Why the US Can’t Simply Ban Offshore Crypto Casinos — And How Regulators Are Trying Anyway

If the US government wants to stop Americans from gambling at offshore crypto casinos, why doesn’t it just pass a law banning offshore casinos from accepting US players?

It seems like the obvious solution. It is also, for reasons that reveal a great deal about how internet regulation actually works, essentially unenforceable, and the attempts to work around that fundamental limitation explain most of the regulatory history of US online gambling since 2006.

The Jurisdictional Problem

A US law is binding on entities subject to US jurisdiction. A casino licensed in Curaçao, operating servers in Malta, owned by a company incorporated in Cyprus, and accepting Bitcoin deposits from a blockchain address has no US presence. Congress passing a law saying “offshore casinos cannot accept US players” is passing a law aimed at a foreign company in a foreign country that has no obligation to comply and no US assets for federal authorities to seize.

It is the same reason the US cannot pass a law requiring French resta...