Online gamblers in Australia have been having a tough few months. Tightening of gambling regulations has resulted in a ban on online poker and sportsbooks have been forced to remove popular features like in-play betting from bookie websites and apps. Now it appears that the Northern Territory Racing Commission has contacted every registered bookmaker to ask them to refrain from facilitating cryptocurrency sports and horse racing betting. What appears to have prompted this clampdown was an announcement by Northern Territory licensed bookmaker, Neds, that they were about to start accepting bets in bitcoin. This obviously irked the regulators who emailed both bookmakers and betting exchanges stating that "The chairman of the Racing Commission is intending to issue a formal communique to all sports bookmakers and betting exchange operators licensed in the NT if currently transacting in cryptocurrency (for example Bitcoin, Ethereum and the like) for their wagering operations to immediately cease and desist,". This will be a blow to Neds as they had obviously invested heavily in building a cryptocurrency betting product for their players that will now sit idle. Their chief executive Paul Cherry said that they planned to add a range of cryptocurrencies if bitcoin wagering proved popular. Now they will have to put those plans on hold until the Northern Territory Racing Commission sees sense and grants NT based bookies the option to accept deposits and withdrawals with cryptocurrencies like BTC, LTC, XMR, BCH and ETH. This over reaction may have been sparked by the fact that some bitcoin poker rooms like Ignition began accepting real-money poker players from Australia when PokerStars, 888poker and PartyPoker exited from Australia.
LOL!! What a joke. And how is the regulator going to stop offshore bookies from offering cryptocurrency sports betting to Australian's? The only thing this stupid directive achieves is putting Australian based bookmakers at a disadvantage, which means they'll make less money and will pay less taxes.
They can't stop Australian citizens gambling with crypto so I think this is extremely shortsighted move that will only result in offshore gambling sites making more money and the Australian taxman making less money.
in the united states they are finally learning that prohibition of gambling was as effective as their prohibition on alcohol and they are finally legalizing sports betting on a state by state basis. seems odd that australia has learned nothing from americas failed experiment and they are moving in the opposite direction.
Exactly, it is still possible to play online poker in Australia despite the Australian governments best efforts to shut down all the major poker rooms https://www.bitcoingambling.io/top-australian-cryptocurrency-poker-rooms.html
The United States must have lost out on hundreds of billions of dollars in lost taxes and revenue by not allowing online gambling companies to operate in the country. Image the amount of employment that would be created if they insisted that poker rooms and sportsbooks operating legally in the USA also had to be based in the United States.
Thankfully you can still gamble at cryptocurrency and stable coin-friendly sportsbooks, poker rooms and casinos. Check out this guide for further information https://www.bitcoingambling.io/crypto-guides-help-section/is-crypto-gambling-legal-in-australia
Wow, it's tough for Aussie online gamblers lately. This move by the Northern Territory Racing Commission seems pretty strict, especially for Neds. Let's hope they reconsider the cryptocurrency ban soon.