Bitcoin Forum

Hi, is this the end of crypto bookmakers in Europe?

Well, I'm concerned about KYC and transaction tracking in the cryptocurrency world, which are to be in force from the new year.
Wanting to make a deposit using e.g. USDC, let's say on Stake. What in such a situation?

What about the sick gambling law that applies in my country. All crypto bookmakers are illegal.
Only those with a high tax on the player's side are available, which means that you are washed out from the start.

From what I know, every transaction is to be tracked.

How lost are we? Does it also look so hopeless in your countries? Is there any way out of this situation?

Let this European institution fall already.
I invite you to the discussion.

To continue playing legally (or not playing anymore) you need to comply with the regulations established in the country... But remember the fundamentals of bitcoin, what it is for and what it was created for and all the advantages of having bitcoins and using bitcoins... and your question will be fully answered... bitcoin is freedom, never forget that, Use it to free yourself from state constraints.

but remember all your choices have pros and cons.

My country's government is shit, poverty has been increasing in my country for years and I don't like the politicians and the government of my country, but at least they are in favor of gambling. They don't create barriers, on the contrary, they encourage casinos to come and operate here in my country and there are many casinos and betting houses that operate here in my country and fortunately we don't have any problems. My country's laws on gambling are very good. Of course, all people are required to do KYC to avoid cases of minors getting involved in gambling.

It would be pretty much appreciated if you also provided some source of the news you are talking about, since there are many of us here in the gambling section of the forum who are to so much up-to-date with regulation concerns, specially from the European Union.
The little I have read or heard of is how they are going to start to put more regulations on stable coins, specially on USDT and favor USDC, since the latter since to be more aligned and comply with whatever regulators demands are...
I do not think this is going to be the end of crypto gambling in Europe, there is still a long path ahead before we can conclude there volume of Bitcoin and alternative currencies will come to zero within the gambling market within Europe, as it stands for now, regulators will push whatever they believe will help to fight Money laundering and unbacked stable coins. The important things is always to have a Bitcoin option, as it continues to be the most reliable Blockchain.

Countries make laws for a reason. Gambling regulations are for a reason too. Online Crypto casinos make their own laws for a reason too.
We either comply with them or look for an alternative service to use. KYC have come to and there is hardly anything anyone can do. Those casinos that don't do KYC are restricted in their service.

If these bookmakers don't have these KYC requirements, the rate of gambling addictions will increase. Underaged gambling will increase.

There have been less strict measures to gambling in my country and like I know, one can Gamble without much restriction actually I can't guess correctly but our government has made mention of that for taxing gamblers but that has never come into implementation. So, for now we gamble without restrictions but however there are casino or betting site we are using we must obey their rules and adhesive to their anti-money laundry policies while gambling or using their site to bet games.

Dont be deceived cryptocurrency gambling cannot be shutdown. Of course there will be restrictions enact by the law makers and even the law makers will not keep to the law. The restrictions are for those who cant find alternative means to gamble. Just like cryptocurrency was restricted in my country but we still use it, invest in it and make transactions. Yet no one knows unless you decide to spit it out.

There is a reason why the other stable coins have been made and that's why USDC and the others are also accepted in casinos. So, if they're dropping their USDT support, they'd simply turn to the other stable coins for everyone who likes to deposit and withdraw through stable coins, there's always an option. While it might hit them big at the start but everything is going to be neutralized and get used to this adjustment. Don't make it as something too big to be wary of.

Exactly! The only issue here is the stablecoin and it is the USDT. USDT in every casino platform is just an optional currency you can use to deposit or fund your account.
Very important is always check the news or terms of services of every casino we are using right now because there could be changes.

I assume you must be from Nigeria, aren't you? I recall it is one of the countries where Bitcoin and other cryptos are used the most in order to survive the economical crisis going on there, the government tried to forbid Bitcoin and they failed to enforce such a ban against Bitcoin. I recall.

Either way, OP is not implying there will be a complete ban or restriction against gambling in the European Union, but rather a prosecution on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange of value on internet casinos... Casinos won't go anywhere, that is pretty obvious, though as centralized organizations and governments feel the need to continue to grow their control over people's finances, it is going to get harder for us to use Bitcoin or decentralized assets in an anonymous manner, that is what is at stake.

Why you need to be surprised, most of online casinos are illegal, just because you not find your country listed on restricted jurisdictions in casino's terms, it doesn't mean your country allow the citizen to gamble in that online casinos.

Although I'm not live in Europe, but my country also block online casinos, however I don't really care either because I obscure my source and claim it to be from other source.

Until now I have received no problem from banks, government or tax authority.

Same here maybe that is because they are also trying to gain some profit out of anything and that would include gambling houses. As long as that gambling house or platform is registered and would follow the requirements set by the country
This is also the casino's way of making sure they can avoid any kind of abuse from gamblers like creation of multiple accounts or whatnot.

It is not the end of online crypto bookmakers in Europe. Online crypto bookmakers will adapt the new rules and will find a way out of the matters. There will be something that the online crypto bookmakers will do to solve this matters so we should wait for that. Meanwhile, you can moves to altcoin if you want because i think the government still allow their people use crypto to playing gambling.

You can use USDC or other stablecoins available on the casino so you can solve the matters without a problem. Let them search for the solution while we can still playing gambling.

The government will use all methods to subjugate cryptocurrency, but I am sure that at this stage, it is difficult. As long as they continue to ban crypto and invent more and more new tricks, we can use Bitcoin. Of course, to play with Bitcoin, we must be ardent fans of gambling, and we always have a choice to use it for investment or as an option not to obey the inventions of the government.

There have always been restrictions and there have always been those who have skipped them. There have been people betting in cryptocurrency casinos from countries where gambling has been forbidden from the beginning. Europe is not new. If you live in a country where gambling is regulated, asking for a country-specific license to operate before you could not bet in cryptocurrency casinos legally either.

And be careful to do so, because if you bet in a cryptocurrency casino you would have to read the ToS first, and there you will see that from your country you can not bet, which for many casinos is not a problem, they let you bet, but if you win a large amount and require a cashout they will ask for KYC, and will not let you withdraw for having broken the ToS.

Same here, I won't give a thumbs up for the politicians in my country but where it concerns gambling, whether it's crypto or physical there's no issues. Although we're hearing about new regulations on gambling sites but I know that it'll be mostly on taxations, but so far the government is gamble friendly and we're enjoying ourselves.

OP could've shared a link to give us a better insight about the information so we can have a better understanding of the gambling situation in Europe. I believe that crypto gambling can't go extinct in Europe, bookmakers will have to comply to regulations there to remain in business.

Well, I don't think we should be surprise about this, the government always like to employ their tricks to have control which is what is going on but there is always solution, you can use Bitcoin or any other coin that the casino permits, some exchange doesn't allow direct deposit from casino but you can withdraw to a self custodial wallet before sending your exchange. I know that no matter what, there will always be a solution.

The risk of not using KYC platforms for gambling is that one may pick a non KYC platform which is unregulated and carries even greater risks than when you use KYC platforms.
I found the Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR) which I think is what the OP means but then I don't disagree with the regulations. It is for the good of crypto holders. Assuming you fall into a situation where you are the victim of crypto related incidence, this will help you easily recover your cryptocurrency back.
In my country, we don't have such regulation. There is an outright ban on any crypto transactions.

Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR): https://www.idnow.io/blog/transfer-of-funds-crypto

The regulation rules apply to the platforms, not to the customers, so if a platform is based outside europe and doesn't want to apply those rules, it's not your business. They could eventually be banned in your country or in europe but nobody would tell you anything, except if there is a special law in your country against gamblers.

So this mean we should not care as long as there are discriminating laws against gamblers in Europe, so far it is this way but this new framework lays the ground from our European institutions to do whatever they like and whatever in their power in order to stop gambling based on occurrences from this industry. So for an instance they can ask to ban every single gambling entity offline in the country when a couple of gamblers kill themselves in suicide, or whatever happening like the inflation is going up and people are losing money to gambling, let's restrict them, so despite nothing has happened so far the European Union is trying to be ready to prevent bad things from happening, this is how I read this.

Every transaction may be seen on the public ledger, but not all can be tracked, this is now when it all depends on the kind of wallet we used, if its an exchange wallet which is a custodial wallet or a non custodial wallet, also for most of the physically represented gambling platforms, these tracking could work for them because the government may be running after them through their physical locations.


I will always advise that we should start from the understanding or what the law in our respective countries says about gambling and the specific aspect we want to specialized on before gong further.

Sometimes this could be a measure with which the states want to control gambling,  and so they will decide to tax players higher and if you cannot keep up with such you may just  have to quit gambling,  another could be for the purpose of checkmating laundry as its believed that some casinos are used to carry out such so all of these laws are to help put all of that in place actually and not just about  sabotaging gambling or casinos.

Really?
What stops them from taking down every single website that host a casino or a bookmaker?
Casinos are no different than mixers at that point, if a government is bent on shutting them down they will, you might get lucky if you live in a country that has no say on the global scale but most Western countries would not give a damn in which jurisdiction such a website is hiding.
All those sites are centralized, just as the US can shut down polymarket whenever they want they could do the same with any other website.


Discrimination means there is something targeting you specifically, there is no discrimination for users in regulations for a service provider, it's like requiring milk producers to meet some standards is discrimination on people that buy milk. 

In the very rare and unlikely scenario most of governments of the world decided to shut down all crypto casinos worldwide, then there would be a huge surge on the use of decentralized casinos, those which are programmed, deployed and used within a Blockchain (Like Ethereum or matic). It would be just matter of time before someone with enough money and desire to capitalize on the vacuum in the market appeared and opened such casino. And since blockchains cannot be shut down easily as websites can, then crypto gambling will continue to go on, just in different terms from what we see today with centralized casinos.

Though, I can assure you centralized and regulated casinos are not going anywhere. They have much money and with money they can influence on politics, specially in countries like the United States.

All crypto bookmakers are illegal? Which country are you from, by the way? Anyway, imposing big taxes on crypto gambling platforms and imposing a ban on them are two different things. If bookmakers can operate while requiring users to pay the necessary taxes, then they're not illegal. They just have to abide by strict rules.

As to tracking, I guess that's the rule nowadays. They're centralized registered platforms, after all. KYC is a must. It's always specified in their terms and conditions that they are willing to cooperate with authorities, that they share data, that they're bound by certain laws and regulations, and so on.

Always be mindful of the terms. They're updated every now and then, possibly without informing their users, so you have to keep a look for yourself for the latest changes.

You can't hide @OP, EU seems to be the most strictest countries about cryptocurrency regulations, you're forced to deal with that or you can fly to other countries.

I think that's what he looking for, he want to play in not legal casino in order to avoid paying high taxes.

Technically all crypto bookmakers are illegal in every countries, except countries who have no regulation with online casinos, so they would be in grey area.

Yeah, no!  ;D
If you think people will go through all the trouble of setting up and dealing with the stuff of a decentralized client on a decentralized chain that's well above for your average Joe in terms of difficulty you're deeply mistaken, if it were so Bisq would have volumes in the millions, but as we stand people prefer to load their crypto on a Visa card to spend it  :D
People like simple things, most of them will simply give up after trying to find a normal casino that is still regulated and that's it, much like a protest in the street is fun to do it once or two times to show the middle finger to the government but 99% of them get lazy by day three.

Not to forget that we don't actually have any decentralized casino at all right now.

Yeah, in fact those restrictions  force us to give  our tax returns ^{relevant to profit from gambling} the extra scrutiny as nobody wants to pay the enormous penal fines for improperly filled-in  tax returns. This impose extra burden for both me and my financial consultant who needs to know all my crypto transactions relevant to my gambling. Unfortunately my life becomes tougher.

As much as we hate it, there's no more (pseudo)anonymity in gambling, at least in certain thresholds. Every one of them are being mandated by the governing body that give them licenses or the country that they are going to operate.

And the regulators are hiding behind AML that's why they are asking for KYC now. Again, it might be that bad if you are not hiding anything, and casinos are also being push by this regulators to handle the data very carefully otherwise they will be fine or their contract not going to be renewed if they fail to handle all our information in cases of hacks or leakage of the data.

Serbia is quite open to gambling, there are a lot of local casinos, and it seems to me that in recent years many new online and land-based casinos have appeared. As for crypto gambling, there are no laws about it, for now, there are some regulations about cashing out in our currency.

But the European Union is something else, and you asked a very interesting question: is there a way around the new rules that are being imposed on you, and has anyone tried anything yet? Can using a VPN and Monero help?

Nobody's goin' spit it out! I'm thrilled to see that people can still be very cooperative and diligent when it's a matter of cryptocurrency.The only challenge that people experienced was only for a certain period of time before ever they were able to figure out how to execute,manage and improve basically in areas of their own concern.

In my opinion, it's time for people to start creating associations for bitcoin in their countries and explain to politicians how cryptocurrencies work and pressure politicians to approve good laws about cryptocurrencies. What has been happening is that politicians, during the campaign, talk about many things they will do but never talk about bitcoin. In most cases, politicians don't even know anything about cryptocurrencies but want to approve tough laws about cryptocurrencies.

Bookmakers must follow regulations to operate legally, in order for them to ensure transparency and player protection, otherwise they will be only risking themselves beside their players funds. I think as crypto adoption grows, KYC and transaction tracking are becoming mandatory to prevent fraud and money laundering.
Platforms like Stake will likely comply limiting fully anonymous gambling as they have asked already all players to pass the second level of security, otherwise you cannot play.
If crypto bookmakers are illegal in your country, then licensed options may be scarce and high taxes drive players toward offshore sites. The trend in Europe is tighter regulation not less. While feeling bad for what’s happening now, it’s only the reality for legal operations, I think for fairer laws or seeking legal alternatives may be the best options is moving forward and accepting these limitations.

Politicians are usually selfish and so it will take a crypto enthusiast who turns out a politician can then relate well with what crypto is and would try seeing how it cam be incorporated into the government but with others who aren't into crypto it will become  a problem  because they aren't  really seeing  the direct benefit to them and the fact that they don't really have the soul control over it, so it will not make sense to them when u try enlightening them about it but if it were centralized such that they can influence it, then adoption will be something most of the countries will do without a second taught.

Honestly, it's quite hard to answer because your question should be answered by legal who work in EU or at least people who live in EU.

Using VPN and Monero might help, but the transactions should be small, IIRC you can withdraw your coins without need to submit KYC if you only withdraw less than $1K per day. The problem is when someone win a lot like $100K, will they choose to withdraw $1K per day? not to mention the fees charged by casino is really high.

If you are only withdrawing small amount, some of the casinos are still accomodating such withdrawal without KYC. But definitely, if they start seeing big numbers, they will surely flag down the account and may be start asking for credentials. Also, using VPN is not a guarantee as some casinos won't permit such route. You need to confirm it from their end if you really need to do this route of getting out of money from the platform.

The government that allows its citizens to gamble but discouraging them by imposing high tax on them is only foolish because people in the country will not gamble on the gambling sites registered in the country. They will prefer to go for offshore gambling sites.

Do not mind them. If you have the ability to know people that are laundering money, you will find out that most money that are laundered are still in the banks.