Tag: igaming

Play Ventures GP Anton Backman: Real-Money Gaming is Entering Its Mobile Games Era

Play Ventures GP Anton Backman: Real-Money Gaming is Entering Its Mobile Games Era

Most of the apps on our phones are built to feel social. We can chat, scroll, follow live events, and often see what other people are doing in real time.

Sports betting has moved from the counter to the smartphone, but open an online sportsbook, and you’ll notice that the experience hasn’t changed all that much.

There are still odds grids, bet slips, promotions, account balances, and casino lobbies full of games that users mostly play on their own.

That model is big business, but it’s also starting to run up against a different kind of user expectation.

Younger gamblers grew up in a completely different type of entertainment economy.

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WSEX Co-Founder Jay Cohen on the Sportsbook That Saw the Future of Modern Sports Betting

WSEX Co-Founder Jay Cohen on the Sportsbook That Saw the Future of Modern Sports Betting

Before DraftKings and FanDuel, before Kalshi and Polymarket, there was Jay Cohen and World Sports Exchange.

When the gambling industry looks back on its modern roots, the conversation often begins with the Supreme Court striking down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, opening the door for states to legalize sports betting.

From there, it often turns to the rise of DraftKings and FanDuel, the normalization of sportsbook advertising, and the legal fights that will ultimately determine the future of prediction markets.

Cohen sees it differently.

Back in 1996, Cohen, Steve Schillinger, and Haden Ware launched World Sports Exchange, better known as WSEX, from the small Eastern Caribbean island of Antigua.

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Exclusive: BetFury to Roll Out Utexo’s Bitcoin Lightning USDT Payments This Summer

Exclusive: BetFury to Roll Out Utexo’s Bitcoin Lightning USDT Payments This Summer

CasinoBeats can exclusively reveal that BetFury has partnered with Utexo to bring Bitcoin Lightning-based USDT payments to its platform this summer. 

Once live, the integration will be one of the first major deployments of the technology at scale in iGaming, giving BetFury users a new way to deposit and withdraw USDT.

To understand the stakes, it helps to take a look back at the original promise of crypto casinos.

From the very beginning, these platforms were marketed as being built around freedom: Players wouldn’t have to deal with banks, there’d be no waiting, deposits would be processed in seconds, and users could play from anywhere, all while moving money whenever they wanted.

However, in practice, things haven’t always panned out exactly as expected.

Moving funds into and out of crypto gaming platforms can still mean waiting 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, or even longer, as transactions get caught up between a centralized exchange, a compliance queue, and payment rails that were never really built for instant settlement at casino scale.

That is the exact gap that BetFury and Utexo are betting they can close.

CasinoBeats sat down with Utexo co-founder Viktor Ihnatiuk to discuss the BetFury rollout, why he believes crypto casinos still have a payments problem, and why Utexo wants to bring USDT back to Bitcoin.

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Ubertesters CEO Ran Rachlin: iGaming Payments Are About Trust, Not Just Transactions

Ubertesters CEO Ran Rachlin: iGaming Payments Are About Trust, Not Just Transactions

When a payment fails on Amazon, most of us would agree it’s annoying. When a payment fails on an iGaming platform, that same glitch can set off alarm bells.

Maybe it’s a stalled deposit. Maybe a payment option customers are familiar with is missing. Maybe a player clears one identity check, then gets caught up in another before withdrawing their winnings.

An operator may chalk these things up to simple technical hiccups. However, from the user’s perspective, they can raise a pretty damaging question: Can I trust this platform with my money?

That psychological gap is exactly what Ran Rachlin, co-founder and CEO of crowd testing firm Ubertesters, sees when he looks at payment friction in iGaming.

In a wide-ranging interview with CasinoBeats, Rachlin said operators often treat deposits, withdrawals, know-your-customer (KYC) checks, and local payment options as just another set of technical steps in their launch plans.

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