UKGC to allow licensees to use Bitcoin

Licensed casinos will be allowed to deal in convertible digital currencies as of October 31, 2016.

UK.- The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) announced that licensed casinos will be able to use digital currencies beginning October 31. Licence condition 5.1.1 of the recently updated License Conditions and Codes of Practice addresses “cash and cash equivalents”  and includes the “usage of cash and cash equivalents (eg bankers drafts, cheques and debit cards and digital currencies)” as allowable for the first time.

The United Kingdom is now one of the first licensing bodies that has set and implemented conditions on the use of digital currencies. The Isle of Man regulator and Malta are moving in the right direction to make it happen, but they’re not there yet.

Most casinos and poker sites accepting bitcoin now are licensed in Curaçao, where players are on their own, with no historical hope of intervention from the licensing authority when disputes arise.

In late July, the executive arm of the European Union proposed a directive that has been designed to help prevent the use of the digital currencies to finance criminal activities and terrorism. The idea from the European Commission would create a central database holding records of the identities and wallet addresses for users of all cryto-currencies including Bitcoin.

This information would then be accessible to member states’ financial and law enforcement officials through a centralised automated search query. The legislation could become law as early as January.