The problem with that is it's frequently impossible. Case in point, I know a long-term, savvy investor (in the real world, not in Bitcoin) who got taken for $250k recently by a new startup that was probably just a shell. They had a great business model, great product, and both an extremely personable CEO and CFO who each took time to get to know their investors, and were always available to answer the phone. The only problem that stood out - to me - was that they were too available to answer the phone for an investment of that size. I didn't tell my friend this, since his money was already sunk and there wasn't much point in telling him to be more paranoid.

This was a real-world security, not some shady garbage floated on the internet. It wasn't strictly a ponzi, since they didn't actually pay anyone anything; the founders just pretty much declared bankruptcy under suspicious circumstances and bailed themselves out.

So points 1-3 apply, but I have to say that getting to know the people behind an investment doesn't prove anything. You just need to have a sixth sense for when you're being conned. Start with the assumption that you're always being conned. Work backwards from there until you trust somebody. Matthew Wright gave me endless shit for calling Pirate a ponzi, since that whole thing started. "How can you prove it's a ponzi?" He kept asking. Well, prove it isn't. Because until proven otherwise, anyone with their hand out is suspicious.

Nope, nothing changed... just click Cards > Poker and then go to the Tournaments menu at the top of the window. You'll see the September Hourly Freeroll.

I don't want to get into the exact nature of our decisions on this - I'll say that we draw a red line at VPNs. We are not going to send back someone's losses (or cancel their winnings) just because they're a US citizen, if their play came from some residential broadband network in Europe. In general, if people are using a home computer on a regular network to access our site, then we consider that bet to be coming from the country the connection originates in. We believe that if you own a piece of equipment in another country that you're using to bet, then you are forwarding the bets yourself -- i.e. acting as your own casino and broadcasting an illegal service into the US. If a guy mails himself pot from Amsterdam, that doesn't mean that the coffeehouse where he bought it has broken any laws. He's the one breaking the law. That logic is totally valid for VPNs, too...but renting a server for a few bucks a month is one less major level of difficulty for the average gambler than buying a condo in the UK with an internet connection, and so we feel it's worth trying to stop it. The reason is that the laws aren't always applied logically; Bitcoin and gambling both have plenty of heat, and the quarter- or half-million we could be making a year in the US ain't worth it. As far as the IRS is concerned, if they're trying to tweak us by having some guy deposit and lose a few bucks, they're going to have to jump through so many hoops that no reasonable jury would consider us as having had any intent to take bets from US players, and that's the bottom line. Your specific scenario's a tough call, and we'd deal with things like that on a case-by-case basis. Our lawyers have told us we're within our rights to just freeze a player's funds for violating our TOS and leave it at that, and that would by my gut reaction if someone tried to pull that kind of shit on us. So far, it's been our policy to pay back these deposits out of an abundance of caution.

In this case this was IMO clearly a setup by a gov't agency, and we are trying to return the bettors money in good faith. So to repeat:

Bettor, come claim your deposit back. It will be waiting for you until the end of time, because we do not want your money.

The reason for this post is that we believe the person in question was actively trying to entrap us, and is intentionally ignoring our email asking for a Bitcoin address to return their money to. Therefore it's important to state, in a public forum, that we will reverse wagers made from the US, and that we are not claiming this person's money.

We have reversed one set of wagers before, to an American. We have never, and will never, reverse wagers in any other case. If there is some other gross violation of our TOS we would do so, but it would need to be something egregious, and it hasn't happened in the 15 months we've been open. We're the longest-standing Bitcoin casino and we have a reputation to defend; we pay fast and we never screw around with our players' money. We keep at least 5x our players' total standing funds on tap at all times to pay out jackpots. So - this is not a setup to some other punch - it's covering our legal ass.

We're not magicians, but we make every effort to identify them. Most legal casinos rely on two things to comply with US restrictions: simple IP blocks, plus the fact that payment processors won't accept US funds. With Bitcoin, we can't rely on the latter. We subscribe to two services that track known VPNs, hosting blocks and TOR exit nodes; in this case the user entered through a server that was not on either list. At that point we have three other internal checks we perform. The point here is not to stop all VPNs, it's to make every good-faith effort to not take American players, so that, e.g., a guy in the IRS office in Kansas City can't gamble on our site without breaking several federal and international laws, violating our TOS and entrapping us in order to do so. The point is to make it totally clear that we don't want Americans playing and to make it as difficult as possible.

We believe the play took place illegally, we believe from America, in violation of our TOS. The guy was using a VPN that slipped through our system and was only caught on our manual check. We reverse both wins and losses in cases where we believe an American has played.

ed: FWIW, the guy lost and we're refunding his money.

This is a public announcement to player "clubfooted" - we cannot take your bets. All of your bets have been reversed and your account has been frozen. This was done within 1 hour of your play. We have not had a response yet from your email address.

We do not want your money on our books.

Contact security@strikesapphire.com immediately with a Bitcoin address where we can return your deposit.

In case you missed it in the old thread...our $0.50 NL Texas Hold'em freerolls (cashouts in Bitcoin) are running every hour from now through the end of September!

And if you haven't tried StrikeSapphire, come check out our multiplayer Craps, Roulette, Blackjack, video poker and lots of other original games.

Hey all! Been awhile, but we're truckin' along...
Quick announcement: Our hourly NL Hold'em freerolls are back from now through the end of September, $0.50 an hour, and only 3 players needed to qualify! Jump in anytime.

We're also leaving bots on easy 3-player sit & go tables, so feel free to take them for a spin.

And the offer above still applies; if you run out of chips, choose your cashback method. People have been contacting us privately for these, but we do prefer to have you post here to help bump our thread!

uhhh...this is strange (from the pastebin)...


(emphasis mine). So bitscalper/bitdaytrade is also jjfarren, who's also labeled as a forum scammer? That's interesting. In any event it calls into question the validity of the convo.

I don't know enough about the details of their business to say who did what to whom. But I've done some minor work for JRO and been paid on time. I also know from talking to him that he's smart, honest, and he's not the kind of guy who would see his reputation screwed for a few thousand coins. Why would he? He's got way too much to look forward to. And it sounds like this chat is at the very least, very suspicious. Maybe Wayne Lee-Archer can show up and tell us if it's legitimate?

Zhou: Remember when you personally told me that I would get my money back?

Since then I've tried to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I'm a developer and a business owner. I want to have sympathy for your plight, because I know how hard it is to run a startup that's responsible for other people's money. I do understand. As a casino owner though, I know that no one has sympathy for excuses from the bank, and my personal reputation lives and dies by my ability to pay my debts. Immediately. Not later. No matter how large.

Your reputation will live and die by your ability to pay your debts as well. Because you bear exact same responsibility as me.

I sympathize with your position, but I also think you've done something I would never do (whether I were 17 or 70 years old): You are responsible, directly or indirectly, for a situation where money was stolen from your customers, and you haven't paid them back. It's as simple as that. If I were in your place, I would be paying people out of my own pocket, taking out loans if necessary. It's the only honorable course of action. And no amount of money is worth losing your honor.

The only way you will ever be free of this shame is by honoring your debts. Now. Not later.

So, having read your email, you can have my full sympathy and support when you put my money back into one of my accounts. You owe me $981.18 - that's all I had in Bitcoinica USD when your site went offline. Feel free to open a StrikeSapphire account and send it in as a Bitcoin deposit. I don't care how it comes; when I see proof of your honesty in the form of my money being returned to me, you'll have my support.

Sorry for the delay, we got your ticket

Heh, Thanks Bon!

Heads up - this evening, the BonjinBot will be hanging around for Sit & Go tournaments ($0.40 buyin) with 3-5 players... two are waiting to start up right now.

The Bot's lost about $10 so far, not bad -- not your fault either, Bon. Our code that picks what you'd do in certain situations still isn't perfect, and we're still gathering data. Not a bad time for players to jump in the game!

Well, it's finally started... Meet the StrikeSapphire SINGULARITY.

You probably didn't expect a Bitcoin casino to be the first place your consciousness would merge with the great AI in the cloud for fun and profit, right? Or maybe you did? Either way... Bitcoin Land is full of surprises.

A little history. About 3 years ago I wrote a poker bot -- nothing too complicated, just something to keep people playing when no one was on the site. It's a pretty straightforward piece of RESTful PHP with a little monte carlo routine and a couple gizmos -- but the idea behind it was to be able to program its personality with nothing more than a player's hand history off of our site.

The first of our players to finally qualify for this - by having enough play time, enough status points, and winning enough poker hands - did so last night. A round of applause please for Bonjin... who just became the first player in casino history to have his subconscious mind uploaded into a poker bot of his very own! Bonjin played his bot for a bit, to test it out (we won't get into details, but it held its own) ... and now his bot is live in prime time, playing with our house money. Best part? 10% of whatever it wins goes to Bonjin.

Including what it wins from your bot, should you be awesome enough to get one of your own.

So... Want to have a bot made of your own personality, that makes money for you while you're asleep? StrikeSapphire is the only poker site in the known universe to offer it... and here's what you have to do:

1. Play at least 20,000 hands of poker in real-money ring games or tournaments (including freerolls)
2. Earn more than 10,000 player points since opening your account
3. Have a silver star
4. Have won more showdowns 1-on-1 than you've lost.

Think you can do that? Or have done it? Contact help (at) strikesapphire.com for more info...

BTW Someone voted we were slow to pay out?  If anyone had a problem with a payout, let me know; there are only two of us who handle all of them, and I think the slowest one so far has been 8 hours...

This seems to confirm what we believe - that Tihan and/or Patrick sent the money to themselves and claimed a hack.

My claim - StrikeSapphire's claim - for $981.18 which was entirely in USD should have been processed months ago. You had all my documentation, including my passport. I spoke personally with Zhou, and with Patrick on separate occasions and was assured that it would be handled quickly.

I'll address Genjix here, because Zhou was out of the process at that point: There was absolutely no reason for you not to have paid back my USD long before your MtGox account was 'compromised'. It didn't involve any Bitcoins. The money was there in your account; you know who I am. You took my money.

There was also no reason to continue to ignore my emails. Long before this "theft" from your MtGox account, we began to suspect that the Bitcoin Consultancy (in particular, Patrick) was planning to take our money and run. I have a chat log with him where he denies he's planning to do that, and then immediately and rudely adds that I need to know that "Bitcoinica Consultancy" is not the same as "Bitcoin Consultancy". It was such transparent hedging, it was clear to me at that point he was a crook.

You didn't notice the first two large MtGox withdrawals? You didn't notice $40k and then $60k going missing, or the emails they must have sent? Tihan's LastPass password after the date of the initial compromise was the MtGox API private key...and still hasn't been changed? How stupid do you think we are? No one in their right mind would believe this bullshit. And it doesn't change the fact that you owe us money.


It's the position of StrikeSapphire that:

1. The Bitcoin("ica") Consultancy 3 and Tihan who financed the heist - never had any intention of returning our USD.

2. The USD withdrawn from their MtGox account into Liberty Reserve has undoubtedly gone right back into the pockets of the BC and Tihan - as will any other money should MtGox unlock their account. Had MtGox not locked their account, we would clearly have seen another "hack" already, since someone asked to have the password reverted. Then there would be another round of "oops, can't believe we were so stupid", and then silence.

3. Tihan gave BC $500k, supposedly for Coinlab. The real purpose of this money was to buy Bitcoinica and drain its users' accounts. All these "hacks" have been his withdrawals.

4. Patrick, Tihan, et. al. personally owe us $981.18... and until that's paid, we consider them thieves.

We recommend that everyone injured by this scam file a criminal complaint against Mr. Seale with the USDOJ. It's very easy to do, and you can file it online here:
http://www.ic3.gov/
It only takes a few minutes.

We will join any organized legal action against Mr. Seale in the United States, where I think there's a good chance of holding him personally accountable for stealing our money, given the trail of public claims to his ownership of Bitcoinica and his direct access to their USD accounts. Finally, we encourage anyone in Washington State who was harmed in Bitcoinica's theft to file in small claims court against Mr. Seale, which is the easiest way to put his involvement in the public record.

Hey Bitlane.

The requirements are listed first - it has to have been a deposit lost in the past week, no withdrawals since then, etc. Everything under "requirements" is necessary to qualify for either style of cashback.

By "terms", we mean what terms are placed on the cashback. Assuming you qualify and choose the 50%, it comes in the form of a bonus with wagering requirements (the terms). If you choose the 10% there are no wagering requirements, and the cash is basically a free win with no terms on it. Most casinos that offer cashback only offer it in the form of a bonus, usually a "sticky" bonus that can be played but can never be withdrawn and has heavy wagering requirements before even the wins can be withdrawn. The kind of offer we're putting in this forum is usually only available to long-standing VIP players at most casinos.

Sorry if it was unclear. I've changed the wording around Requirements to clarify it.

hm. The problem that strikes me here is: Why would you want to tie Bitcoin denominations to USD? In the future, Bitcoins could be a lot more stable than hyperinflationary fiat.

I wish our site's customer balances weren't tied to USD. There are reasons for it... but I think the beauty of Bitcoin is that it's completely independent of that. I guess you could tie the denominations to be "less than 1 $N" where $N is the average of a basket of currencies, but then who decides what currencies are included? And why choose USD instead of Euros or something else...?

If you think the US government has a fetish for blocking online casinos... Communist China is way ahead of them.

AFAIK no bitcoin casinos have been blocked there yet, but it's a matter of time. There are some large online casinos that operate in the mainland; in fact there's a master license holder in a certain offshore jurisdiction who specializes in punching holes in the Great Firewall for exactly that purpose. Retail price of getting your site decent uptime in Beijing is $100k a year, supposedly for "hidden infrastructure" within China but probably mostly being paid as bribes to Chinese officials.

I'd like to watch that pitch...

Genjix, Asking again:

What is the status of my USD? My claim is for $981.18 -- no Bitcoins, no open positions. Just USD that was being held for me by Bitcoinica. This should have been handled before any Bitcoin issues or MtGox theft or anything. It's completely cut and dry. I provided my bank information, you guys already had my passport on file.

Added a poll... I better get at least one vote on #4!