Australian Racing Commission considering crypto wagering proposal

[The Buzz]

Australia’s Northern Territory Racing Commission is consulting with its gambling licensees over a tentative proposal to incorporate crypto wagering as part of the regulated gambling industry.

From a CoinTelegraph.com article:

For the most part, gambling in Australia is regulated at the state level and not federally. The NTRC oversees all gambling and wagering companies that choose to be licensed in the Northern Territory (NT), including global wagering companies such as Betfair, Entain Group, Draft Kings and Sportsbet.

As it stands, the NTRC has sent a private document out to licensees, which seeks input and feedback on what the regulatory landscape could look like to get crypto wagering off the ground in the NT.

Julian Hoskins, the principle of one of Australia’s major gambling law and regulatory advisory firms Senet, has been given access to the private document and discussed with Cointelegraph what the NTRC is looking for at this stage:

“What it provides for is a licensee, say a sports bookmaker who holds a license in the Northern Territory, who wants to accept cryptocurrency for striking or paying out wages, [is that they] need to apply for consent to be able to do that. And there’s certain conditions that attach to that.”

“Now it’s clear from the draft framework that what they're looking at is wagering using cryptocurrency, and not exchanging into fiat,” he added, noting that punters will most likely need to place fiat and crypto bets separately on the one platform, as the two financial tools won’t be interchangeable with each other for gambling.

While the prospect of such a move is hard to quantify at this stage, Hoskins stated that “given the popularity of crypto, I would imagine that this would be very popular as an alternative to fiat. I think it’s got the potential to be quite material.”

Read the article here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/austr...ing-regulation

[Pokerface]

As governments are looking at more controls on crypto this cold be a very interested situation to follow.