Listening to Izabella Kaminska's Latest Talk on Cryptocurrencies It Struck Me That...

...combining her interest in crypto with her interest in neurotransmitters she could be aiming at a synthesis of the two trains of thought and I wondered if anyone had gone there and if this might be a way to relieve folks with the dopamine D2 receptor Al allele variant, specifically addictive gamblers, of a bit of their money,.

There's a reason the Hong Kong billionaires decry gambling as the worst of the vices.
There is a natural limit on how much you can spend drinking, whoring or eating before it kills you.
With gambling there is no limit and you can destroy not only yourself but the family and not just the family but future generations of the fam.
As one of my favorite translators tells me, "No good".

And thee are reasons casinos are not allowed to have patrons use credit/debit cards directly in their slot machines and instead have at least one step in-between: they have go to the ATM or cashier. Still, the casinos  do everything possible to dissociate their wealth removal business from the feelings folks get when  parting with actual cash, so you lose credits in a machine or chips at table games.
Not money.

So I looked it up.
And lo and behold, we find this published October 21 at CoinDesk:

Macroeconomics, Gambling and Crypto: A Perfect Storm?

Noelle Acheson is a 10-year veteran of company analysis, corporate finance and fund management, and a member of CoinDesk's product team.
The following article originally appeared in CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday, exclusively to our subscribers.

The gambling world is no stranger to disruption. Just as online platforms are pushing aside evocative, casino-based settings, they themselves are starting to face big change.

The threat – or the opportunity – comes from two trends, one cultural and one technological.
On the cultural side, we have the explosive growth of eSports, which now spans a range of online venues, genres and demographics. Analysts insist that the recent surge is a small foretaste of what is to come. There is even talk of them becoming a medal event at the Olympic Games.

From technology, we have blockchain. While gambling with cryptocurrencies has been around since the early days of bitcoin (and is expected to grow strongly as customers get more comfortable with the concept), an interesting twist appears to be emerging from platform tokens.

Combine these trends with national legislation and economic strategy, and you begin to see a fundamental shift that has the potential to transform a massive segment of the leisure economy.

And in the process, it could also give a big boost to the development of distributed ledgers and digital tokens.

Rolling the dice
As an example, this past week U.S.-based eSports betting platform Unikrn got an online gambling license from Malta. This enables it to offer real-money betting to most of Europe, and token-based betting to the rest.

What makes this noteworthy is the platform’s new crypto token. A couple of years ago, the company created a platform-only digital token to enable users to place bets on the outcomes of games such as League of Legends. The new version, however, will run on the ethereum blockchain.

This means that it can be traded between players, sold on an exchange and converted to fiat money in many jurisdictions. It also points to the emergence of a community of developers that in theory could extend its utility by creating additional apps and add-ons.

A more intriguing aspect, though, is the strategy of the Maltese government, and where this could lead.

To help offset the decline in manufacturing, the Maltese government over the past few years has focused on attracting technology businesses to the island, offering relatively lenient legislation, low tax rates and lots of sunshine. The efforts have largely centered on the gaming industry, given its potential to foster related sectors such as finance and film.

Malta was the first state in the EU to regulate online gaming platforms, back in 2001. Since then, the industry has grown to be one of the world's largest, accounting for over 10 percent of its domestic GDP.

By incorporating the potential for eSports gambling and cryptocurrency tokens into the mix, the island is not only signaling a future-first approach to gaming legislation. It also appears to be setting the stage for a broader development of blockchain technology.

All in?
To see an example of this strategy in practice, we only need to hop over to the Isle of Man.
Like Malta, it was an early legislator of online betting (which grew to account for almost 20 percent of GDP). This, combined with fast internet and a zero percent corporate tax rate, encouraged an influx of technology businesses, which in turn helped to foster a strong cryptocurrency ecosystem. Official support for blockchain technology was not far behind.

In 2015, the Isle of Man was the first government in the world to trial a blockchain platform – fittingly, for registering digital currency companies. It was also one of the first to regulate bitcoin businesses. Last year, it became the first jurisdiction to officially recognize bitcoin gambling, and just last month it announced its intention to foster a friendly framework for token sales.
Malta appears to be following in the Isle of Man's footsteps.

It recently announced its intention to legalize bitcoin gambling, and last month unveiled a blockchain advisory board to steward its national strategy around the adoption of the technology. It also is contemplating testing the impact of cryptocurrencies on the national economy, and last week revealed a trial for putting academic credentials on the blockchain....MORE

Here's the conversation that got me thinking and after the jump a link to one of the more profound economic thoughts I've come across this year.

I chatted to @izakaminska about crypto coins, the Wolf of Wall St, Putin, and other clickbaity things. So click it > https://t.co/RijwZGO0H8

— Katie Martin (@katie_martin_fx) October 24, 2017

In late September, in the course of her talk with Professor Dr. Lustig and his work on sugar and neurotransmitters she casually mentioned the idea that when discussing this stuff the whole concept of Homo Economicus as rational actor goes out the window.
Just mentioned it en passant, no biggie.

A couple weeks later it was announced Richard Thaler would be picking up some hardware from the Nobel folks for a related insight.

Here's "If You Want To Be Happy, Listen Up. Now! alternative title: The FT's Izabella Kaminska Is...".