At G2E, Gaming Executives Said Crypto Progress Does Not Depend on the CLARITY Act

The CLARITY Act may have died in the US Senate, but the G2E panel in Las Vegas had a simple message for regulated gaming: crypto adoption does not have to wait for Washington. The practical issue is less politics than whether operators are willing to build the rails, the controls, and the user experience.

1. The discussion took place Monday morning at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas during the 2026 edition of G2E. Industry consultant Jonathan Michaels moderated the panel, joined by Earle Hall, CEO of systems provider AXES, Rich Winley, CEO of payment kiosk maker Payline, and Lindsay Slader, chief growth officer of UBank.
2. The panel came about two weeks after the US Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, a federal crypto bill that would have created a market structure for digital assets like crypto. Even so, panelists told iGB that the industry could still make progress without it. Slader said, “I feel like we have all these tools in our toolbelt where we could really spin it up quickly if we wanted to, regardless of what’s happening in the federal government, is my personal opinion.”
3. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, already provides a framework for stablecoins, which are crypto assets pegged to another asset such as the US dollar. That matters because the panel’s argument was not about speculative crypto in the abstract; it was about whether regulated gaming can use crypto infrastructure for payments and settlement without waiting for a broader federal market-structure bill.
4. A recurring theme was the contrast between gaming’s caution around crypto and its long-standing dependence on cash and traditional banking. Since the start of 2025, the Las Vegas casino industry has received five multimillion-dollar anti-money laundering fines, including a $7.2 million penalty for G2E host Venetian, which has sharpened the industry’s view of cash oversight and verification.
5. Hall argued that the basic mechanics are already familiar to casinos. He said the foundation of crypto or stablecoin technology is the “most secure and the fastest means of moving a transaction,” and described casino chips as a rudimentary version of stablecoins: fixed value, issuer tracking, and backing by another asset, in this case cash. Winley added that user experience remains a sticking point, with gaming still moving at “the same pace” as before.

For PSPs, acquirers, and casino payment teams, the takeaway is straightforward: the blocker is not only regulation. The industry is still deciding whether it wants the operational benefits of crypto-style rails badly enough to rework the user journey, controls, and compliance stack around them.