Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone can shed some light on the subject of Bitcoin gambling sites.

Specifically, does anyone know (definitively):

a) Whether or not it is legal to offer gambling or wagering (ie: Poker) services to American citizens where Bitcoin (not USD) is used exclusively.

b) Whether or not a gambling licence is needed to host and operate the service from Australia (.au) ?

c) Where is best to host a gambling website offshore if not Australia? I have heard Costa Rica doesn't require a licence to operate a gambling site but that it's difficult to find a reputable and reliable hosting service there...

d) Where is Satoshidice hosted, how about the other bitcoin gambling sites?  If I traceroute satoshidice.com them the firewall doesn't allow me to find the hosting service..

Thanks

According to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/SatoshiDice, the SatoshiDice (http://bitcoinreviewer.com/satoshidice-tribute-review/) gambling website might be run by a Costa Rican company called "Blockchain Limitada".

Thanks - seems like Costa Rica is the place to go.

America is home of the free where you are free to play poker online. Got to love all that great freedom.

I don't know about American laws, however I think it is legal.
You can use poker chips (or anything) to play, why not to use bitcoins?

I think legal is open to interpretation and I would suspect that if any of the Bitcoin poker sites such as sealswithclubs became big enough then the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) would be amended to specifically include Bitcoin.  If you were to operate a poker site I would forever rule out traveling to the US and preferably choose to live somewhere with lax extradition laws.  

I would say avoid all U.S. allies (Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand etc).

tl;dr - the US is against gambling and will likely interpret the UIGEA in a way that permits enforcement irrespective of bitcoin's novel peer to peer nature.

OK, long version below:

Please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the legality of BTC gambling is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a gray area.

In a nutshell, the UIGEA does not prohibit gambling, rather it prohibits financial institutions from processing gambling transactions (ie banks and credit card companies face fines if they process gambling transactions).  Applying bitcoins to this admittedly very high level legal framework posits an interesting outcome.  Because BTC is peer to peer, there is no central authority or financial institution, which seemingly circumvents the UIGEA. 

PROFIT!

Well, maybe not.

If you were the owner of said casino, you probably wouldn't utilize bitcoin in a true peer to peer fashion.  Instead, you would want to take a cut, which would require you to take BTC in and pay BTC out.  Making you a 3rd party.  Stated another way, you would be processing BTC gambling transactions.  This processing, while admittedly tenuous since you're not an official financial institution, is likely enough to subject you to the UIGEA, albeit in a way that violates the spirit, if not the exact letter of the law.  It should also be noted that this processing of bitcoins from one party to another could also subject you to the ridiculous Money Transmitter Laws as well, thanks to FinCEN's guidance.

One novel approach could be to attack the definition of gambling itself and apply bitcoin to games that are not based on chance.  Chess is one example of this.  I believe that one guy does this already (gambit.com?), but there could be others as well.

Is it possible to get a gambling sublicense?

Sublicense? Like at the state level, or for some other jurisdiction?

For the country I would host a gambling website in.
I just found out in Curacao you can actually get that.

That very well could be.  Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with the best / most legal countries from which to open a bitcoin gambling site.  Rather, I was just giving my opinion on the legality of transacting in bitcoin with US customers for games of chance. 

Ok this is a pinhead topic. Don't host it in the US. OBVIOUSLY. SAME WITH CANADA B/C THEY JUST FOLLOW US ORDERS.

Get the fuck offshore I mean to europe. Central / south america are shitshows. You can't have your stuff down there, I'm hosting in france, told them the deal, and I could be less worried. Should be a fast connection etc. I'll just ssh/vpn tunnel into my hot wallet occasionally to xfer funds from my home base cold wallet if need be.

bitcoin gambling site depending on the law of a state, if gambling is legal in a country or in a religion then you can own it but if there is no law about this then you cannot own a gambling site, for example in 'Pakistan as gambling is strongly forbiden therefore one cannot run a casino, he even cannot own a online gambling site.

I think you can find most relevant answers to your queries by doing a small google search.There are some good sources of bitcoin related articles and tutorials outside of this forum also

I know that Primedice,one of the oldest and largest bitcoin dice gambling sites,doesn't allow deposits from the US or Australian geolocation (determined by the customers IP)
so they avoid any possible legal issues
doesn't mean that you cannot run a bitcoin casino in the US,you have to search for yourself,probably,consult a lawyer