Business risk consultant, Steve Vickers (pictured), chief executive of Steve Vickers and Associates, is a former commander of the Royal Hong Kong Police criminal intelligence bureau, says that the cryptocurrencies can be used either to store value in cyberspace or access fiat currency via the conventional banking system, have the potential to dodge China’s efforts to stem capital outflow.
He adds that if they are used for gambling funds in Macau or elsewhere that poses regulatory risk for the casino industry.
“Potentially from an organized crime point of view, cryptocurrencies… do afford opportunities for the avoidance of government duty, for example, China’s program to contain capital outflow could be circumvented quite easily if cryptocurrencies took on a wider distribution
Cryptocurrency transactions are essentially pseudo-anonymous in their nature. While it’s true that all transactions are recorded in an open distributed ledger which makes every single transaction completely transparent and traceable by anyone, it’s still possible to create a new bitcoin address without the need to verify your identity, as you must with a bank account.
“Unfortunately, the side effect of cryptocurrency is the anonymity it provides, a number of extortion cases I have dealt with involving kidnap, ransom and other offences had a ‘crypto’ element, unfortunately. This is something that governments need to get their heads around now, before it becomes more difficult,” the former police officer Vickers added.
Currently, the use of cryptocurrencies in the gaming sector has mainly been limited to online gambling.
