About this app
About Flying Hippo
Atucha praises the regulation and the regulators themselves for making entry into the market easy, as well as allowing them to be competitive against illegal operators. But the market hasn’t been without its challenges.
A 1% selective consumption tax (ISC) on the value of every online bet has been in force since 1 July 2025, after the original policy was scrapped from proposed regulations in July 2021.
Atucha warns that regulations are often perceived as operator-friendly at the start before governments begin looking to squeeze licensed sectors, likening the process to “boiling a frog”. He has observed similar scenarios in other LatAm markets, with tax increases occurring in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico in the last couple of years.
What is Flying Hippo?
The Bitcoin ecosystem, now in the form of BitcoinSV, has advanced to a level where so many of the pain points within the gaming industry can be solved with Bitcoin technology. For this reason, from today, I’m moving over to CoinGeek.com full time with a laser focus on raising awareness of BitcoinSV within the gaming industry and highlighting the innovative minds and relevant BitcoinSV-powered solutions currently existing in the market.
Looking back on my 11+ years with CalvinAyre.com, I’ve made life-long friendships, attended countless industry events, interviewed hundreds of leaders, made thousands of contacts, built deep relationships with organizers, even had the honor of delivering a DAF award or two back in the day (who remembers???!!) but best of all, had the pleasure of working with some of the most incredible colleagues along the way, many of which who I classify now as dear friends.
When I joined CalvinAyre.com in August of 2009, there was an enormous gap in the industry for an honest, transparent news site with regular, fresh video content. Over time, we grew from a tiny team of a handful of people to dozens, providing the industry with the juiciest breaking news and cutting-edge video coverage.
How to play Flying Hippo
Notably, ethics concerns may have played a critical factor in the rejection of the bill. Lawmakers from both sides did not feel that an updated version of the text released on Sunday went far enough in addressing concerns related to senior officials maintaining or endorsing crypto business ties. However, a group of Republicans claimed they made a series of concessions when US President Donald Trump agreed to modifications on Sunday night that contained stronger ethics measures, the Associated Press reported. The 11th hour concessions were not enough to appease potential swing voters among Senate Democrats.
“This legislation failed squarely because Republicans refuse to say no to the president,” Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego said in a statement. “It takes 60 votes to pass a bill, and instead of spending their time twisting themselves into knots to appease President Trump, Republicans should have worked more closely with Senate Democrats to craft a bill that could pass with strong ethics provisions.”
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, the leading negotiator for Republicans, berated her Democratic colleagues in a statement, saying they “played games” and “were never truly serious about protecting consumers”.
