Topic: Is there a possibility of a Country to ban access to Crypto games? (Read 669 times)

Clearly it's possible for any Government to ban the game and block the access because they have all things which are helpful for this and if game provider is register then they can revoke their licences as well.

And if the game provider is not legal, then they can declare this illegal. But, there are many issues for Government as well because they are still unable to track all players and their data how they will manage them for bringing in tax net and how is this possible they will bring them in regulations.

Could you possibly write a longer sentence? 

I assume that casinos could block people who try to access their services if they're using a VPN, as Amazon and lots of other companies do it, and if a casino were to put in their ToS that VPNs aren't allowed, then you'd be screwed if you used one and ended up winning a ton of money.  They could easily block your withdrawal.

As far as decentralized casinos, do they exist yet?  I'm not a gambler (and currently US residents aren't allowed to gamble online, though I think that's changing), so I don't keep up with what's available.  If they are in fact around, I don't see how any government could regulate them.  They could declare them illegal--just like they could declare bitcoin ownership illegal--but that doesn't mean they can stop people from using them.  Assuming governments are at least semi-rational, their best move would be to try to work with the casinos to tax members, but good luck with that!  Viva la P2P!

It would really be hard for the government to ban a decentralized gaming platform.
I believe the OP is talking about Axie Infinity as the PH government is said to tax those gamers on their earnings.
But how? Can they track all those players or are all players willing to submit their data to the government and let the government impose tax on their income?
I also don't know how this will work out. That's the perks of being decentralized platform.
Curious how the government will implement tax regulation on these players?

Depending on the government system of each country, how to respond to the existence of crypto and all types of activities related to crypto, which is clear is that they will think more about the progress of the country and consider whether there are risks or negative things that will be obtained from crypto.
About banning access to crypto games completely, I think that's a slim possibility.

I think government will only can block access to the game. Like when they block access to illegal site or maybe porn site. To close site that to be NFT games, i think they can't. Or maybe only can made it is illegal so any money that sourced from crypto they can track it like what your government do, and P2P can be temporary solution for it.

If the blockchain gaming platform is a decentralized organization, then there is no way the government can put a ban on it. The only way they can ban it is by banning everyone all around the world that helps run the network which is almost impossible (unless they whole government of the world decides to unite and impose the ban). On other hand, if it is some centralized entity that runs the network, then the government can easily impose a ban and restrict that entity from offering services to their country. In other words, governments can't do shit to a decentralized network.

I have always said one thing, if a government prohibits an activity, its population will always try to access it by whatever means, there are many people who are very irreverent before these types of absurd rules, this not to mention that many have paid VPNs, which They are very useful, it is an almost useless effort that the government manages to catch these people, I think the prisons would be small, at least in my country the government knows that it is impossible to do it, because they do not have the technical capacity or the energy to do it, they are people who are very aware of stealing more and more every day, I think that a government cannot always tell you what to do, I think it is excellent that people ignore these warnings and continue playing, not everything can be a dictatorship.

For physical casinos that do operates nor resides on the country then it could really be taxed but for online casinos then its really hard since people are the ones who had been accessing it and also it is operating on other

country and even if they would tend to block those sites via ISP demanding them to do so but still wont really be that enough to get rid with since people could easily make use of VPN if they wanted to which means

it is somewhat residing on being impossible on totally get ridding of it but at least you do know that your'e government is against with it.

So a government bans a game simply because it can't be taxed, even if the game is good/safe?
Well, if the game is dependent on the government to function it'd probably be ok to tax it. Otherwise the best the government could do it to beg the users to contribute part of their earnings to society/government.

Considering how laggy axie has been in the past, I am sure if they are not given any rights in most nations and have to find some island nation of who gives a damn to build their servers on, then they will definitely have a horrible period until that is finished which will definitely be something horrible for the business. Many people will leave, not many will be left to continue playing because there won't be too many people buying SLP and that will drop the price (like it has recently) which would make playing not too profitable and people would leave and recovery will be hard.

This is why axie should foresee this and make sure they could actually recover a lot quicker, maybe build one somewhere way beforehand. In any case, games could be banned by nations via ISP's for sure, crypto can't be but games uses servers and that could be banned.

Majority of the people here speaks for Axie Infinity, just like Bitcoin, NFT games are decentralized, but since NFT games includes servers and such, Governments may not have the power to ban these games but I am sure that our ISPs can cut off our access to Axie servers or even any NFT game out there, although having a VPN can fix the problem, however, I am sure that the amount of users would start to decrease, and because of this, Axie is forced to follow what the government demands, taxes.

there is a possibility that the NFT game in your country does not pay taxes or you live in a country that does not accept cryptocurrencies, but to overcome this you can use some software VPN and my advice is that you don't worry too much about banning the NFT game because this is a decentralized blockchain game, no one can control or ban it by the government.

As Philippines is one of the friendliest countries in the crypto and blockchain space, I don't like to see them end up like Thailand. For sure, Thailand would be left behind if they can't embrace NFTs, DeFi, etc. Worse of all is China, where they are anti-crypto by cracking down on Bitcoin mining, exchanging, ICOs, etc, on top of their "Great Firewall".

I assume that the Philippine government would welcome this development because they realized how Axie Infinity and blockchain games can contribute to the economy as long we are paying taxes for sure. Only death and taxes are guaranteed in our lives to the very end. It's the lifeblood of the government, whether you support or criticize them, a law is a law and we have to oblige.

And of course, Filipinos are still under the "Income Flexing Pandemic" where they can't just stop themselves showing their money, house and lot, cars, etc., instead of staying low key.

It was just a matter of time until Philippine's government made a statement about Axie Infinity since the game is so popular there. In fact, there is no way to keep the popularity of Axie hidden, because even if people don't post their earnings at social medias, they talk about it with their friends, at work and this talk never ends, reaching to the government's ears at some point.
I think the game wouldn't be so successful right now if people had a different approach when sharing their experience with Axie Infinity. After all, marketing is also a very important factor when growing the audience of a product or service. Undesired attention from governments is just a bad and inevitable consequence of the game's popularity.

It could be worse if Philippines' government acted like Thailand SEC, which completely forbade NFTs and DeFi investments.

This has come to the point why the government is hunting those who play Axie Infinity and those who earn big amounts from gambling as they keep posting on social media how much they could get from this. If they are just silent and never do that, the government never knows it in the first place. But sad to say that is going to happen now, if the law will be going to release and approve,  then that was the time they have to pay taxes for it otherwise this Axie game will be banned.

And that could be useless with just one VPN, hell use opera and it has a built-in VPN so you will be going to any website you ever want without caring about what government or ISP says. I have a bunch of blocked website in my nation and I do not care about it at all, I go to them all the time, even bitcointalk itself was blocked for years and I still used a VPN and came here and messaged daily almost every single day.

So ISP doesn't matter, governments doesn't matter, blockchain can't be banned and all you have to do is overwrite the blocks they put in and you will be doing fine. Governments can only make it harder, do not allow exchanges, do not allow people to trade, or own, and that would be scary for a while but we will get it together with VPN and P2P and everything will be back on track without any problems after a while.

the government can't prohibit it maybe it can only break access/blocking in the country itself according to the technology and information technology law policies that have been set, but things like this will be detrimental to the government because it reduces one of the inputs to the state treasury. cooperation is the most appropriate thing;the company that provides crypto game services so that they can receive data from game players so that they can collect taxes on each player

You don't need to change the blockchain in order to cut off access.  It's as simple as getting ISPs to block access to the sites.  The easiest way to enforce taxes is to get the cooperation from the website itself, and if they refuse, you deny them people the ability to access the site through the ISPs with a court order declaring the website out of compliance with your laws.  Cut off the flow of customers to the website and they'll be likely to comply.

Not a possibility in my opinion.

If they wanted to actually ban a game then they'd have to not only draft it into their legislation (which is going to pose some issues at least in democratic countries), but also find a way to actually police the ban.

It's very hard to mutate any data stored on the blockchain that is designed to be immutable. Games and coins that are hosted on the blockchain are therefore quite resistant to political pressure.

It is not possible to ban a decentralized game, but the government can ban connections to the game using its firewall system. And of course, only China has such strict control, besides Russia and China, I can't think of any other country that can afford it but the US. Of course, the US is in favor of crypto.
Recently, the Philippine government wants to tax Axie players. That is no good.

It's possible that accessing or playing nft or crypto games can be banned and have a law that whoever found gambling or playing nft/crypto games will be put to prison. More likely an IP ban so that people from that country can't access the site but it could be possible using VPN.

These are just rules made only for the personal benefit of those who want to limit crypto freedom in a country.
If they are looking for liquid accounts that have large balances of crypto generated by a game, doesn't it look shameful how they ask for taxes but the policy regarding the legality of crypto in the country is just a bias rule?

If they couldn't track the players, they could just simply ban the game by blocking it in your country. If they really want to apply tax, they could do it whenever players do a local transaction through withdrawal charges. To be honest, even huge countries can't track crypto users so they just simply block the crypto games or even gambling sites.

Very likely . even in my country the ISP that I use has blocked access to some "NFT" finance games, so it depends on the games too. if there is something that violates the rules in a country, it is very likely to be blocked.  such as NFT games that having strong gambling elements compared to the gameplay or something that contrary to state regulations.

Some games actually have the ability to format VPN usage as a conduit for hackers to attack, especially for games where the user invests too much, the developer defines a solid defense system and prevents third-party software such as VPN from accessing, once faced with this situation and the government ban, our account in the game will probably say goodbye forever. However, NFT games as well as crypto are the individuals who have not caused significant damage, even with several cases of fraud, governments still do not ban access, there seems to be a lot of ambiguity and users like us still don't know

But unfortunately not all NFT games allowed there users to use VPN due to some reasons so its still not good for us if government will ban those NFT games totally since we will lose a certain percentage of earnings what those NFT games generate to us so hopefully no banning will be issue and they collaborate together and government will put a legal laws and regulation towards NFT games for proper security of the players.

If the developers or the company that owns the game is in that country and that country for whatever greedy reason there is, decided to ban crypto games or P2E games then probably they will be able to ban the access of it but if they aren't operating in that country then they won't be able to control that game in any other way besides being a tyrant to their citizens.

I don't think the government is capable of banning the NFT games in an instant. If ever they would plan to do so, it would surely take some time and it wouldn't be guaranteed that they will totally hinder the players from bypassing the law. Nowadays, most people already knew how to bypass such banning of websites and the likes. They would certainly have a tough time in touching the decentralized game such as Axie Infinity even if they wanted to because the company is far ahead from their reach to begin with.

The government can't even tax NFT unless the exchanging process of the tokens to fiat will go through a platform that requires KYC, which is regulated by the government. They won't be able to track every single player because KYC isn't even required in the game in the first place. Hence, the taxation would purely be voluntary because every transactions of each player can't be monitored.

I just find it funny because way back when Axie Infinity isn't  really well-known p2e game yet, they kept on saying it is a scam. Now that they knew that the players are earning money, suddenly they want to tax them. Such a shame to the corrupt officials who just want to take advantage of every single penny their constituents earn decently.

So I think, totally, because the only thing they can do is also take advantage of the boom, that is, now with all the possibilities that are coming out of those NFT games, governments can demand that gamers have to pay taxes, it is the most they can do, as they are doing in the Philippines, although I will never agree with this type of controls, blockchain technology and everything that has to do with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will never have access to governments and banks, because those are the agencies of control worldwide where they do not allow financial freedom, debt must always exist for them to benefit.

If they ban cryptocurrencies as a whole then they can do that. But knowing that it's a game and people makes money from it, they can put a ban but that will stop people from playing it? no.

There's still a lot of things that the governments should know about the adoption of cryptocurrencies it includes these NFT games and other crowd funding that they've been cracking but how many of those they did really stopped?

Depending on rampant of such problem but if it turns out to be on normal scale then it wouldnt really be that much of a problem since there would be no prohibition or something like that.

Just like here on my country where gambling operators that do came from other countries is allowed to operate here as long they would be regulated or licensed.

There are countries which do ban access or simply the sites are making restrictions due to law issues or regulation on each country.

Well for one taxation on a decentralized system like cryptocurrencies would be hard if not outright impossible. The fact that the transactions itself is nigh-untraceable already speaks for itself. Then again what a government can do is have ISPs operating within their country impose website restrictions on key sites where cryptocurrencies mostly operate, but this will be counterintuitive since what they want to happen is to tax let's say a cryptocurrency game. So they're basically in a deadlock situation where they ought to allow these games to be operable within their territories without tax until they find a surefire way to do so. The government will make all kinds of excuses to impose these bans and will mask it as reasons. We cannot do anything about this type of scenario but what we can do though is to stand up against malpractice within the confines of the government. If you think taxing or imposing a ban on cryptocurrency games is unjustified then there should be protests and movements that the people who support the operation of cryptocurrency games and cryptocurrencies in general are to make to ensure that their voices are heard, lest these efforts will all be wasted.

They can ban a website? But I am not sure if they can ban a game as a whole. Think about it, in a game like axie infinity, many things are done via the game itself, and you need to play the game and access to the website in order to do it, but with a VPN all of the bans would be solved, many websites are illegal in many nations but we just use VPN and that's it, no problem at all.

This is why I believe that we should not be really worried all that much about a nation banning it as a whole. Sure it is still "banned" but that is not a bad thing, it is not a situation that we can't handle and which is why we should not be worried. At the end of the day so many things in digital world are out of nations hands that governments of the world could try their best but nothing will really happen. Look at wikileaks, that was banned in sooo many nations but it is still accessible.

The state should not prohibit citizens from accessing encrypted games without reason.
When the game endangers the health of most citizens.
The state will take action to prohibit the use or access of this encrypted game.

Banning of cryptocurrency games is the best for a country to do maybe because of tax issues but I know they'll have the power to do such. It possible to restrict players that are playing the games but their is another way round players can tweak the restrictions by the use of VPN which can change the IP address of the player making it hard for it to be restricted.  Many gambling platforms have always escape tax payment by using different means to hide their activities from the government.

Can renting foreign servers escape the supervision of the local government?
Whether it can be banned depends on how the local law stipulates.
In my opinion, blockchain is popular in the world, and it is not easy to find project subjects.

Government can ban anything that they think is somehow not according to their rules and regulations and something that might cause them to loose their powers. When we are talking about the NFT games then you have to realize that, these games are usually something that people cannot trace 50% of the times and if someone does win and still tries to evade tax then it would have probelm for the overall community and not just that person alone.
I do think you should not think much about it and enjoy it as long as you are able to. Since if it gets banned there would honestly be nothing that can be done for a while, using VPN might not be a good idea, therefore I do think that they might reevaluate their decisions later on.

Of course, they could proclaim a ban.

However, whether or not the ban actually has an effect is a different topic for discussion altogether. It is impossible for them to actually to shut down a decentralised network but totally possible for them to take something like Axie Infinity's site onto the banned list of websites.

This is true for pretty much all blockchain projects. Soft bans are always possible but at the same time circumventable.

How can the government "easily ban" games, when you yourself state that using a VPN this ban can be removed? The government needs to understand that the world has become smaller as a result of internet penetration. What they need to do is to lower the tax rates or make the tax levels more reasonable. Nowadays people are more rebellious, and they see no point in paying 50% or 60% of their income in the form of taxes (both direct and indirect ones). If the tax rates are reasonable, then the population will pay their dues without any compulsion from the government.

You need to understand that most the time politicians do not really know what they're talking about, it is impossible that they are experts on every single topic in which they pass different laws, as such it is entirely possible that they approve legislation that bans or prohibits cryptocurrencies, however the problem is going to be the implementation of such legislation.

So as long as you have taken the right precautions you have nothing to worry about, however it is fair to wonder if it's worth to break the law of your country by keep doing that activity as long as the law is in place.

The government can easily ban the NFT games by collaborating with the ISP provider and block the connection. But people can use VPN to access the game or the provider to playing and earn money from the NFT games and nothing can stop them. I think the government will try to chase the tax from people because people can make a lot of money and the government will not let that happen without getting benefits.

It's just that the government is greedy who only wants to take advantage of financial resources from any sector, even such a government only makes rules to take other people's finances that are not generated from agricultural taxes.
Believe that the government is not very objective in taking profits, considering that there is a new crypto sector that is present in the game, then making it a revenue target. This is not a rule that they must apply, but a lack of funds.

As I understand it, we are taking the "civilized option"?
Let's just say - an example with KUTs, this is one of the options. Conventionally, the "state" can ask for a list of IP addresses, from the global address space corresponding to their country, they can force providers to provide information about everyone who directly accesses the [ l i s t of resources]. Believe me - in this case there is no goal to "catch" 100% of the players, it will be enough to catch and severely punish 10%, and report it so that almost all of the remaining 90% refuse themselves, weighing the risks ...

I live in a country where porn is banned. So this doesn't sound much impractical. It is entirely another topic whether such bans can be implemented or not. Here everyone is using VPN to access banned sites and so far the government hasn't been able to do much about it. And I guess crypto-games are much lower in priority for the regime. In most of the third world countries, the governments have a habit of trying to control the population. They want to decide what the people watch, eat and invest. And trust me, I am not residing in a socialist nation (at least as per the official classification).

They cannot. As you know, transferring crypto assets can be done easily and exchange it with another crypto.
Another thing, this is true. If they ban websites and they're trying to avoid their people accessing it, it's no brainer that everyone is aware of the existence of VPNs.

I can fully agree with you here. The easier route how to track these players is to communicate with the gaming platform itself. Because there are many workaround how to access a site if the government ban the site on their country. So to address the situation directly, they need to directly collaborate with the gaming provider itself. But do you really think this gaming platform will require KYC to their clients? Because that's the only way to know if the player is residing in a specific country or not.

this goes back to government policy and when it happens then we can't do anything but the policy must of course be accompanied by clear reasons because it is impossible for the government to prohibit without a clear policy.
  and if in your country now you have started trying to implement rules like this, it seems that all forms of NFT games and NFT farming may also definitely be affected. because this is definitely the reason to return to crypto and everything that contains crypto elements must have a tax (if you look at the government system from the thread you said).
the possibility is very high that it can happen in your country and if this happens you must be prepared with all the consequences and possibilities that will happen even if the possibility is the worst.

which country are you from?  as long as you are connected to the internet, don't worry about the site being banned.


that's right, banned sites now are a waste because everyone can use VPN well, the government doesn't have a strong lock on our freedom on the internet anymore.

The question is, to what extent will the state really want to do this?
There are "totalitarian" ways, there are quite "civilized" ones.
An example of "totalitarian" solutions is full control of the network and traffic, such as in North Korea, China, etc. The state obliges backbone and local providers to monitor traffic (DPM systems, etc.), identify specified "markers" and provide information about such violators
An example of "civilized" solutions. If the gaming platform is official and operates in the legal field, the state fiscal system, through international regulatory bodies, may require the platform owners to either restrict access to the platform for citizens of their country, or request KYC data regarding players with registration from the country of interest. ..

I think there are many more methods to "identify" such players, but it all depends on the level of interest.

The thing is that crypto could be taxed, it could be taxed a lot and that means we are talking about nations losing so much money from taxation by banning it, and that doesn't make sense. If you are a nation that has $100 in crypto tax income, and $80 of that is hidden from you, you are still making $20, but if you ban them all then nobody could pay you taxes and that means you will get zero, that is just not possible and not acceptable.

This is why I think that people should not be afraid of their governments banning crypto, they should be excited to explain it to the government. Even on the worst cases like NK, you could convince them how much of money you could bring to the nation from the USA and you could convince that dictator to be happy about it. This is why I believe that governments neither should ban it, nor should the citizens should be afraid to get banned.

As far as tracking goes, it's relatively simple to track all the players playing a game because you connect to these games via your IP address and with little refining of the traffic, they can easily get the data of all the players playing the game.

I would suggest you to pay the taxes because if I am not wrong, the taxes would be similar to what must be imposed on E-sports players playing games like DOTA2, LOL, CS:GO professionally. And normally, these taxes should not be too high for a regular gamer.

BVery interesting thread and one to keep an eye on how things unfold.

Yes, that will be sad news for every player who can earn well from NFT games. But that does not stop them to search for other ways because I am sure that if people can get the benefit, they will still find out more. If the government wants to take taxes from the NFT players, they should legalize the crypto, whether they like or not because people will react to that if they ban the crypto because of wanting to take taxes.

It doesn't even matter because the company doesn't operate in the country and they don't trade securities so they aren't under any laws that is for the securities. It's decentralized so that can only mean that they can't do a thing about it. Also, the government can ban all they want but remember that people will always find a way to access it.

I think one thing for sure is that they are trying to track down some crypto players/account holders whose sole goal is to make more profit from these people. but this you don't need to worry about the cryptocurrency can't be controlled because it's decentralized nature they can't check it all just maybe you have registered KYC information item from them, about The problem of banning websites that can use VPN software features is now many and popular.

your brain is too advanced and you think it will lead to ban .
 dont think like that mate because you only cause worry to yourself and to others .getting taxed is normal and it will be alright if they taxed players and earn less than banning the activity where they earn because they cannot earn something if that happens .
 i know there are countries before that didnt ban cryptos but they only tax the cryptos users so this is also possible in crypto games .

So you remember something that might be about something you recall and it might not be about bitcoin but about something else. Try harder, when has the US government completely lost in curt the means of taxing profits from bitcoin?
It might help a lot of people here cause the IRS seems to not know about that either.  
We both know that's not true, leave it like that.


How do you keep the other 90% secret?
You dig a hole in the ground and bury 90% of the tokens?

Once we're talking about taking profits it means you're going to spend those and everything!!!, everything is traceable. If you're in the worst situation, that you don't have a job and you're relying on only profit from different crypto deals or investments, if you're invited to the financial authority and they ask you what do you do for a living and how can you afford rent and food what are you going to tell?
Do you think they are stupid enough to believe your words since you neglected to declare that income in the first place? You know that a false income statement is a crime in almost every country, would you still stand by it?

The age of keeping a low profile, making a few hundred $ from coins, and staying under the radar is long gone, a lot of countries have regulations now, rules and laws, this is no longer a game for kids and some poeple will find out in a really bad way.

Thing is though, what are they going to do to enforce the ban?

I don't think that there is really much to be honest. It's a decentralized game and perhaps they could remove the game app from the appstore or block the website, but a quick and simple VPN would get over that hump.

Don't worry too much about this. People have been calling a worldwide crypto ban for years now.

When the government is really serious on tracking those individuals who had been accessing those blocked or prohibited sites then the main thing that they would approach on would be the ISP itself.

but still wont be a complete thing for government to do so because people could just simply make use of VPN on where people could still access those sites that they do really like to visit on.

Speaking for NFT's game access then i dont see for it to be blocked just because of some taxation issues.

Yes crypto is untraceable but if they audit the history of certain user they flagged using their binance,coins.ph or any other accounts where they can track there money flow then for sure the government can impose the law to the people which they tracked. If this will successfully implemented by them then we don't have a choice but to follow but hopefully the money taken from us will used for proper projects and will not go to corruption.

Well if they are really dedicated to combating tax evasion and there are an overwhelming number of people who are using crypto to not pay taxes, that they definitely can a simple solution is they ip ban the website and any user that visits it regularly probably owns crypto and thus they do an  audit and some investigation on it, but for the most part none of the governments thus far have that as a main problem they they allocate the resources to it, but i believe with the popularity of crypto rising up and its price reaching high values in the future we might see them do so.

Even if they catch people who are playing these games or investing in crypto but how would they know what's the amount of money you are making playing these games or making these investments? Because, crypto is untraceable if used wisely and there's no way unless you are tortured that you would reveal the real income.

One can always pay a small amount on taxes and get away by making much more money. For example, if the government knows you are investing in crypto and making money, you can pay taxes on 10% of the profits and keep the 90% secret. There's no way they would ever come to know about it. I am not suggesting anyone of doing so but this is a possibility.

Yes there's a possibility but unless they're willing to be militaristic and surveillance state, they won't be able to stop the people from playing the game because there's a lot of ways to bypass bans in your country, just a little bit of technology know how to save you and your precious investment from being useless.

Reading the thread I come to think that maybe the possibility of a certain country to ban crypto related especially NFT games I think is very much possible. I mean the government wanted to take taxes from the player in a certain platform that they don't have any control so maybe the only thing that they can do is to ban the said NFT game in their country. However, if this going to happen it would be a sad news for every players that earned a profit out of this NFT games.

Not only in ur country, Tax officers in my country not only audit our income even our newly owned assets they ask to be taxed and we have to give our cash to them or all permits and legalities for our assets are hard to get. Just imagine you have to pay taxes on assets in the future that you don't have. Especially when it comes to income and BTC.

I think that it is quite possible for the government to ban crypto games as it can ban web-sites, for example, Binance got banned in my country, so I can’t use it. Also authouritives can track players as when you interact with centralised exchanges you get through verification using your documents. Or if you use other ways to get crypto, you use your card, it means that it is possible to track your bank account. Crypto is not as anonymous as some people consider.

I think you might be talking about games like axie infinity. I haven't played the game so I guess I cannot exactly tell you what are the potential ways the government can track you. But most of these games are near impossible to be tracked because the transactions are happening on the blockchain and there's no data stored anywhere.

The title of the thread made me think that you are asking about gambling rather than gambling.

Technically, a country can ban all such games and then anyone found to be playing them is considered to breach the laws but those things will take years so not sure if you should be too worried about anything.

It's just possible when the government thinks their citizens are spending or earning a lot of money and there are no impact or taxes that they could take from it, i think they will ban it for a healthier country economy.
But i don't think that could stop the prople on the country do it again in the future, because there are a lot IP bypass or VPN to play the game as if they play from another country, and VPN are cheap or even free (but the free one has some risk our data to be stealed).
So for me anything that in the internet, could not bannable by a country ban to prevent the people do it.

How does the government do it? knowing crypto has no govern bodies so maybe they just finding a needle in a middle of the see for doing that maybe they will get a hard time to implement this since for sure no NFT gamers will declare there earnings as they didn't provide there details anywhere while playing their income generating games. If your afraid for the upcoming implementation better not to fill up any form since if you do that for sure you will be liquidated and force to pay taxes to that greedy agency.

The only way for you to avoid the tracking from your government is not to cash out the money to your bank account in a big amount because that can make the bank alarm sound and report to the government. The government can track players by their connection on the internet or filtering their connection so the government knows who the player is. But I do not think that will stop the players from playing the NFT game because they will use other ways to play the games.

Yes, it is Axie and he is talking about the Philippine players because this is the big news in the Philippines because so many media are covering people who made a lot of money and still making money, and the government because of lack of funds are looking at online influencers and Axie players, banning the Axie site is a bad idea because people have invested a lot of money here and some players are willing to help the country paying taxes, not all Axie players are on the taxable threshold.

Local law enforcement can subpoena your ISP to give them access to their "logs" on their server to determine what sites was visited by the users. So they do not have to contact the game provider that are most probably in another country.

Also, if you transfer money from your local exchange to buy "credits" or "tokens" ... they can subpoena your local Exchange to get those logs. (Most income goes through the local exchanges, so they know about that)

In my country tax authorities audit your returns and do lifestyle audits and if you cannot explain your income... then you in deep trouble. 

Well they're milking it anyway in other means already, such as for those people using custodial wallets, plus they would need to comply to KYC requirements before they have the full features that their wallet offers. It is not just happening to Axie Infinity.

That game, by the way, gets pretty hyped up in here and people are finding all those opportunities to apply for scholarships.

Why do people only focus on the earnings in crypto and always forget that the money you earn, be it $ or BTC or god knows what token when you're going to take those profits and use them in real life you will be easily discovered if the sum is a bit over the average earnings? You will have at one point to convert your coins to fiat, you will have to use a card, a bank account, and atm, you will buy stuff that can be tracked, if you go an buy a car and you're without a job how long do you think it will go to take before the IRS equivalent is on your case?

If we start from the hypothesis of a government being bent on tracking you then you can expect the worse, just pay your income tax and enjoy some sleep at night, tax evasion once caught without good lawyers will not be worth it.


Depends a lot on what government we're talking about...
A 40+ employees company in Vietnam is hardly something intouchable.


When did this thing you're talking about happen?   

Nothing to worry about it hence NFT games are part of crypto currency market and blockchain technology, government nor country cannot ban that because it is a decentralized platform that no one can touch it. If you are referring to Axie Infinity, definitely BIR or SEC can't tax people who were playing or breeders directly, they have to conduct first a crypto regulations before imposing such scoundrel imposition.

Agree! But it's difficult because they don't have any justifications for blocking it, and people are profiting from it, so why are they going to ban it? Taxing it is the most likely they would do because it involves income. Here in our country, crypto is becoming more well-known, and Axie is particularly well-known; as a result, the government has stepped in and announced that players will be taxed.

Why would you think it is not possible? Governments have all the things about the surveillance tools, I don't think there are any options they couldn't track any of it. Even if we mentioning the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies space, they can enforce any regulation or law that they like to prohibit people to not get taxed.

Here is the thing, Game/ E-sports are a multi-billion market, and the crowd are now seeing some innovation about game embedded with NFT, in short, E-sport industries are matured enough, and combined with cryptocurrencies who recently gaining a lot of traction, it will make people bat an eye into it. Governments surely won't miss a thing to get their citizen get taxed.

There is a possibility and, yes, any country can indeed ban cryptocurrency-based games. As for the former, I can't imagine a fair reason why a certain NFT game is to be banned simply because the people are earning and the government fails to collect taxes from them. That's too shallow a reason for a ban. As for the latter, there's always a way to go around it. So, all in all, I guess you shouldn't worry that much, especially because it seems you are referring to a country not as strict as North Korea or China.

Countries can do that, block access to certain sites, for example gaming sites, porn sites, etc, they have no trouble doing that.
Exception, they cannot prohibit users from playing crypto games online, if for taxation reasons, what i know about sites that pay taxes for non player country games that don't pay taxes are likely to be closed, and vice versa.

Too vague ngl. There's a similar situation in my country (PH) where the Government plans to Tax the NFT game Axie Infinity, but close to no news about it being "banned" or whatnot. I'd consider it from my case, my country just to give an answer. It's rather easy to avoid it tbh. The government can't exactly ban, or heck, touch the company themselves since there's no reason to. Even if they forced a reason, at most, they would ban access to the site, but can't really touch the company themselves. Also let's be real, who here doesn't know how to bypass bans like that.

Honestly, it's a useless endeavor. if they ever do so, wasted resources for them and them only, since their ban basically hit nobody. There's also no way they can track the info of players since the info is handled by the game company, and the game company themselves don't really ask for KYC, so no way to track their irl info. They also don't need the permission of a country to run a game, since if it was like that, then every other company should also do so right?

You’re giving too few details. What country, what’s the overall status of cryptocurrencies there, who’s a distributor of these games?

Naturally, I think, the company should’ve come to certain terms with your government and either require KYC or make this game unavailable in your region, if taxes in this case is an obligation dictated by the laws of your country.

I suggest you just pay the taxes, as if you’re caught, tax evasion can be punished pretty seriously in most countries.

There may be many restrictions on a specific game, but there are many informational tools to skip them, in this sense I think it would be a lot of effort for a government to do so, also a government cannot handle satellite connections, there are nearby countries, such is the In the case of Venezuela and Colombia, many Venezuelans set up Colombian antennas and pay for Colombian internet and cable television services, that is a very elegant way to bypass such prohibitions. For some it is easier to acquire services from another country and it is paid on a regular basis, in fact in Venezuela itself you can pay for those services, and the government is so bad that it does not even have control of those things, because it is simply a lot of effort and he would be fighting a much smarter conglomerate.

Our government now is planning to tax crypto investors and players, I think they can track it like how they track youtube vloggers to pay their taxes. They can’t tax the small earners but those who might ise the bank or if they have contact with the company they can probably. Im not sure yet how they will do it since its crypto and there many ways to cashout it bit soon they will sure yo figure it out especially now they see the interest of people in it

This is bad for the Axie players. If the government wants to milk from your earnings, then it's their rights too. There are many games out there anyway games come out every now and then and there is a wide new opportunity for gamers out there. One will be blocked others will open, it's going to be a battle for the government and ISP once players found a way to navigate. I'm sure there are tools out there to be used.

If they are just going to get tax from players, they could just do it to the apps in the country like the Strike app and forget about blocking games because its more money for the government if they won't be blocking anything at all from this industry.

They can order ISPs to block the game's website if there is such. But these days everyone knows how to bypass such bans with a VPN. But if people convert their crypto gains through centralized exchanges, the government might have a chance to tax people. because centralized exchanges do KYC and might be forced to report on their user's trading activities.

Yes, it's possible some countries pass a law which includes NFT/Blockchain games in gambling category, banning all of them together. As these games become more popular and some people start losing their money by playing virtual games I think it's very likely to happen. All the government needs to do is to send a project to the legislative house and get it approved.

If the hypothetical law would work in practice or not it's another story. I can say it's really hard to ban/forbid online activity due to VPN and P2P transactions.

Where is the company behind this game registered? They can easily extract those information if it is within their jurisdiction.

The platform may be "decentralized" but not the company. They can be taxed and have their business license revoked.

Are you talking about Axie Infinity? I think that a decentralized platform can't be taxed or banned by the government and it's going to be difficult for them to ban the game because people will find a way to bypass the ban and go on like it's not banned.

Right now, Government of my country is in a process of trying to track players/account holders of a one crypto game to ask for tax because of fast and good earning rate, and I think it's not possible. So in my conclusion if they can't tracked players, is there a possibility of a country to ban this NFT game? I want to know everyone's opinion.