In March, New Zealand’s Racing Integrity Board put a number on a problem the gambling industry has spent years talking around. More than 50 operators dealing in cryptocurrency, the board found, now accept bets on New Zealand racing. They pay no product fees into the sport. They share no integrity data. Many shelter behind licences issued in Curaçao, Anjouan and Costa Rica. Those jurisdictions lend a platform the appearance of legitimacy while asking almost nothing of it in return. The board’s chief executive, Dr Eliot Forbes, described a model that extracts value from racing without contributing to the systems that keep it honest.

The timing is pointed. New Zealand has just legalised online casino gambling, partly on the logic that a licensed market can pull players back inside a regulated perimeter. That logic is sound. But the Racing Integrity Board’s warning is a reminder that legalisation, on its own, settles nothing. A market can be regulated on paper and still leak, and the question that actually matters is not whether an activity is permitted, but how much of it stays within reach of the controls that make regulation mean something: consumer protection, money laundering controls, integrity monitoring and tax.