Again, it's useless to blame a lobby or a government unless we know what's going on, and I still haven't heard a response. Indictment? Yes or no, and by what country and on what charge?

Anyone who leaps to conclusions without having the basic facts is only doing damage by setting up straw-men.

So, that's a yes, they're under indictment? On what charges?

Well, no one should work for free...except me, I guess

I haven't really sounded off about this, and maybe for the best, but I'll say while I can appreciate the pressures that were likely brought to bear on TradeHill, it would be a real public service for the community to know exactly what they were and how things went down. It does none of us any good to sit here and speculate about exactly what the final straw was, and it's stupid to talk about shadowy forces and conspiracies, when a lot of things could be explained by a series of bad breaks, inquiries and temporary seizures initiated by a few bank branch managers acting independently.

There's been some talk - pure speculation in our own legal circle - that TradeHill may actually be under a sealed grand jury indictment and unable to talk openly about their situation. Obviously they can't respond to this if that's the case, but I'd be interested to hear if it's not the case, and I think it would put some of the grander "great powers" conspiracies to rest.

It's not easy to eke out a living with a tiny, volatile, fledgling market like Bitcoin; and even less so if you're taking abuse from your payment processors while trying to hold your customers' accounts intact and maintain your reputation. Despite their lack of communication at the end (which again, I think may not have been their choice but rather imposed by a court - time will tell), TradeHill never acted with malice or took anything from their customers. It will be interesting to know if our conjecture was accurate, but again we might not find that out for awhile.

At least those two movements actually motivate a few people, and might actually shift political debate in the US a little. Truthout is like that hippie neighbor with 17 cats who keeps inviting you over to smoke hash, listen to Jello Biafra and talk about Che.

Occam's razor: Why assume a conspiracy when all this can be explained by incompetence? 

Check out the new giveaway too

I just started using CXC in the past couple weeks, and think I was unlucky in that I experienced the worst of a couple of issues that have shown up since then. It's been a bit bumpy, but the customer service is excellent and has definitely made up for it. All the issues have been resolved quickly and efficiently.

I've got a positive view of the site, the owners and the CS. There are two minor technical issues that could improve the site, though. Firstly, the lag-time between placing a "Quick Buy"/"Quick Sell" order and having it execute. I've seen this take anywhere from 30 seconds up to a minute and a half. In one case, the trade didn't execute, but stayed on the books in small pieces, and I had to delete each one manually and place the order again. It would be better if Quick mode either locked the orders in question for 5 seconds while waiting for approval, or simply executed what they could immediately and warned you that some of your orders couldn't complete, and gave you the option to leave them or try again at a new price. I realize that raises other issues like security (preventing an attacker from locking up the exchange repeatedly), so it's not an easy request.

The other thing is it would be nice to see Bitcoin deposits as pending while they're waiting for confirmations. Gox doesn't do this either, but it always bugged me.

Other than that, it's a great service and there are definitely some net positives that make it worth a little extra in trading fees, particularly the ease and speed of bank withdrawals for those of us outside the US.

Yup, that's what we're doing. Giving away free money to the winners of poker tournaments that cost nothing to enter.

Everything OK?

Since everyone else is pitching, I might as well too 
Try StrikeSapphire if you're not in the US. A lot of our original games like "Scuba Cube" and "Sapphire Rummy" have a 100% average return-to-player if played skillfully. Plus we've got roulette from $0.01 up to $50 (with silver VIP status). Also, blackjack, 3 card poker, multiplayer craps, keno, slots, and poker (of course).

This just in... StrikeSapphire now has two new round-the-clock tournaments: a 3-player, $0.50 buyin with a $3 prize pool, and a 6-player, $0.50 buyin with a $6 prize pool. We're paying out double what you put in!

Also:
In addition to our round-the-clock $1.10 freeroll, StrikeSapphire is now offering two $3 NL-Holdem freerolls nightly, at 9pm and 11pm GMT. Only four players are needed to start, 10 players max (if we get more, we'll raise the payouts). See you there!

A lot of poker players hate bots, obviously. But if they're labeled as bots, and they're only on tables where you know there will be a bot, then whether it's a house bot or a player bot I don't see why it's unethical. We don't ban bots as long as they're labeled "bot" and stay on bot-friendly tables, and we keep a couple of them around in case people just want to practice. Players can choose if they want to play them or not.

Something about this just sounds all kinds of wrong.

Did BTCOnTilt get popped by the US gov't or something, and we just don't know about it yet?

Yup! Once you're logged in, check out the Rewards menu. We offer a 100% matching bonus for the first deposit of anyone you refer, up to $20.
Got your PM by the way, haven't had a chance to get back to you about that yet.

BTW, @OP
if you go directly to Bitcoinica's IP with https://50.56.4.62 -- or any direct IP address that supports https, and proceed through the warning, your connection will still be encrypted even though the certificate ID isn't recognized by the browser. So even though it shows red on the lock, if you click the lock for details you should see that it's just a validity error, but that the encryption is working.

Well, I'm really glad we spawned such a fascinating conversation about power and politics  

Cypherdoc, you're on Comcast. Comcast's in America the last time I checked. @myself, in case you thought you were still in Karbombistan, you actually do have rights in America. For example, you have the right to remain silent; you have the right to an attorney. You have the right to complain loudly and to lobby your congressman about not being able to use a foreign casino website. But you won't. Because you say you want freedom of speech... but really you're too lazy to do anything other than bitch on a forum. Maybe you should bitch about the fact that you live in a fascist country. You just want convenience. So everybody else in the world should bend over backwards, take risks and break laws so you can do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it. But just wait. When those foreign law-breaking casinos run off with your money? It's "Boohoo I'm being censored" one day, and "Boohoo Mr. Policeman, those criminals took my money" tomorrow. Or else, "Oh no, my government shut down my favorite casino and they won't give me my money back. Guess I'll go back to watching Regis until the next idiots come along who I can gamble with for three months before my government shuts them down." Write a letter to your fuckin Attorney General. Tell him you're a victim of censorship. It's a free country they say, and stamps are cheap.

I really can't believe TH won't take care of you here. The delays and issues with banks are somewhat troubling, and there's been some slippage with their CS but I think they're under a lot of pressure right now. We don't have reason to believe they aren't solvent. You should post this in the current thread in the main forum and ask them to address your issue. I know I'd personally like to see them address it; because I don't think they have any malicious intentions. You should wait and save the $1k if you can.

Sadly, I won't be near London for ICE.

Your point about affiliates and superaffiliates is well taken. I was fortunate enough to have some great advice and mentoring from industry insiders in the years I was building Sapphire. A lot of what I learned is that the larger & less nimble casinos today suffer from crippling inertia, inefficiency, and a serious lack of imagination when it comes to marketing and management structures. We don't actually have affiliates. We're built to rely much more on player referrals, which I think are more trustworthy and valuable. Sapphire's set up in a way that doesn't distinguish superaffiliates from managers; in fact, superaffiliates are mods who manage their region, with regional marketing just a small part of the job. They can set up local promotions and local tournaments, and draw marketing funds from the general treasury; but the focus is on loyalty, not new player acquisition. And they're on exclusive contract. This turns the traditional model on its head. To date, we haven't put it into full effect - we're not big enough to sustain it yet - but the software and business structure are there to support it. Roughly speaking, one of our chiefs with 1200 players in his country will have a full-time staff of two, a $10k marketing budget, and earn about $91k per year for an 8-hour workday. And I'm specifically not looking for people with previous affiliate experience. I actually don't believe in online marketing. More ad rotations, SEO, spam, offsite links...as far as I can see, all of that is a hugely inefficient way to get an audience. I'd rather put that money into customer service, loyalty programs, larger jackpots, and offline marketing. And I want our managers out meeting players at poker games and working from their phone at the racetrack, setting up local bar nights and player get-togethers; not spending all day on the internet figuring out new ways to spam.

Whether any of this will actually work is a completely open question, but we might soon get a chance to find out.

Sorry man. America. Rules is rules.

Matonis, for what it's worth, I agree with you and this is exactly what I've been thinking about lately. Technically there's nothing stopping us from taking other payment methods in Costa Rica now...I've been looking at it from every angle for almost a year. But I've been hesitant for a number of reasons, which are:
*Additional KYC overhead
*The danger of becoming a conduit between methods that have chargebacks, and only pay out once a month, and BTC which has to be paid instantly and has a lot of volatility
*The extremely high fees charged by processors which would force us to lower our paybacks and bonuses
*Unexpected delays in payment and rolling reserves held by the payment processors, which increase our risk
*High up-front overhead for banking introductions and additional legal fees in the countries we chose to land the funds in
*Becoming just a tiny, unaccredited casino in an ocean of big ones, forcing us to spend more to seek higher volume, raise minimum deposits, and rapidly pressing up our server infrastructure and ability to handle customer service before we actually see any profit. I've always been a fan of growing slowly and responsibly with this.

Of course, not taking other methods means we are really counting on a lot more regular gamblers from the general public turning to Bitcoin to play. That seems more likely in the US, where there aren't a lot of other methods available. It means our interests are very closely aligned with the spread of Bitcoin as a worldwide means of exchange, which is why I loved GoWest's idea of BitcoinsForChristmas, and we put our resources into building the site with him.

For that reason, it would be great for us if other casinos decided to start accepting Bitcoin en masse. I'm not worried about the competition, because I think our games are unique enough and our service is good enough to keep a growing niche of players loving our site and coming back to play -- like the 3dice model. Rather than having to deal with all the nastiness of the payment processors, a move by other casinos toward Bitcoin would bring in a flood of players who could suddenly cash out to BTC and try our slots and games for a unique experience. Rather than having to prove ourselves legitimate in a whole new arena, it would legitimize what we've been doing all along, and I think we'd have a better shot of licensing games and providing consultancy to the majors, having been one of the first in the arena. It might hurt our SEO pretty badly, but search only accounts for about 2% of how people find our site anyway.

I figure if we keep hammering away at maintaining a solid reputation, and just keep doing what we do, the world might just come to us. At least, that's what I think in my optimistic moments. So - you've voiced what I've been silently thinking for awhile, and it feels true. I hope it is.

Thanks, elux. Nice to have you on the site.

To any & all... As long as we're just doing Bitcoin transactions, we're not enforcing real names or asking for identity unless we see multiple accounts, poker collusion, or something we feel is suspicious as far as the location being in the US. In that case, you might not be able to deposit until we can verify your identity. That's our main security priority; we're not trying to make signing up a hassle or make life less anonymous for Bitcoin users.

If/when we add more payment methods, anonymous Bitcoin users might have to provide some additional information if they want to use those methods to withdraw, but will be able to continue using Bitcoin with anonymity.