France’s online sports bettors wagered over €1b in the second quarter of 2018, driven by their nation’s masterful showing at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Figures released by French gaming regulator Arjel show the nation’s online sports bettors ponied up €1.002b during the three months ending June 30, a figure 61% higher than that recorded in Q2 2017. Sports betting revenue shot up more than two-thirds to €181m at the 12 sites licensed by Arjel.

The number of weekly active sports bettors rose 75% to 527k, drawn by World Cup action and operators splashing out €22m in bonus offers, more than twice the incentives dangled in front of bettors in Q2 2017.

Football accounted for 59% of all betting stakes in Q2, and the 50 World Cup matches that occurred in June attracted betting handle of €218m, representing 37% of all football wagers.

Bitcoin Core’s Lightning Network (LN) has been billed as “best thing since sliced bread” for handling cryptocurrency payments. It reportedly creates a payment mechanism that can handle more transactions, more quickly at a much lower fee. However, three years after being conceived and more than six months after first being introduced to the world, it is still in beta testing and doesn’t seem to be making any progress. Given the overly complex nature of the platform, it’s not too surprising that it can’t seem to get off the ground, and this is why it won’t become a mainstream payment solution.

In June, a study showed that the LN is still unreliable for routing payments. This unreliability is further emphasized as the amount of transfers increases. The study, conducted by Diar, indicated, “…the reliability of successfully routing a payment on the Lightning Network is still quite low, especially for larger amounts. The success rate for a payment for no more than a few dollars between random LN nodes is 70%.”

Put simply, transactions of more than $200 over the LN have a success rate of 1%. The success rate of transactions of under $100 is better, at 70%, but is still at an unacceptable level.

For the LN to be productive, three entities are needed—a sender, a receiver and an intermediary. This is self-defeating, as cryptocurrency is designed to be a peer-to-peer currency, a concept that Bitcoin Cash (BCH) developers understand completely. Making it worse, for the LN transaction to be successful, all three entities must be online at the same time.

The success of CryptoKitties is mind-boggling. Upwards of tens of thousands of dollars have been spent on the blockchain-based version of card swapping, with one digital kitty going for more than $60,000. However, the real money to be made on the blockchain is through the introduction of gambling apps.

Fomo3D recently saw five times more users begin to use the app than currently seen by CryptoKitties—and that was just in 24 hours. Fomo3D is a gambling app that allows players to try and take other players’ money through a fictional initial coin offering (ICO). Since it was first launched last month, $40 million has been sent to the application.

Fomo3D isn’t alone. According to a recent report by DappRadar, the blockchain app tracking website, gambling is second of all distributed apps in terms of money received—the top spot is held by cryptocurrency exchanges.

Token sales for gambling-related enterprises have continued to increase, as seen by Dragon Coin and another ICO, which collectively raised almost $1 billion. As indicated by Autonomous Research, a total of 21 gambling projects have attracted $300 million via ICOs.

Mickey Mouse doesn’t want Floridians to gamble. At least, that is the takeaway from reports that Disney Worldwide Services continues to dump money into bills that would allow gambling to expand in the Sunshine State.

Disney, as well as the Seminole Tribe of Florida, have each recently put $5 million into the “Voters In Charge” political action committee (PAC), a group established to support a state constitutional amendment prohibiting widespread gambling expansion. That amendment, called Amendment 3, will appear on voters’ ballots in this coming November’s general election.

To date, Disney—a longtime opponent to casino gambling—has now contributed about $14.6 million to support the ballot entry. This is even more than the Seminole tribe, which operates a series of casinos in the state, including the famed Seminole Hard Rock casino. The tribe has donated a little more than $11.7 million to the cause.

Voters In Charge now has around $20 million on hand, according to a report filed on August 3. The ballot proposal needs to be approved by 60% or more of the voters if it is to be accepted. If approved, it would rewrite the Florida Constitution and give all Florida voters the “exclusive right to decide whether to authorize casino gambling.”

Revenues of Malta-based online gambling operator Gaming Innovation Group (GIG) rose 39 percent in the second quarter of 2018 on the back of strong demand for B2B offerings.

In a regulatory filing, GIG announced that its second quarter revenue soared to €36.9 million ($42.04 million) from €26.6 million ($30.31 million) year-on-year as the demand for its B2B offerings and internal gaming brands rose.

GIG’s B2B revenue jumped 84 percent to €15.6 million ($17.77 million), while B2C revenue surged 20 percent to €24.2 million ($27.57 million) in Q2 2018.

However, the company’s revenue slowed by 1 percent from €37.3 million (US$44.68 million) in Q1 2018. Its EBITDA for the three months that ended June 30, 2018 also dropped 10.53 percent to €1.7 million ($1.94 million), compared to €1.9 million ($2.16 million) in Q2 2017.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is quite an interesting enigma. He’s sort of like Donald Trump in personality and approach to exercising power. If Trump weren’t so constrained by the U.S. Constitution, he’d act more like Duterte. Trump has to search for technical loopholes that allow him absolute, or near absolute power, like using Cold War era legislation that allows a sitting President to almost unilaterally institute any tariff he wants on the grounds of national security. Duterte doesn’t have to find any such loopholes. He can just act. And he does.

Duterte has his passions and pet peeves, like his ruthless war on drugs (no comment), but he does seem to have a sense that decentralization and private ownership as opposed to government ownership is generally a good thing. Meaning, he’s no socialist ideologue with utopian views of equality, and he’s certainly no fan of political correctness. He does seem to have a basic understanding of how economies work in reality, unlike, say, Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro or the late Hugo Chavez who are vastly more dangerous. Maduro or Chavez types will just keep pushing their catastrophic economic inanities until there is either absolutely nothing left and everybody starve to death (which is happening now in Venezuela), or they are assassinated (which almost happened earlier this month to Maduro).

Duterte may have a personal hatred for gambling, made clear in his recent suspension of any further licensing for casinos, but he knows where his money comes from and he’s not stupid enough to actively try to harm the gambling industry in his country. The suspension of new licenses will hurt consumers a little bit by raising prices due to constricting supply, but this is not the start of a crackdown on the gambling industry as a whole.

That the gambling industry is not coming under general attack is clear from the privatization of PAGCOR casinos this year. This move is likely to increase the efficiency of PAGCOR’s gigantic collection of gambling venues. The fact that Duterte, generally characterized as very controlling, is cool with this shows that he does have a good amount of sense. He seems to understand that allowing current casinos to operate independently will only help him collect more taxes, which is his real goal. Philippine tax revenues continue to roll in at records under Duterte, and he’s not going to endanger that.

Lady Luck continued to elude a Malaysian businessman after his bid to void his SGD5.9 million ($4.2 million) casino debt was rejected by Singapore’s high tribunal.

The New Paper reported that Singapore’s Supreme Court threw out the petition of businessman Lee Fook Kheun against Resorts World Sentosa (RWS), saying that the petitioner failed to prove his claim that he was intoxicated when he signed the credit deals. And even if Lee was too intoxicated when he signed the deal, Singapore Justice Valerie Thean noted that the petitioner failed to immediately cancel the agreements.

“Mr. Lee has not proved on the balance of probabilities that he was so intoxicated that he failed to understand the nature and effect of the Credit Agreements,” Thean said in her ruling, according to the news outlet.

Records showed that Lee first visited RWS in July 2010 hoping to open his own seafood restaurant in Genting Singapore’s integrated resort. Instead, Lee found himself becoming one of RWS’ high rollers.

Increased depreciation and amortization expenses have pulled down Philippine-listed game technology provider DFNN Inc.’s net income by almost 30 percent in the first half of 2018.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, DFNN reported a net income of PHP86.9 million ($1.63 million) in the first six months of 2018, down 29.9 percent from PHP101.8 million ($1.9 million) in the same period last year.

DFNN attributed the net income drop to the rise of its depreciation and amortization expenses which grew almost two-fold to PHP22.2 million ($415,328.70) during January to June 2018 period.

“The increase in the account was due to the depreciation of newly acquired transportation and vehicles, computer hardware & peripherals, and amortization of software costs installed in the company’s data center facilities located in Cavite, Philippines,” the company stated in its financial report.

About two years ago, poker pro extended a challenge. He said that he could take $100 on WSOP.com and turn it into $10,000. Given his substantial success at the felt at the time – he had won over $5 million at the time and had two WSOP bracelets – it certainly seemed like a plausible challenge. However, here we are two years later and the founder of Upswing Poker is still trying to reach his goal.

As of last Friday, Polk has racked up just a little more than $1,600. He spends the majority of his time playing low-stakes tournaments and other similar-staked cash games because of what he refers to as “a matter of good bankroll management.” He has repeatedly said that he would stick to the challenge until the end – I guess an open-ended challenge is still fulfilled even if it takes 15 years.

According to his WSOP stats, he has played in over 40 sessions recently without improving his position. On Sunday, August 5, he participated in a $320 buy-in rebuy tournament and was pushed out well ahead of reaching the money. He “clicked the wrong button” and re-bought into the tournament for another $320, but it didn’t seem to help any. On the day, he was out $640 with nothing to show for it (except perhaps the knowledge of where the rebuy button is located). His second rebuy ended up costing him 20% of his remaining bankroll.

By last Wednesday, he managed to improve slightly, reporting a recent high of $1,716 for his $10,000 challenge. It was short-lived, however, and he slipped on Friday, losing $110.