On the Behavioural Profiling of Gamblers using Cryptocurrency Transaction Data

Blockchain technologies enable a number of new ways to gamble online. Very little is known about engagement with one such new way of gambling: decentralised gambling applications, which provide simple casino games like dice rolls and coin flips. This is important as understanding engagement with any type of gambling is a crucial first step to assessing the risk of experiencing gambling related harm within the population. This thesis first surveys existing literature for methods of describing engagement in gambling, and then applies these methods to actual transaction data gathered from several decentralised gambling applications. This replication-oriented approach means results can be grounded against existing findings, and the descriptions of player engagement in this new domain have some context for comparison. It also means that descriptions can be tentatively mapped to similar scenarios, such as risk of experiencing gambling related harm in other studies. The results of several replication oriented studies presented herein find that engagement in the decentralised gambling domain is typically less than in comparable online casino games, but that a heavily involved subgroup is more involved. It also finds that engagement with gambling- like mechanisms in blockchain games is much less than in decentralised gambling applications, guiding future studies in gambling research away from blockchain games despite their mechanical similarities. Finally, behavioural groups in the decentralised gambling domain do not appear to be comparable with existing research in the centralised online casino game domain. The results of these studies provide a first look at engagement in this emerging domain, a comparative description with similar forms of gambling, and a description of behavioural groups, which provides essential context for further research to asses the scale of the risk of experiencing gambling related harm.