open field.

I am not that concerned because Brazilians that are using bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies for gambling can easily make use of foreign gambling sites to gamble. There are many trustworthy foreign gambling sites that make use of crypto for payment. I noticed in my country that local gambling sites are very transparent in a way that can not let us have privacy and they are not supporting cryptocurrencies.

Not just encourage but will definitely happen, think of it like this, the more you tighten your grip on something that you want to control then the more that they want to resist which in this context would pave way for off shore betting so as to prevent surveillance or the regulation from reaching those people. This will also make the illegal elements much more creative on how they're going to use that regulation in their favor if evasion of the regulation isn't possible. As always, just another problem regulation that's made without any knowledge from the people that would care about it the most.

I do not see this as an issue for as as long as they are making the Brazilians to use foreign gambling sites. But regulators can do something like illiterates at times and this is another example of it. If a gambling site follow the KYC law and other laws like that, why not allow cryptocurrencies for deposit and withdrawal. The OP is just right about this. Their citizens that gamble with cryptocurrencies will prefer to gamble using foreign gambling sites.

Such laws encourage people to turn to alternatives, but luckily crypto is for all... so probably many people in Brazil will turn to crypto gambling, I guess it's good news for all crypto casinos. Actions like this actually make the crypto world grow even faster, people wish things to be simple and open for them, and people wish some privacy and freedom to decide how to spend money and where.

I think we've always known that some countries will be open to crypto while others will pretend that crypto doesn't exist at all.

I'm not at all surprised by this news. Any government wants to receive taxes and the gambling industry is no exception, therefore, a logical step is to ban all alternative payment methods that do not allow (or complicate) tracking the transactions of gamblers.

This trend will continue in other countries.

As always happens, a gray market (or black market) arises behind the regulation. The Brazilian government, wanting to regulate this niche, only pushes gamblers to switch to alternative sites outside of their regulation. People always adapt to change.

This is just the beginning.

Difficulties will begin when regulation begins beyond the territories of Brazil. How will gamblers play on casino sites (outside the country), which will also be regulated?

This is not stupidity, but greed. They need taxes.

I am not a citizen of Brazil, but I am from a country that also has an official language in Portuguese and every day I follow Brazilian politics, football and news. From what I understand, the ministry supervised by Haddad is clearly telling people that they cannot use casinos abroad, when people use casinos abroad they will not be able to withdraw their money to Brazil and if by chance someone from Brazil creates an account in a casino from abroad, and you want to deposit money in that casino from abroad, you will need to go and buy bitcoin on a website authorized by the Brazilian government, then if that person takes those bitcoins that they bought and places them in the casino that does not have a license issued by the government of Brazil, and If this person won money in this casino abroad and were to withdraw using the website authorized by the Brazilian government, this person would already be committing the crime of tax avoidance as it is called in Brazil.

There’s nothing new to this since government wants a business to be regulated properly and you can only do this through the use of fiat currency. Even on my country, Crypto is not accepted on casino to gamble since people still preferred fiat when it comes to local casino because this is what being use most of the time than crypto.


Who assume this? Unless Brazil is know for being popular on using crypto on gambling then this is true but most of the casino locally in any country use fiat currency to gamble. This is not a big problem imo when it comes to local casino but their target is local customers.

Personally I think that the Brazilian government made these decision without any evidence or data to back it up other than hearsay. It is important that regulatory bodies based their decision making process on empirical evidence. When they do this, it becomes clear for all to weigh the actual risk and benefits of such regulation. However when they make decision of the top of their heads against Bitcoin, I see it as witch-hunting. In addition, they kill any innovation that may have been trying sprout up. And finally, this is the kind of decision that kills the sustainability of the gambling industry.

It is not only something which could be said about the government of Brazil, to be honest, there are a handful of jurisdictions on the planet which are quite closed minded when comes to the use and potential of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. I believe Bolivia does not even recognizes Bitcoin as an asset whatsoever.
The ones who are going to suffer the most are the owners of casinos within the jurisdiction of Brazil and Brazilian gamblers who already had accounts in their favorite casinos, who now need to get used to new platforms and environments they are not used to.

It is weird to see how some administrations around the world do not look beyond the line of the horizon and try to find and equilibrium between adoption and taxation, instead they encourage clandestinity and lose the chance to diversify their economy, moving with the tendency Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are causing in other countries on the world.

I expected more wisdom from the administration of Lula, to be honest...

When they don't have the system to monitor crypto transactions, then they should just easily announce a ban in crypto for online gambling transaction. Indeed, they are against innovation, I think they should learn from other countries, I mean if a country could regulate a crypto exchange, there should be no difference with regulating an online casino with crypto as part of the payment system.

If this information is correct, we can see that Brazil had allowed crypto exchanges to operate, with the following names.
https://www.datawallet.com/crypto/best-crypto-exchanges-brazil

For newcomers to cryptocurrency, our research team has evaluated numerous exchanges and highlighted the five most secure and trusted options for Brazilian users:

It could be that Brazilian government is trying to do is make local casinos go out of business or run at loss and probably close down since they don’t want to come out straight and ban gambling casinos, they are coming up with strategies that will force them to close down. Different people have their convenient deposit method so restricting them on certain deposit method to use will force some people to leave local casinos and look for alternative options elsewhere which will in turn affect the local casinos and gradually they will lose lots of customers and money.

But I will say the government is just being selfish trying to be in control of everything and doing so will make them to lose a lot once people stop making use of local casinos and start using foreign casinos some will even make use of crypto casinos.

Sooner or later they will restrict the citizen to not gamble on online casino outside of their country.

I believe that's not their intention, closing down the casinos will make them not able to make more money from taxing the gamblers. On the contrary, I think they're actually want to encourage people to gamble in land based casino using their fiat, but they're making blunder by only banning cryptocurrency usage in their casino, they forgot to ban people to gamble on foreign casinos.

If the intention of the Brazilian government is to discourage gambling, then they are wrong with their approach.
If their intention is to have total control over the gambling industry, then they are still wrong with their approach.

Whatever the intentions of the government are, they are only reducing the revenue they would have gotten from casinos, betting platforms and even gamblers in their country. Those who are passionate about gambling will always find a way to gamble and once they find an easier means to gamble, they will dump the Brazilian gambling system. The gamblers have nothing to lose, the Brazilian government should look into that law and  make it more favourable to the gamblers and the government so both parties can be happy.

The only problem with regulation here in my country is that sometimes they try to freeze funds that came from gambling and mixing platforms that is why they should have to modernize their system to accurately detect legit funds and distinguish the real thing from money laundering as it may complicate and create fear to players.

Well, I tried to translate the article but it didn't work, I wanted to know the actual deposit means that is now allowed for casinos that is operating there since they have restricted both bank slip, cash and other alternative methods of deposit. If that's the case, then gambling should be ban in the country because it seems they don't want gamblers to have a comfortable deposit means. Since the law promotes clandestine,  there will be punishment for those that will secretly use the forbidden deposit methods.

The disadvantage of this law is that it may cause casino in Brazil to lose customers because citizens would use other international casinos.
 

For gamblers, this regulation won't change anything, as long as they play at international platforms which have nothing to do with brazilian territory. For businesses, though, it's highly suggested they just register their services outside brazilian territory and operate as a foreigner business, just like every other gambling services around, so nothing will change for them as well.

In Brazil, you shouldn't waste your time and energies* thinking on how dumb, absurd and shady the laws are. All you have to do is to find gaps on them in order to maintain your activities without breaking such new regulations, and without allowing yourself to be abused by the bureaucrats, oligarchs and politicians.

*Make sure to use your time and energies with self-development, so maybe someday you can have enough conditions to leave this hell called Brazil.

The fact is that in several countries, as in Brazil too, laws need to be created respecting the constitution and other existing laws.

What I want to say is: The Brazilian government really wants to regulate sports betting, but it cannot create a law that benefits this type of business too much to the detriment of national exchanges, for example, which already have several restrictions and obligations to report reports from its customers to the authorities.

Regarding not doing anything against external exchanges, this is quite plausible, as every minimally intelligent politician knows that there is no point in creating laws against external casinos, there are several ways to continue accessing them.

It's the same situation in my country. Regulations are very strict for local casinos and sportsbooks, they can't decide which games and which type of bets they want to offer, many of them are prohibited. And it's the same for promotions and bonuses. The regulator decides which games and which kind of bets are good for citizens and which ones are bad for them actually. Casinos and sportsbooks have to pay big amount of taxes on top of that, despite being strictly regulated and monitored by the authorities.

Maybe that is just the beginning, and regulations regarding gambling with crypto etc will surely follow.
The government of any country will definitely prioritize taxes as an income for the country, so I think its a bit  too early to call them stupid  :)
Maybe they dont tax gambling with crypto now but buying and selling crypto is definitely taxed there and if Im not mistaken isnt the crypto tax quite big in Brazil?

I don't think that this is something gamblers in Brazil should be worried about especially those that are gambling with cryptocurrency. They can gamble in casinos outside Brazil that is accepting cryptocurrency at enjoy the fun.

It is the government of Brazil that will lose because they will not be able to get tax from people gambling outside Brazil in cryptocurrency casinos. I read that already casinos that cannog comply are leaving the country and they have added USDT to their payment option.

Monitoring the citizens that are gambling is too bad because it is none of the government concern.

sorry if this is a little off topic but is anyone here from Brazil? I am curious, what is Pix? I saw it in the article and while reading through it, I got the feeling that someone wants to pass(or have passed) this law to make gambling bettors in Brazil use Pix more often. also, I can't help but think that this will not stop with online gambling.

Even though a bank slip can be said to as alternative to cash, it's okay for it to be excluded in the restriction because it isn't against with their advocacy. Cash is not an alternative but it is the main source of payment, so they should exclude it as well.

Addicted gamblers that are affected, will surely find a way and they will do that clandestine betting you are saying there. That is going to be easy in the case of cryptos and there are also decentralized sites here that regulatory bodies can't touch. Bettors can enjoy anonymous betting and they will not worry about taxations, if this is one of their concerns. Not all innovations are good, or it can also depend on how the person sees it. For us, cryptos are good innovation but for many governments, it isn't.

Not entirely, government can chose to announce that any casino that operates without following the regulations of their policies can be considered as illegal therefore anyone who is gambling overseas casino violates their laws but it's kind of grey area it can be only explained by the people who were well aware of their constitution policies regarding online platforms.

Its very true that alot of fraud goes through casino, I guess that what the kyc and other identification process exist. A lot of these online casinos might be created with the intention of scamming others claiming to be a place for fun but at the end, implement rules that goes against customers right. Any action that some government are taking to regulate forms of crimes in casino or their country are usually for the benefit of everyone e that's why most times I don't blame them even when they force the kyc on casino users. Just like any other form of online services, fraud still cannot be totally removed as they will always device a new method to make it happen.

Casinos will not be able to accept crypto, if I understood the new law right. How are they going to "turn to crypto gambling" if they can't deposit or withdraw crypto from a casino?
I bet that crypto casinos will be blocked in Brazil, since they won't have a license and the government will consider them to be in breach of the new law.

The only way for people to gamble anonymously will be to use a VPN and play in unlicensed casinos, but how many people are going to do that?

a similar law (restriction on the use of platforms - anti laundering etc) was also made in Italy...

Obviously to "protect" the bettor, in reality they have created a real "cartel" that is able to protect their interest and it is really complicated to find higher odds / events in this market compared to foreign markets.

as decentralized betting will gradually take his spot on the market, fewer and fewer people will be forced to use shameful - national platforms.

Exactly what you said. When people wants to playing gambling but they see the barrier from the government, they will search for the other and makes sure that they can still playing gambling. Those who often playing gambling should see many cases out there and trying to search for the ways just in case if they will face it in the future. If they experienced that, they will not confuse and they can adapt with the situation and can still playing gambling without any problem.

Many people use VPN to access the gambling site because their country has been blocked by the government. They knows which casino sites that allow their customer using VPN so they will playing gambling on that site. They will not risks themselves to playing gambling on the site that they are not sure about the used of VPN is allow or not.

In my opinion, it's not a question of whether a casino allows the use of a VPN because most casinos do allow it. This is about masking your IP using a VPN to bypass restrictions on gambling in certain countries. If a casino is fine with that, then there's no problem. However, we have to bear in mind that they can always use that against us and could deny our winnings, especially if we win a large amount of money.

Stupidity could be truly fitting for what some governments of many nations are doing, but to what end? If not poverty, corruption, no regard for the rule of law, control of court, laggingness and worse. For this, it pains me with what is happening in those countries. That is what we all have to pay for selecting the wrong leaders for such sensitive positions.

However, the clandestinity relating to cryptocurrency did not just start today and crypto by most nature also naturally gives room to that, it is the government that needs to be up and doing in this regard. But instead for many countries of the world to beat the technology or catch up with it, they will either turn a blind eye, clamp down on it or underregulate if at all they want to regulate. This is wrong and with this approach, there is no way those operating online won't be cheating the government.

Now, cheating aside, there should be some rules that will make everyone accountable (casinos/sportsbooks and customers). But depositing using physical cash, cryptocurrency and other online alternatives without strict regulation like what the central banks do with banks, then they are only wasting their time. The governneet may only see what the casino/sportsbook wants them to see. And it gets worse elsewhere where the governmenet official will take bribe to look away. That is the world we live in.

That's why we must make sure by asking to the casino if they allows their user to use VPN or they don't allows it. Some casino doesn't allow the use of VPN so we must avoids that casino and search for the other casino. That's for our safety from the blocked that the casino do for us.

Besides that, if our country doesn't allow us to playing gambling on some casino or our ISP blocks the casino, we don't have to visits the casino but we can search for other casinos that doesn't prohibits us to playing gambling on their casino. When we can gets the right casino for us and that casino have reputation, they will not lets their users from withdrawing our winning and casino doesn't asks for many requirements to us to process the withdrawal. That's why we must make sure everything before we select the casino.

I completely agree that gamblers will always find ways to bypass government restrictions. Instead of giving up they will always try to search for another methods to continue gambling. Experienced gamblers are aware of risks and actively seek solutions such as using VPN to ensure they can still access gambling sites even if they are blocked in their country. They are cautious and only use reputable casino sites that allow VPN avoiding sites that may put them at risk or may be scam. This determination and adaptability demonstrate resilience of gamblers in face of adversity.

This is yet another example of a stupid gambling regulation/legislation. Maybe it is deliberately made that way, who knows.
AFAIK, this regulation isn't any better than most of the national gambling legislations around the world. No country in the world could stop online gamblers from registering accounts on foreign online casinos and moving their money abroad.
Banning cash seems weird as well. What would to happen to the Brazilian offline casinos, since cash is banned? Is offline gambling even allowed in Brazil?

The proliferation of online crypto casinos has been accompanied by a decline in revenue for traditional casinos. Some countries are worried about this and often take steps to protect the interests of traditional casinos. I think it's all about taxation governments profit from legal casinos through taxation. But because online crypto casinos are decentralized, governments are unable to tax them. As a result, governments have declared war against decentralized structures. But governments forget that they cannot win the war against decentralized structures.

They will not stops search for the way that can helps them to keeps playing gambling no matters if they breaks the prohibition. They must trying to calms down themselves for a while, especially if there is new regulation related to gambling and they must learn the regulation so they don't have to break the regulation. Although they can use VPN to ensure they can still access gambling, they must be careful because their government can working with their ISP to watch their citizen while their citizen use the internet.

An experienced gambler will not takes the risks if they see that they may breaks the regulation and will not playing gambling at some casino. Those gamblers can adapt to the situation and will not trying to force themselves to keeps playing gambling while the situation is not good for them. But that will not works for people who can't understand the betting law as they will still find a way to keeps playing gambling.