Recently, Stake has lowered their bonuses drastically, lots of users to this date complain about it in their own forums ... last Friday BCgame said "Rakeback will no longer be available"... "We appreciate your support and understanding".... another well known group is investing less on their current site and starting a new site with a new domain, and if you google search "Curacao" then some article from 18 hours ago about Curacao being investigated for money laundering" is popping out, not that it seems to be a major thing but who knows...
Long story short - is something happening now? Is there something big that's happening behind the scenes and no one wants to talk about it other than behind closed doors?
Yes, Google, Amazon many other giants had to cut down costs, staff and more, but why crypto gambling sites? Aren't these growing now and replacing the failed traditional sites that take 3-4 business days to get the user paid?
What's going on behind all these cuts and cuts ... is it something bigger? is Binance in trouble? just preparing for rainy days? or is it simply about profits?
Is anyone else feeling like something is wrong here?
The collapse of the cryptocurrency gaming sector has been ongoing for months, maybe years. This is evident by the ridiculous clauses added to their terms of service that have made many players victim to "your account is locked, provide kyc", and in some recent cases, even after kyc is provided, the funds still are not released.
There is also the possibility of hacks. These casinos will not disclose when they are hacked...and when they are, they will only lose a small portion not worth disclosing. If this happens over and over again, they might not go out of business (as they are still winning from players and resorting to tactics like kyc to profit from closing accounts) but eventually, the operation is barely profitable and eventually cutting things like rakeback and bonuses are the next option to reduce costs to be able to continue operating.
I expect a lot of publicity for casino scamming coming soon. I expect the collapse of the gaming industry as well. The fact is, you can use a lot of other decentralized platforms to do things like leverage/margin trading where you have higher upside potential with the added risk that equates to gambling. I believe that leverage/margin trading has taken a big chunk of cryptocurrency gambling, and will continue to.
On the contrary, I have a different view on the general direction of the development of the gambling industry. It seems to me that everything is in order in this area and development is going well. Old time-tested casinos are working successfully. We do not hear about any global collapse of the casino. Even if they are, they do not have a significant impact on the entire industry.
Here’s what I agree with you, it’s the negative from the widespread introduction of the KYC verification procedure in crypto casinos. Especially when the casino does this, if the player is going to withdraw a big win from his deposit. This practice certainly spoils the overall joyful and cheerful atmosphere of this sector of online entertainment. But, alas, the requirements of laws and regulators and casinos are now obliged to comply with them. Otherwise, casinos will be deprived of licenses and, in general, of their entire successful business.
But overall, I don't see the gambling industry stagnating.
No one heard of the global financial crisis of 2008 until it happened. In fact, bankers and political officials shouted that "everything will be ok!", that "everything is under control! don't take your money out of bank stocks!" and that "the economy and banks are thriving!"...and then suddenly, VAMOOSE. All the money disappeared in a matter of days, and the whole system collapsed. If it weren't for government bailouts, then the global economy would have been greatly effected by what had happened. Statistics (like banking reports) can be faked. You might see a thriving casino industry, however I see a facade that will soon unfold.
The difference between casinos and this situation, is that there is no governing body to bailout the casinos. Once a big event happens and players are scared even to make a deposit into a casino, then all activity will stop and casinos will be no more. Until then, casinos will shoot themselves in the foot by continuing to use their terms of service to steal from players and they will continue to scare them away from even touching casinos.
The only casinos that have a chance of surviving are web3 casinos that are built on smart contracts, have provably random games and do not use gaming providers. These will take time to become
truly decentralized - being, not just a "wallet connect" function to give the guise of web3, but actually operating as it as described.
Otherwise, there is no doubt that the cryptocurrency casino industry
as we know it will fail at some stage soon.
Oh, and old-time casinos are working fine? Not true. Many "old-time" casinos, like Stake, are locking players unnecessarily...a thread from another user showed that almost every established casino now have a KYC policy, meaning that players are
always at risk of having their accounts locked. With recent cases, there's a chance that even successful verification will not unlock the accounts. This is not going to stop, it will continue.
As for licenses, these are useless and always have been. They are nothing more than a label. You can buy one for a tidy sum and run a shady casino, it's no secret. Curacao are under fire for enabling this and soon a reform will happen that will strip a lot of the current casinos of there licenses, which will lead to excuses as to why many casinos will scam and close across the board.