Australia’s Northern Territory Is Mulling Over Crypto Gambling Regulation

Australia’s northern territory is mulling over crypto gambling regulation as it’s trying to include crypto wagering as a part of the regulated gambling sector.

The Northern Territory Racing Commission (NTRC) in Australia is working with its gaming licensees on a preliminary proposal to include crypto wagering we’ve stated above.

Gambling in Australia is mostly controlled at the state level rather than federally. The Northern Territory Racing Commission (NTRC) regulates all gaming and wagering organizations that choose to be licensed in the Northern Territory (NT), including worldwide betting companies like Betfair, Entain Group, Draft Kings, and Sportsbet.

As of now, the NTRC has distributed a secret document to licensees in order to solicit opinions and comment on what the regulatory environment would look like in order to get crypto wagering off the ground in the NT. Because of this Australia’s northern territory is mulling over crypto gambling regulation.

Julian Hoskins, the principal of Senet, one of Australia’s main gaming legal and regulatory advice businesses, was granted access to the secret document and outlined 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 are 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

While the likelihood of such a change is difficult to predict at this point, Hoskins remarked that given the popularity of crypto, he would anticipate that this would be highly popular as an alternative to fiat. He believes it has the potential to be extremely significant.

He noted that if this strategy works as planned in the Northern Territory, other state casino authorities would most likely follow suit.

According to Hoskins, strict identification procedures have also been recommended in order to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) legislation. As a result, players will almost certainly need to verify their crypto wallet addresses, and any wins will have to be withdrawn “back to the same wallet” that made the initial deposit.

“What they’ll require under the draft framework is a verification of the crypto wallet. So it needs to be verified and registered against a customer’s identity. And the customer has got to prove that they control that wallet,” he said.

Hoskins also stated that the NTRC has suggested monthly crypto deposit limitations of $2,000 AUD for the first 12 months, with a monthly maximum wager of $5,000 AUD.

According to the gambling-industry lawyer, local gaming enterprises would be legally compelled to have crypto wallets with enough assets to properly collateralize consumer wager amounts, as is typical practice in fiat-based gambling.

In terms of the tax ramifications of gambling with volatile crypto assets, Hoskins said he didn’t know “how it would be regarded,” implying that the NTRC is currently debating such problems.

The newly elected Australian Labor Party or the ALP announced an approach to crypto regulation recently.