UK-listed online gambling operator 888 Holdings reported record earnings in 2018, even as business in its poker and bingo markets declined by double-digits.

Figures released Tuesday show 888’s overall revenue hitting US$529.9m last year, a 2% decline from 2017’s result. But adjusted earnings improved 6% to $107.1m and adjusted profit before tax rose 11% to $86.7m while actual pre-tax profits hit $108.7m. Investors liked what they heard, as 888’s shares closed out Tuesday’s trading up 2.5% to 166.7p.

888’s B2C product verticals were a mixed bag, as casino gained 8% to $317.6m and sports betting rose 6.4% to $80.3m. But poker tumbled 37% to $49m, bingo was down 17.5% to $32.4m and the Dragonfish B2B bingo division reported revenue falling 8% to $50.6m.

888’s new CEO Itai Pazner praised his company’s performance despite “headwinds in some areas of the business,” including increased regulatory scrutiny by the UK Gambling Commission. UK revenue was down 16% to $170.6m, pushing the market’s contribution to overall revenue down five points to 32%, which the company dismissed as the result of its ‘diversification strategy.’

Bitcoin was originally designed to operate within all legal frameworks and work within regulation. This still exists in the form of original Bitcoin BSV. The Segwit BTC fork off of Bitcoin (still erroneously called Bitcoin by exchanges) has decided that it wants to move power and value away from miners and to a US-based company that controls the Lightning Network protocol. (I’d call Lightning a side chain, but it’s not even a chain; much worse, it’s just a messy system of payment channels off the BTC blockchain). In addition to the security challenges (miners will stop mining the BTC chain) and restriction against true scaling of Bitcoin’s blockchain, this creates another currency system that is controlled by people inside the US.

The US government has long maintained that any transaction taking place anywhere in the world is subject to US law merely by being transacted in US money. Its courts have also extended jurisdiction to any website domains, such as .com, managed by Internet registries in the US, and frequently even foreign companies using such domains. It is no stretch to believe that all cryptocurrencies centrally managed from inside the US will also soon fall into this same position – which is highly questionable under other countries’ and international laws.

This issue will also affect Ripple which has centralized control by one company (Ripple Labs) in the US. Like BTC/Lightning, Ripple operates like a company with central command in the US.

Ethereum, in addition to not scaling, has planned a technical road map away from Proof of Work to less secure and more centralized Proof of Stake, and also has significant US exposure in its team. The only real use for Ethereum today is as an enabling technology for scammy and illegal ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings or unregulated and illegal security tokens).

India-based casino giant Delta Corp has purchased $10 million in equity shares from Jalesh Cruises Mauritius Ltd (JCML). The purchase, made last Friday, came through Delta’s subsidiary Gaussian Software Private Ltd, which entered into an agreement to purchase the shares by June 30.

According to a filing that Jalesh provided, they are intending to buy cruise ships that will sail to areas in the Middle East and India. As part of the agreement with Delta, the company will become the preferred partner for gaming centers and casinos for the cruise liners.

In January, reports surfaced that Zen Cruise Private Ltd has started a new luxury cruise line service that would be in operation by April. This would be an entertainment-centered cruise line, labeled under the brand name Jalesh Cruises. It appears from the timing that Delta has joined in this venture early on, giving them a prime place within the new cruise line.

The announcement comes on the heels of news that the state government of Goa has granted riverboat casinos permission to stay for another six months on the Mandovi River. Goa officials have been struggling to find a more permanent home for its six floating casinos for the past several years. The current plan is to transfer all floating casino operations to a designated land-based gaming zone, which was originally supposed to happen by 2020, although the government recently said this shift might not happen until 2022.