As attendees and delegates streamed into the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas for the 2026 edition of G2E Monday morning, the festivities began with a spirited and sometimes frustrated discussion on the future of cryptocurrency in regulated gaming, which, as panelists noted, is still very much in flux.
Industry consultant Jonathan Michaels moderated the panel with three guests whose experience covered various aspects of the intersection between gaming and finance: Earle Hall, CEO of systems provider AXES, Rich Winley, CEO of payment kiosk maker Payline and Lindsay Slader, chief growth officer of UBank.
The panel convened about two weeks after the US Senate failed to advance a significant federal crypto bill known as the CLARITY Act. This development was celebrated by some sectors of the industry mainly due to the many connections between crypto and the burgeoning prediction market industry. That said, another, similar piece of legislation known as the GENIUS Act was signed into law in July 2025.
Like many issues in gaming, stances on crypto vary by jurisdiction, but overall adoption is still very low. The CLARITY Act would have provided a market structure for digital assets like crypto, but the GENIUS Act did provide a framework for stablecoins, a type of crypto with a value that’s pegged to another asset like the US dollar.
When asked by iGB whether some type of federal legislation like the CLARITY Act is ultimately needed to reach a best-case scenario for crypto in gaming, panelists indicated that more progress could be made now.
“I feel like we have all these tools in our toolbelt where we could really spin it up quickly if we wanted to, regardless of what’s happening in the federal government, is my personal opinion,” Slader said.
Crypto no, cash yes?
A pertinent theme of Monday’s discussion was the industry’s hesitance to adopt crypto despite its reliance on cash and traditional banking. With five multimillion-dollar anti-money laundering fines administered since the start of 2025, including a $7.2 million penalty for G2E host Venetian, the Las Vegas casino industry has learned just how difficult it can be to manage cash oversight and verification.
“The foundation of a crypto or stablecoin technology is the most secure and the fastest means of moving a transaction,” Hall said.
Hall argued that casino chips are just a rudimentary version of stablecoins, given that they are exchanged for a fixed value, tracked by the issuer and backed by another asset (cash). The “underlying foundation” behind stablecoins is secure technology, and this can help a cash-reliant industry move money faster and cheaper, he said.
A seamless user experience is also a key point of this equation, panelists stressed. Payline’s Winley bemoaned the fact that the gaming industry has been moving “at the same pace, the same speed” for decades when it comes to clearing transactions. The more similar that crypto interfaces become to legacy financial products, he said, the better it will be for user adoption.
Meeting demand with regulation
A new study commissioned by the American Gaming Association this month has highlighted the connections between gambling and financial literacy. Respondents who identified as gamblers posted higher average financial literacy scores than non-gamblers, and 41% of gamblers qualified as “highly financially literate” compared to 27% of non-gamblers.
Such findings suggest that an expansion of crypto as payment and withdrawal methods would be welcomed by bettors if regulations can evolve to meet the demand. A separate study released in June by payment provider Paysafe found that crypto adoption among online sports bettors is more than double the US average, and authors predicted that crypto would become a top-three deposit method and a top-two payment preference in major markets like New York and Illinois.
From a banking perspective, Slader acknowledged that gaming has always been viewed somewhat unfavourably, but crypto is well established – it shouldn’t be impossible to merge the two in a tightly regulated environment for both sides.
“I think we do need to help gaming regulators understand this entire system and help them become comfortable with what this ecosystem that the player’s going to be in still looks like,” she said. “There’s still KYC happening…The same user is still going through the self-exclusion checks, the RG checks, all the other things that happen in their customer journey.”
Jess Marquez
Jess has covered the global gaming industry since 2022. A native of Reno, Nevada, he’d like to note that it’s Ne-va-da, not Ne-VAH-da.