Recent content by bill_collins

Two numbers from the results that put chapman's shop in context. Group revenue was £887.5 million, flat year on year, but up 2% once you adjust for the closure of 270 William Hill shops. So the remaining estate is trading slightly better and the headline only looks flat because there's less of...

@ak47 the vote is Evoke's shareholders deciding whether to accept the Bally's Intralot offer. It's a scheme of arrangement under Gibraltar law, so it needs a court meeting and a general meeting. If it passes, completion is expected Q4 this year or Q1 next, subject to regulators. If it fails, the...

Remote gaming duty went from 21% to 40% on 1 April. That's the whole answer to most of this. It applies to online casino and slots, not sports betting yet. Sports goes to 25% next April, and bets on UK horse racing stay at 15%. So the free bets and price boosts disappearing on the sportsbook...

There's a defensible counterargument to be fair to the states. The sweeps model genuinely was operating outside consumer protection frameworks while marketing aggressively, often to people who didn't understand they were effectively gambling. From a regulator's perspective, shutting down an...

I can agree with @vogafox. To add the specific Louisiana detail, because it's genuinely unusual: Louisiana passed two bills together. HB883 defines the dual-currency model as gambling by computer. HB53 is the one that matters for the fifty year figure - it expands the state's racketeering...

One forward-looking note for anyone deciding whether to fully abandon USDT. The European Commission is reportedly working on a MiCA stablecoin revision, partly because the current rules effectively handed Circle a monopoly by forcing Tether out. If that revision creates a route for Tether to...

Correct. This is specifically an EEA on-ramp problem. USDT remains dominant globally - around $184 to $186 billion market cap, roughly 59% of the entire stablecoin market, versus USDC at about $75 billion. Tether's global position is unchanged. What happened is that the EU carved its regulated...

Worth being precise about what actually changed on July 1, because there's a lot of confusion about whether USDT is "banned." USDT is not banned. It is perfectly legal to hold and self-custody. What changed is that MiCA-licensed exchanges (CASPs) can no longer list or offer it to EU users...

Syzyf approach mirrors how financial insider trading enforcement works. You rarely prove someone explicitly traded on inside information. You prove they had access to material non-public information and a connected party took a position consistent with it. The burden shifts to the defendant to...

Stake detail is more interesting than it first appears. Stake voided the estimated $4.5 million payout, and Stake is also an ESIC Tier 1 Anti-Corruption Partner. So the same company taking the bets is also a formal integrity enforcement partner. The bookmaker that would have paid out is the one...

If anyone using these platforms, nothing changes today. You are not at risk of an insider trading charge for having an opinion. What changes over a longer horizon is the regulatory character of the venue. These cases establish that market abuse law reaches event contracts. That invites the...

Still pending as far as I can find, which isn't unusual at this stage. What's more interesting is that his case and the Van Dyke case now both turn on the same question, and it isn't whether they did it. Van Dyke is the Special Forces sergeant charged over the Maduro contracts. Bought...

That's the strongest argument the states have and it's noticeably underused in their filings, probably for the reason @firstleague gave. The gap @laura_BETTS describes is real. State exclusion lists are administered by state gaming regulators and have no reach into a CFTC-regulated venue. No...

The legal question is narrow and everything turns on it: are sports event contracts "swaps" under the Commodity Exchange Act? If they are, they fall under exclusive CFTC jurisdiction and state gambling law is preempted. If they're not, they're bets and the states regulate them. Kalshi's entire...

Petfre (Gibraltar), the online arm: £2.87m, September 2022, social responsibility and AML £240,000, October 2025, online slot game breaches £900,000, June 2026 Done Brothers (Cash Betting), the retail arm, roughly 1,300 to 1,400 shops: £825,000, December 2025, social responsibility and...