You enter the casino. Early on, you will experience strokes of luck and double your money. Encouraged by your success, you will continue to gamble and only lose all the dollars you have won before. Disciplined by your losses, you leave the casino in your hands with your original money, and you can even get lucky.
How much did you earn from your taxable income that day?
For years, the answer to that question was intuitively clear. Section 165 of the Internal Revenue Act of 1986 now allows bettors to amortize gambling losses due to gambling victory. As a result, if the bettors leave the casino for the same amount they walked together, it doesn’t matter how much they won that day.
Section 70114 of the Budget Settlement Bill promoted Congress but brought unpleasant surprises to gamblers and recreation bettors.
To help put this in perspective, imagine if someone wins the Megabacks Jackpot (currently over $10 million) next year. Under the new law, at least $1 million of these prizes will be taxed unless the winner is a bad bet by the end of the year and the winner somehow loses $11 million (a lot more than he wins in the jackpot).
You read it correctly – starting next year, you could lose $1 million more than you would win at a Nevada casino, and still borrow taxes on your “prize.”
The overall business model behind Casinos demanded that gaming industry executives and lawmakers support them in a state of game control do something to encourage gamblers to return to average and return their prizes.
Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) has quickly introduced fair accounting of revenues realized through the Betting Tax Act to restore the full deduction. Within a week, all members of the Nevada home delegation signed as co-stars. Then there was a “field hearing” in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Houseways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) pledged to restore the deduction before the changes take effect at the end of the year.
But there are people who forget to ask about this: President Donald Trump.
After all, the budget bill was pitched as a Trump signing legislation achievement this year. Called “One Big Beautiful Bill” by him and his supporters, it is one of 31 bills signed by the president since he was inaugurated in January (by comparison, Gov. Joe Lombardo signed 519 bills and rejected 87 others in the shorter Timespan). It took several months of negotiations to pass the bill’s narrowest House and Senate majority. The Senate’s final vote was 51-50.
So what’s in there for him?
Trump doesn’t have any particular love or affinity for the gaming industry. He built and bought casinos in Atlantic City in the 1980s and 1990s, and gained some notoriety for banging their names, but those projects ultimately became embarrassing that was not adopted. The only person who made money from them was the president himself. He transferred his infamous personal debt to his property, excluded rigid bondholders in the bankruptcy court, and refused to make sure the contractors pay him while raising millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments.
But at the time it was behind him.
Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., the company whose president organized various game properties, filed for bankruptcy four times before it was finally sold to ICAHN Enterprises a few months before the 2016 election. Trump’s name was forced to make in exchange for using his name while his casino was running his name – and was subsequently removed from his previous gaming properties.
Instead, Trump’s enlightened future of self-interest (his Bellal’s self-contract, not e-musical) lies in a direct competitor of cryptocurrency, the backbone of Nevada’s economy.
The fundamental appeal of cryptocurrencies for people like Trump is clear. Just like Trump did, to put your name in the casino, you need to buy capital, deal with regulators and negotiate with shareholders. However, to name meme coins like $Trump or $Melania you need a press release (or if the name isn’t worth much, it’s a green dildo). You don’t even have to sell anything, but a short speech followed by a mediocre dinner, certainly not harmful.
But if you dig deeper, the appeal doesn’t stop there.
When games executives such as Miriam Adelson donate $100 million to support Trump, they tend to be accompanied by sudden conditions, such as the requirement that he remain a strong Israeli support regardless of Trump’s personal feelings towards the country and his current leadership. But if cryptocurrency executives spend more than $245 million in the election cycle, then someone in Congress combines two industry-friendly bills into one.
Game executives also rely on three resources that are ideologically offensive to the Trump administration: imported electronics, international tourists, unions, and the largely migrant workforce. Imported electronics and migrant labor are certainly not uncommon in the tech industry, but there is no requirement for cryptocurrencies to host themselves in domestic data centers and are not subject to tariffs.
You can launch one at home in just a few minutes on the labor requirements associated with building cryptocurrency host meme coins. You don’t even need to clean the room.
Finally, there is the issue of Nevada’s president’s support for mercury. Trump won in 2016 without Nevada’s six election votes and in 2024 without them. Why should he care about how our votes should go? We simply don’t matter to him, at least.
All of this may help explain why the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to hurt Nevada’s gaming industry and launching crypto.gov at the same time. This employed Nevadan, which has already declined every year due to the growth of online games and the fiscal year-on-demand for traditional betting products. The administration’s recent decision to raise prices for international travelers, a policy of sucking up at least $750 million from the pockets of millions who visit Nevada each year, is another nail in a co-op that has already waned visits since Trump took office.
It may also help explain why Bitcoin is higher than inauguration date.
David Colborne ran twice for public office. He is currently an IT manager, father of two sons and a recurring opinion columnist for Nevada Independence. You can follow him on mastodon @(Email protection)please email him at bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social (Email protection). You can also send him a message at the signal Dcolborne.64.
