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The first online casino opened in 1996 and there is a whole lot crammed into those years in terms of the growth of the online casino business and online gambling.
The very first thing of significance happened on a tiny island country called Antigua and Barbuda in 1994. It was in this year that they passed a law that would make them a legal jurisdiction, allowed to issue gambling licenses. This is significant because even today, a healthy portion of the online casinos continue to use this jurisdiction to acquire their gambling licenses. And since no state in the US seems to want to give these licenses out, places like Antigua and Barbuda are sorely needed.
The first online casino took a bet in 1996. From 1994 when Antigua and Barbuda passed the licensing law until that first casino went live is full of big events, one of biggest of which is the opening of Microgaming, still today one of the industry leaders in online casino software. In fact, a huge percentage of the online casinos use Microgaming, especially their powerful Viper software.
Of course, when money and the internet are involved in something together, there is always going to be security issues. Enter CryptoLogic, a top-notch online security software company that is still big in the business to this day. This happened in 1995, and it took quite a few months for the fruits of the labor of CryptoLogic to be seen.
At the beginning, both CryptoLogic and Microgaming were hard at work trying to make improvements, which eventually culminated in Inter Casino being the first to open its virtual doors to customers on the net. But this almost didn't happen because of all the legal challenges.
In fact, the online casino industry faced many, many obstacles on the road to development. Many challenges over the legality of online gambling were voiced, including court battles and even a battle in the US Congress, where Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) tried repeatedly to block citizens of the United States from being able to gamble online. Every time one of his anti-gambling bills was knocked down, it seemed he would start another and recruited many to take up his cause.
Since pretty much every bill that has been introduced to block online gambling has failed, now some senators are trying to make it impossible for you to make a deposit into the casino by going after credit card companies and wire services. In fact, at any given time it seems there is litigation pending regarding online casinos.
Despite this, there are literally hundreds of online casinos to this day. Now, separate Poker Rooms and sportsbooks seem to be cropping up everywhere, giving the new online gambling customer a myriad of choices as to how to spend and/or bet their money. Though the legal challenges may always exist, the industry is so big and powerful now, any legal threat to it may soon be a moot point.