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Comment by jackpirate | Hacker News Reader

I would guess most bitcoiners are mathematically inclined people, and not super into pure gambling. That said, I think poker might take off, especially here in the US where things have gotten super murkey. This has the potential ro revitalize the bitcoin debate amongst naysayers. I wish there were more "obviously legitimate" services that use bitcoin out there.

If this takes off at all, there is no way that a lone programmer can provide adequate security for a project like this. You will get hacked, there's just so many potential attack vectors.

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"That said, I think poker might take off, especially here in the US where things have gotten super murkey."

I know the IRS isn't fooled by "it's not dollars, it's just these things that can be freely converted back and forth between dollars on the open market", where "these things" is a category well beyond merely "BitCoin" or even currencies. If you set up a local-ish economy that solely trades in cows, literal, actual cows, expect the IRS to continue to enforce its relevant laws based on the market value of cows. I seriously doubt that the laws against online gambling will be fooled, and even if a few of them are, it's very easily corrected. BitCoin doesn't add much to the murkiness at all; if it's illegal to do it with dollars it's almost certainly (and certainly eventually) illegal to do it with BitCoins.

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

If you're thinking about playing poker for profit in the US, you should do it in a casino licensed to accept your bets, and you should report your income. We're dealing in bitcoin, but that doesn't mean we are ignorant of or unyielding to local law. Taking bets from the US is just not a winning strategy these days, and we have no intention of doing so.

Things aren't murky with the IRS. That's perfectly straightforward: you must report net gambling income.

Things are murky with the legality of transferring money via credit card to online casinos, and if the individual gambler is actually breaking the law by participating. Bitcoin resolves that murkiness.

I use the IRS as an example, not the totality of Federal law. To the extent it is illegal to transfer dollars to an online casino, it either is or will be illegal to transfer anything else with market value. BitCoin won't resolve the murkiness one bit.

Something I think you may need to understand is that this isn't a remotely new idea. BitCoin may not have existed before, but casino chips, again, literal physical casino chips, to use just one example from a richly populated field, have been around forever, and Federal law does not watch someone trading around chips and just shrug its shoulders and go "Well, golly, I guess those aren't dollars, I'll just walk away I guess." It does something more like "Well, golly, I guess we'll just slap some money laundering charges on too."

First, individual gamblers are not the target of any sort of federal online gambling regulation.

The regulations on online gambling revolve around the accepting and disbursing of funds by online gambling sites. Bitcoins do, and don't address this issue. It does address the issue in so far as it makes transactions between parties opaque, but it also doesn't address the issue if an FBI agent can just sign up for an account and demonstrate the system working for transferring BTC.

I'd put money on it: The potential customer base for a prediction market would have a huge overlap with bitcoin miners. They're valuable for research and possibly even policy[1], but seem to be on shaky legal ground in most places.

[1]http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.html

> I would guess most bitcoiners are mathematically inclined people, and not super into pure gambling.

Heh, ahh, maybe this will disabuse you of that notion:

> "I'd say my IQ has jumped at least 10 points for having learned about and joined the bitcoin community."

https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?action=printpage;topic=1...

> I would guess most bitcoiners are mathematically inclined people, and not super into pure gambling.

Being mathematically inclined doesn't prevent someone from being into gambling. They are just less likely to treat gambling as a method of financial planning rather than a game.

The risk involved in gambling gives the game more emotional impact. This makes it fun, and (to some people) worth paying for as a form of entertainment.

I agree there's a high risk potential for that. At the end of the day, no money is withdrawn without a manual check on it. The other vectors, like injection and no money's stored on the live servers. There are constant backups and mirrors to servers around the world, so at worst, the site could suffer a couple hours of downtime and we'd have to comp a few people. I'm limiting signups to 50 per month, at first, until I can afford to hire more help; right now I've got floor managers, and yes, I have lawyers, and yes, the guy who posted about finding an attorney is a fed who I think just tried to sign up with a fake IP address. But we control the throttle and this will only do what it's supposed to do; I won't put players at risk of losing if we get hacked, but if we do there are backups and people on standby to clean up the mess.

You're probably already aware of the Betcoin (1st Bitcoin online poker site) hacking incident, but just in case, see http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=840.msg93927#msg93927.

Who cares? IRS can't trace bitcoins to real people.

They can't trace dollar bills to real people either, hasn't stopped 'em so far.

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