Australian crack down on crypto scams

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Australia is one country that is extremely
proud of its name as the homeland of the kind of love for blockchain and crypto
that many countries in the world will never understand or identify with. It has
spent years upon years of the existence of blockchain embracing the new
technology and all of the currencies that are associated with it, establishing
exchanges and starting ICos that have since become either large scale companies
or have managed to capture the attention of the rest of the world. And yet, this
love of cryptocurrencies seems to be what will be creating issues for the
country in the past couple of years. It has been reported that people that were
looking to play with an Aus online casino were at the top of the list
of people that had lost their money to cryptocurrency scams in 2017 and 2018.
The reason, according to the Australian authorities, was because there were a
large number of online scams that were pretending to be casinos licensed to operate
within Australia, asking their users or allowing them to deposit money with the
help of cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin. As a result, thousands of
people ended up depositing upwards of four million USD equivalent cryptocurrencies with scams,
that then too the money and ran, never even gracing these people with a chance
to play a single game. Now, seeing this affect the people of their country so
much, the Australian government has decided to take steps and crack down on a
number of cryptocurrency related businesses, in order to protect their citizens
from further scams of similar nature.

What the crackdown looks like

The crackdown seems to be taking several
levels. First and foremost, the Australian authorities seem to be continuing a
campaign with the help of which they are trying to inform their citizens that
not all online casinos are licensed to operate within the country. More so,
they are trying to point out that there are specific restrictions that are not
too hard to check, although some people seem to be discontent with the scope of
the campaign, as they were hoping it would be a larger and much more comprehensive
one. Information spreads better when you try to spread it better and there are
those who believe that the Australian government is not doing a good enough
job.

But the information campaign is not the only
thing that the Australian authorities are trying to use in order to produce
results. Something else they have started doing is listing crypto and
blockchain companies that they trust or don’t trust on a website, which has
become a reliable source of information on whether they can a company can be
trusted or not. With this active step in the direction of making information
easier to access, ASIC has created a better resource for users than by simply
providing information on the subject of the gambling legality within the
country. Now, users can go and check whether an online casino, crypto casino or
blockchain company can be trusted before they start working with them, which is
a commendable initiative.

One of the first companies to fall to this new policy has been Dartalon Ltd.,
an unlicensed financial services company that solicited advice and investment
services (Bitcoin-related) in order to get more people to invest in them. This
listing has resulted in the company losing a large number of their customers
and has also resulted in many users being safer as a result of being able to
look up information on the company from a trusted source.

Taking it further

Even despite the fact that their current
strategy seems to be more or less successful, the Australian authorities seem
to be not stopping. They wish to take the matters even further, which is why
there have been more and more rumors of new legislation regarding cryptocurrencies
coming into play within Australia. What seems to be the same across all of
these rumors is the fact that the regulation will not blanket the entirety of
the crypto industry, but will specifically concern casinos and the crypto
industry. Some might consider this to be a good way to keep the industry safe
for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons is that many think this
regulation would specifically concern the gambling ind0ustry and would prohibit
it from using blockchain and cryptocurrency, at least as a payment system. This
way, many believe, they would further limit the gambling industry. This has
already been a trend over the past couple of years with Australia. Introduction
of new regulation on the industry, over and over again, in order to limit its
scope and protect its citizens. So we might end up seeing some new regulation
being introduced in terms of crypto in casinos, but not in terms of crypto in
general.

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