The rise in unregulated cryptocurrency betting markets poses a threat to the integrity of horse racing in Asia. So warned Hong Kong Jockey Club's executive director of racing integrity and betting analysis, Tom Chignell, at the Asian Racing Conference in Cape Town.

As reported in the S China Morn Mail service, Feb. 21, the evolving landscape of cryptocurrency gambling platforms potentially opens the door to race-fixing.

Unregulated betting markets require greater scrutiny

Cryptocurrency has purportedly fuelled a vastly expanding gambling market place, with some operators specializing in offering fixed-odds betting on equus caballus races around the globe.

In the legal regulated marketplace there are established reporting channels, through which bookmakers must report suspicious gambling action. Anyone looking to fix a race, therefore, would logically use an unregulated platform. Chignell explained:

"Let's be clear – the greatest betting integrity threat to racing are jockeys and trainers stopping horses from winning and betting on them to lose on the illegal market ... What makes ... illegal operators unlike to the regulated markets is there'southward no obligation to report on suspicious betting, adulterous, jockeys betting, breaches of the rules of racing. Non having those reporting channels in place is a huge integrity threat."

Illegal betting channels besides lack the motivation to written report on cheating and assist proceed racing make clean, as it is in their best interests to earn commission on the maximum amount of bets possible.

Chignell believes that racing government must monitor the illegal market as closely if not more so than the legal market, maxim:

"The nearly essential [step] is to have a robust integrity function that must include bet monitoring and betting assay, an active intelligence function ... and having the power to investigate and disrupt where appropriate."

Equally Cointelegraph reported last week, cryptocurrency has as well been cited as i of the reasons for an increase in illegal gambling on Asian soccer leagues.