Crypto and multiverse, what is the future of online arcades?

Cryptocurrencies as a payment instrument. Multiverse as a virtual mode of interaction and playful experience. The game evolves towards new directions, in part already marked: those that converge in the dematerialization of real life to the detriment, or to the advantage, of digital life. Like the case of the Partouche Group, a transalpine holding operating in the hotel, restaurant and spa sector, ready to launch Partouche Multiverse: a subsidiary of entertainment 3.0 based on the virtual casinos of the metaverse and on cryptocurrencies.

For Agenda Digitale, the metaverse represents “A virtual space in which the differences with reality become almost imperceptible”: here it is possible to work, meet, do business and buy goods. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, represent the arrival point of the process of dematerialization of money, which starting from the inconvertibility of the dollar into gold, declared by Nixon in 1971, marked the end of the link between money and its material equivalent value. Common element: intangibility.

Virtual casinos therefore evolve in the metaverse: unreal environments in which people are replaced by avatars and chips or cash by digital currencies. Exactly like Partouche Multiverse in which “We will accept the strongest cryptocurrencies”, declares the chairman of the supervisory board, Patrick Partouche. The scenario that is looming on the horizon, mainly beyond our national borders, is that of a playful experience lived in a new impalpable ecosystem mediated by the displays of PCs, tablets and smartphones which excludes and marginalizes the physical presence of the players.

Currently Italy is still far from a regulation, and therefore from a system, which allows the development of digital casinos in the metaverse that accept cryptocurrencies as a payment method. For the Bank of Italy, in fact, the digital currency is not a real currency. In the regulatory field, however, Brussels has moved, which with the European MICA regulation on cryptocurrencies not only wants to improve the general discipline but, specifically, increase its transparency, forcing all cryptocurrency service providers to promptly report the transactions of customers residing in the member countries of the Union. Undoubtedly the new directives that will implement the European sources will also have an impact on the future scenario of gambling portals. Scenario that still remains nebulous and unpredictable. After all, among the few, if not the only country where cryptocurrencies are enabled for the casino circuit, is El Salvador. In the rest of the world, registrations, withdrawals and deposits are always subordinated to traditional payment circuits.

It is not yet possible to use cryptocurrencies to register with Italian iGaming portals and redeem the promotions offered (for example free spins without a deposit). It is advisable to understand which are the most used payment methods in online gambling, with reference to the AAMS portals, those with a regular license granted by the Customs and Monopolies Agency. Here is a brief overview. The deposit and withdrawal methods accepted by Italian gaming portals include three alternatives: cash, credit/debit cards and electronic wallets (e-Wallets). Leaving aside the two simplest and most well-known ones, electronic wallets are the most recent innovation among payment systems. By now widely recognized and used by online users, electronic wallets (or e-Wallets) are online services that contain payment cards, identity documents and loyalty cards through which it is possible to carry out economic transactions and pay via electronic devices such as PCs, tablets and smartphones (in this case we speak of mobile wallets).

The only, small exception in this matter is that of Cristaltec which at the beginning of 2023 announced, through Lorenzo Calvi, member of the Board of Directors of Cristaltec Entertainment, the launch of the new service that allows you to use the CryptoMerchant currency exchange system to top up your account game using cryptocurrencies. The service, currently usable only from a platform with which the partnership has been signed, could achieve greater market penetration in the future, thus becoming a pioneer of the new frontiers in which digital currencies and the metaverse come together to achieve that maniacal and diabolical desire to dematerialize reality.