The gambling without license could have been the best because most of them would have been non KYC gambling casinos and they won't require KYC informations from us as well as seing them not regulated by the government since they are not having any license to back that up, but can we have the required trust in some of these sites, how reliable could they be in such a way that you will not see them taking their users fund away at anytime when they cease operations.
When cryptocurrency casinos were first introduced, there was no KYC or anything like that, no one had to verify their identity before they could access certain features in a platform such as making large deposits or withdrawals or participating in certain events. You could deposit any amount you wished or withdraw any amount no matter how large, and it would get processed in a matter of minutes. However, over time, due to regulatory pressure, rules such as KYC and AML started popping up. Casinos were asked to acquire licenses to operate.
The licensing part isn't very bad in my opinion, because platforms that are registered with authorities would have a lower possibility of scamming its customers and run away with their funds, which isn't the case with unregistered and unregulated casinos these days.