Centralized vs. Decentralized Gambling. The Case with Bet 365.
Online gambling is one of the highest industries of the globe with its skyrocketing income, a huge variety of games, millions of loyal players and potential technological development. Gaming is a passion of the masses, who appreciate the fact that it is entertaining and exciting, suitable for all budgets, convenient..
However, there are many people who believe that gambling should be banned and is regarded as a means of exploitation rather than entertainment. It continues to develop manipulating strategies, which cause fraud and cheatings. As a result, even the most enthusiastic players are convinced that gambling has a number of issues, which should be solved.
What are those issues?
Gambling operators fully control the fund distributions, deposits, and withdrawals. These processes commonly involve at least two intermediaries to carry out the transactions. Centralized control makes players rely on the gambling operator to receive their winnings. This poses safety risks and is time-consuming, especially when it comes to high stake bets.
Moreover, the old saying “the House always wins” is still relevant. This saying is mainly connected with the house edge-the higher the edge, the fewer opportunities for the players to win. The most common risks which are often connected to this sector are primarily fraud and match-fixing.
Today, however, a new chapter begins. Cryptocurrency gambling enters the industry. The immutability of blockchain technology comes to ensure transparent play in the world of online gaming. With blockchain, there are no third party intermediaries or centralized control to govern the distribution of funds. All fund distributions, deposits, and withdrawals are recorded on blockchain, processed by smart contracts and can be audited by anyone at any time.
Blockchain-based gambling platforms can guarantee the player that they will always be able to receive the amount of money they won, regardless of shape and size. As the whole system is decentralized, no entity can distort the outcome. Furthermore, the recipe for blockchain gambling going enormous is that the players won’t see themselves as gamblers, much like lottery ticket purchasers, who don’t consider themselves as gamblers either.
However, centralized online gambling platforms debate with blockchain-based gambling enthusiasts, insisting that centralized casinos obtained all the features provided by blockchain technology a long time ago. They assure that fund distribution is appropriately conducted and that their activities are audited continuously to prove their transparency and fairness. Although there are a lot of casinos and online gambling platforms bringing facts about their clear working rules, still a lot of cases occur that shed a bad light on the centralized gambling industry.
The case with the betting giant — Bet365- is just one of the many examples. Megan McCann, a student from Northern Ireland, sued one of Britain’s biggest bookmakers for refusing to pay out £1 million on a winning bet on the horses in 2017. Miss McCann staked approximately £25,000 on 12 different horses, winning £985,000 from the “big fish.” But the betting company refused to pay out the wager. Ms. Coates, the chief executive, insisted that Miss McCann was in “flagrant breach”, which means she acted against the law of the online bookmaker, and added that the firm was sure that the original betting stake was done by a “third party” in contravention of its Terms and Conditions.
This long-lasted court case has revealed the possible cooperation between Britain’s most prominent online bookmaker and the leading money-transfer company, Skrill. Bet365 successfully applied for a ‘Norwich Pharmacol’ — a court order for the disclosure of documents or information that is available in UK- against Skrill in the high court in London, requiring Skrill to reveal details of McCann’s account with the firm. Skrill, an e-wallet, serves as a popular way for players to deposit money with online gambling sites. Bet365 obtained details of the McCann’s account via Skrill. This case is a real scandal for the industry and a rude act of breaking the factor of transparency, fairness and privacy. Check out the article published in The Guardian for more details.
All this hustle described above is impossible in case of the blockchain. The rules of the game are written in the smart contract, which is open source. Even a small alteration or distraction from the practices described in the smart contract is impossible, as the distributed ledger will prevent any attempt to distort the rules.
Fasttoken, blockchain-based gaming solution, has the vision to improve the players’ gambling experience via fairness and transparency. We believe that absolute transparency, lightning fast transactions are possible in the gambling industry while being based on blockchain technology. Although the gambling industry has already gained some bad reputation, the real fans of it still remember the days, when gambling was on the same track with entertainment and excitement.
