A look at how gambling industry attitudes toward Bitcoin have changed over the years through the lens of a ‘fictional’ character

When I was asked to do an article about the recent rise in the price of Bitcoin and how that might affect the gaming industry, I paused for a moment. The ‘no no…it’s different this time’ approach would induce many an eyeroll. Probably the biggest eyeroll would come from me as I typed it.

Still, it’s a topic worth talking about and so I considered different ways to approach it.

I decided to write about my experiences with ‘Harold the Hall Lizard’. Harold the Hall Lizard is a real person. The conversations below, while not verbatim, are spot on with respect to sentiment and theme. …

For tonight’s performance, the role of Napster will be played by Bitcoin

Even though I felt like I was one of the ones that ‘saw Napster coming’, I don’t think any of us could have predicted the speed and the totality with which it took over.

To me and a lot of my colleagues, Napster was our first lesson in the power of the network effect of the internet. …

A look at how cryptocurrency gamblers view things a little differently than traditional gamblers and sports bettors.

Last time out, we took a brief look at how the people that gamble with crypto think, and more importantly act, differently.

Continuing to dig deeper into the mind of the crypto gambler, today we look at how the use of crypto affects the gambler’s mentality.

I am reminded of a time recently that I had lunch with a friend of mine who I knew to be a big bettor. I found the chat fascinating.

He had placed a futures bet on an event that would take place in two months’ time. We were discussing the merits of the bet itself, when he offhandedly mentioned that he ‘bet that one in Bitcoin’. …

Lessons from Rock and Roll, Volume 1

Many people don’t know that before I was in the gambling business, I was in the music business. I worked for Atlantic Records, then in artist management, then later was named the President of an Atlantic subsidiary label. With the advent and adoption of the CD, the music business was booming.

But dark skies were lurking. The advent of file sharing was still a fringe activity, but it was starting to have an impact. People weren’t buying music, they were giving it away by sharing it. …

My guess is you’ve been hearing for at least a couple years about the massive opportunity in the crypto gaming market. I can tell you the opportunity is very real — well into the billions of dollars. But the single biggest learning for me over the past three years spent at the center of the intersection of digital currency and regulated gaming is that the crypto gaming customer is different.

The culture of crypto is different. Crypto people are, by definition, a group of people with a higher risk tolerance than most. If you’re still unsure, a glance at the 12 month price chart of Bitcoin should suffice. …