Frankly Analog
As, after 40-odd years, my career in print journalism begins to wind down (also known as “circling the drain”), I often feel my expertise struggles to keep up with the times. To put it another way, sometimes I feel like an analog reporter marooned in a digital world.
It goes beyond the fact that I still carry official reporter notebooks, in which I actually scribble honest-to-God notes in longhand, using cursive letters they don’t even teach in school anymore. Or that I once routinely did complete interviews taking longhand notes that would eventually form the basis of feature articles.
Incidentally, I don’t do that anymore. I’m quite happy that I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the century of recording cellphones and Microsoft Teams, which actually transcribes your interview for you and tells you who said what. It beats the heck out of looking at scribbled notes and trying to guess the meaning of what looks like “grwilnoggin fratishie.”
In general, I love the technological conveniences of modern journalism, compared to the standing-at-a-pay-phone-taking-notes-on-a-pad method. (Yes, I did that, too.) It’s the technology of the industry that I find myself chasing toward an uncertain future—in particular, the rapidly evolving world of online gambling.
There was an article in Forbes last month describing a civil suit filed against the rapper known as Drake (his real name is the un-gangster-like Aubrey Graham) alleging that the rapper was involved in a $38 billion illegal crypto casino scheme.
Even the headline baffled me, because it included the word “crypto,” which invariably causes my brain to imagine a swirl of tweeting birds around my head, like in a Three Stooges short. But as I followed the body of the story, I felt more and more like Curly or Shemp.
The lawsuit alleges that the crypto casino enterprise run by Drake and two others constituted operation of a criminal organization as defined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Alright, a RICO case involving a gambling operation. A popular theme in federal law enforcement. Then, they started to go through the details of the crypto casino.
The class-action suit claims Drake promoted illegal gambling to his vast social media audience. It alleged a money laundering operation in which, according to the Forbes piece, “millions of dollars were funneled through the platform’s ‘Tipping’ feature to fund bot farms that fraudulently boosted Drake’s Spotify streams.”
OK. Umm… What?
I’m still working on mastering the process of “streaming” (I just got FIOS), and now there are bot farms cropping up on me. I can only imagine what they must look like. I’m guessing the plows would have to be super big to pull robots out of rows of dirt.
The “crypto gambling” subject constitutes another digital assault on my analog brain. According to the article, crypto casinos exploit misunderstanding of the term “crypto,” as fluctuating cryptocurrency prices create inflated accounts that encourage larger bets.
“Crypto platforms perpetuate a dangerous illusion by displaying user deposits as fluctuating cryptocurrency coins, misleading users into believing they are earning investment returns,” according to the Forbes article.
All this cryptocurrency talk gives me a headache. All I know about cryptocurrency is that it’s this imaginary money with a fancy logo, like the Bitcoin “B.” As far as my own gambling, I’m guessing I can’t fan out Bitcoins at a craps table in a crypto casino, like I can with cash at a real felt table. A big “B” would probably clog up the slot when the dealer tries to push it down into the drop box.
I also play video poker, but I prefer to do that at a sports bar, watching hockey or baseball while someone pours me free drinks. Crypto casinos can’t offer that.
But evidently, crypto casinos are part of what’s known as the “shadow gambling economy.” Derek Webb, an old industry pal and the inventor of Three Card Poker, just formed an advocacy group called the Campaign for Fairer Gambling. The group funded a study that showed illegal gambling operators took in 74 percent of the U.S. online gambling market in the first half of 2025, much higher than industry estimates that include brick-and-mortar casinos.
Much of it can be traced to illegal casinos that take cryptocurrency wagers, usually paired with illegal sportsbooks, most taking crypto wagers I can barely pronounce.
The bottom line: As a journalist who once had a portable manual typewriter, and who put magazine layouts together with typeface, wax and X-Acto knives (yes, I did), I must now write articles including terms like crypto, blockchain, bot farms and Bitcoin.
And don’t forget Drake, who I now recognize as a megastar performer.
He wrote “Stairway to Heaven,” right?
