Europe, the Netherlands, Ireland, and the US move on crypto, gambling, and prediction markets

A few separate regulatory and market moves landed at once, and for high-risk operators the pattern is familiar: licensing pressure in Europe, enforcement in the Netherlands, tighter iGaming oversight in Kyrgyzstan, and a growing political fight over prediction markets in the US.

1. From 1 July, around 75% of crypto companies registered in Europe may lose their licences. The source does not name the specific licensing regime, but the message is clear enough for PSPs and crypto payment teams: a large chunk of the regional cohort is facing a licence reset, not a routine compliance update.
2. The Dutch regulator fined Chestoption $3.5 million for unlicensed gambling activity in the Netherlands. For acquiring and payment providers, this is the sort of enforcement action that tends to harden merchant checks fast, because the issue is not product risk in the abstract — it is activity without a local licence.
3. Kyrgyz lawmakers are calling for stricter iGaming regulation. That matters for operators and their payment partners because once deputies start pushing in that direction, the practical question becomes how quickly licensing, payment routing, and exposure to local players can change.
4. Nine European regulators came out against prediction markets, while the Irish government launched an action plan to strengthen the fight against financial crime and money laundering in gambling. The two stories are different, but the payment angle is the same: more scrutiny on where the money comes from, where it goes, and how much of it can be reconciled cleanly.
5. Kalshi’s prediction exchange saw trading volume exceed $100 billion on the back of the 2026 World Cup, and a coalition of US gaming groups and unions asked the Senate to impose a federal ban on sports betting through prediction platforms. So prediction markets are no longer a niche compliance footnote; they are now big enough to draw both serious volume and serious lobbying.

For high-risk PSPs, the useful takeaway is not that “regulation is tightening” — it is that the pressure is landing in several different places at once: licences in Europe, enforcement in the Netherlands, legislative momentum in Kyrgyzstan, AML policy in Ireland, and a sharper US fight over prediction markets. That is the environment in which banks and acquiring partners usually get more conservative, not less.