Personally, I never care whether a crypto gambling site has a license from some random place or not since what matters more to me is the site's reputation within this forum and elsewhere along with crypto deposit + withdrawal fees.
I truly hate how most of the crypto gambling world has essentially become centralised these days.
You have a good point here, crypto casinos are about trust. And the gambling industry nowadays thinks the users will trust on them because they have a valid lisence. But a curacao lisence doesn't mean the casino can't be an exit scam or they cant close when they want without anouce it to the users.
Casinos need to build trust more than having a lisense, and for that they need time and be nice with the customers.
Come to think of it, trust is also very dangerous, to fool a lot of people, you need to build trust and make them believe your company, serve every customers right and let everything look normal for a long period of time, until it's time to pull the plug, how do you like this OP? And if any online casino manage to pull this on how will some justice will be served if they are not licensed?
I am right in between centralized and decentralized way of gambling, I can't choose a side as my final answer because they both have advantages and disadvantages, I don't want to trust just like that without anything backing it up, just in case is the biggest strategy I believe in, and trust alone can't do this for me.
If trust can be built it can also be ruined, I know the authorities are making money from casinos getting licensed but it's far way better than letting unlicensed casinos to run, it's even more dangerous, people only care about themselves I get it, but the damages can be big and there won't be anything to hunt them down with.
I choose to go with KYC requirement and a licensed casino, the other way around is not safer because we can never see the inside of a human mind, those who give you services of no KYC and unregulated casinos can have a bad plan behind the scene, this is not non-custodial vs custodial.