The seventeenth episode of the Hashing It Out crypto and blockchain informational series featured Paul Foster from the compliance-focused firm Crucial Compliance. Foster spoke about how blockchain can help the gambling industry avoid regulation hurdles by making all its data immutable.
Crucial Compliance’s Mission and How Foster Saw The Potential of Blockchain
By trusting the potential of blockchain and signing a deal with nChain’s Kensei integrity solution, Foster became one of the pioneers in the gambling field. In his interview with Hashing It Out’s host, Becky Liggero, he explained why he trusted in the novel solution.
Foster began by explaining what is Crucial Compliance’s mission and why data is so important to the company. He pointed to the Crucial Player Protection system – a behavioral monitoring system that follows a player from the moment they sign up.
“We monitor your behavior and whenever you change your behavior, then we know about it and we can then interact with the player. So, it reaches many different levels for responsible gaming,” Crucial Compliance’s representative explained.
In Foster’s words, everything Crucial Compliance does is “nudging players to stay in the fun zone and avoiding the danger zone.”
Liggero then asked Foster how he was first introduced to nChain, to which he responded that nChain’s Nick Hill was the one who introduced him to blockchain and taught him how the Kensei platform would benefit Crucial Compliance.
“With the Kensei platform, we found something that was really, really positive. So we thought, let’s explore the opportunity.”
Blockchain Can Help Operators Avoid Huge Fines
Liggero asked Foster what the main compliance issues operators in the field face and how they can deal with them.
Foster said that identifying problem gamblers is always the key first step. Once such people are identified, it’s important to take the right approach to change them from potential “at harms” to being in the safe zone again. During all that time the monitoring system records all the actions a player takes, as well as their conversations with the operators.
This is where data integrity comes into play. Foster explained that the data may sometimes get corrupted, especially considering how often M&A activity forces companies to change platforms. Corrupted data may bar companies from proving to regulators they have done everything in their power to inhibit problem gambling and may therefore result in unpleasant fines. Foster even said that one time a corrupted piece of data resulted in a $4.8 million fine.
However, the immutable blockchain can benefit compliance by creating a robust ledger that is impossible to corrupt.
“If we put the data onto the blockchain, then we create an irrefutable log of all that data. It’s time-stamped. It’s correct. And at any time, you can check that against the system to make sure that the system has integrity,” Foster elaborated.
Foster then added that many operators still don’t understand the potential of blockchain and regard it as something strictly related to cryptocurrencies. However, once someone explains how the Kensei platform works and how it may prove useful, many operators realize the opportunities.
“Then all of a sudden they get very excited and go, ‘so, in reality, we could independently verify that data that you’ve got in your system?’ And we go, ‘yes, that’s the whole idea of it.’ So they get quite excited,” Foster said.
The usage of blockchain in data integrity is one of the hot topics of the gambling ecosystem. In the previous episodes of Hashing It Out, various other gambling-related parties spoke about the prospects of implementing blockchain into the space.