First of all - "help ensure legitimate gaming and also totally ignore all government laws" - is a totally absurd contradiction. How exactly can a site be legitimate if it ignores all government laws? Does that include laws like, players have a right to be paid back their winnings? Or is there some other kind of law that says they have to pay people out...and if so, why do they have to follow it?

Secondly, most casinos don't run free or open source software. The ones that do tend to look kind of shady. There's a reason for this. It's that operators who don't have the money to buy a casino platform -- or write their own -- probably don't have the money to pay out winning players, so they tend to go out of business pretty quickly and run off with everyone's cash. Like about a half dozen Bitcoin sites already have. Also, while players might want to be anonymous when they gamble, most players don't want to gamble with an anonymously owned casino. They want to know their money is safe.

It's true that if a casino's anonymously owned and running open source software, it could hide from law enforcement. But as a player, I wouldn't trust a casino like that with my money. So as the author of a huge piece of casino software, why would I support handing it out to fly-by-night operators, if I wouldn't want to play at their casinos myself?

Besides all that, there's a free way to get casino software already: Write it yourself. We spent tens of thousands of dollars in three years of development and beta testing to get our code to the level it's currently at. That's not counting about 5000 hours of my own code time and a few thousand hours more managing this business, looking for investment and putting together a company, that could have been spent surfing the internet for free software or something. But it can be done, and anyone willing to invest the time and energy can make it happen. Once you've put that much time into it, you probably won't want some anonymous operator using your software to screw over players, either.

I think the time and commitment we've put into both our casino and our software shows players that we're more trustworthy than a site that sets itself up overnight running free software. Add to that the fact that we have an extreme level of transparency built into our site, plus the fact that our average RTP has been well over 100% after bonuses for the 6 months we've been open, and I think it's hard to argue we're not "legitimate".

Oh yeah, this.
The answer from the lawyers was basically that even if Ron Paul gets elected and there are no more Federal laws, we're still completely f*cked because state laws basically only allow state lotteries to run. The exceptions being states that allow gambling, and the licensing process in NV and NJ is a lot harder and more corrupt than it is in, say, Alderney or Malta. Bottom line don't expect legalization of foreign gaming sites in the US, ever, whether or not Bitcoin's a currency. The only shot at it would be taking $250k to the nevada gaming control board, giving them a couple years to chew on it and reject it, then maybe opening up a small, legal bitcoin operation to compete with...Caesars and Bally, which by that point will have been running intrastate for two years at least.
Brought to you by the American taxpayer - supporting the right to own a gun and constantly shoot yourself in the foot.

Jered, if we really wanted to move cash out quickly through Tradehill and would pay the premium for it, is there a reason it can't be wired from Chile to either a US or European bank account?

Bump.

The irony of this being reported by Russia's state propaganda agency is pretty rich. Like they just can't believe a government could be so authoritarian in this day and age 

Well -- it's gone pretty well except for the gift pickups. We've got about 160 BTC in outstanding gifts that emails were sent to, but who haven't managed to get their gifts. [edit: Meaning, they haven't downloaded MultiBit or another client and actually claimed them]. I ran a bunch of gifts out myself on Christmas Eve, so I know we weren't getting spam boxed -- so if anyone who used the service hasn't had a note saying their friends picked up the gift, email them and help them out!

A month from now, we're going to send out notices to the senders of any unclaimed gifts, giving them an address to pick up the coins; and March 1st, whatever's leftover will be donated to Habitat for Humanity.

All in all, we regard it as a success... it brought some good attention to the community, and got some new people involved.

I've got our lawyers working out whether this means we can take US deposits... it's interesting, to say the least. It definitely takes one concern out of the equation. From my reading, all that's left now is whether anything in UIGEA can be applied to Bitcoin; and it doesn't really look like it.

Thanks. Fixed. Juggling versions here.

The sponsors page is back up -- just a permissions problem while we were reloading it.
@[ed]lonelyminer -- I think it must have been you, because we've had no other mail there yet -- just sent you back, we queued that gift to be re-sent.
We're moving fast tonight 

We haven't updated sponsor links for quite a bit -- didn't realize those sites were down now. Thank you for the info; we'll update it.

Great news -- BitcoinsForChristmas got tweeted by the Wall Street Journal! We've had over 3000 new hits since then. New gift orders are pouring in, and we'll be delivering them all day tomorrow to brand-new Bitcoin holders, who've never used the currency before.

On behalf of the site, and our sponsors, we're very proud to have been right at the front of the "second wave", just in time for the media's apologias for exaggerating Bitcoin's death; and we're glad to be doing something that reflects well on everyone in the community.

We're going to keep the site going for those late gifts, and possibly even turn it into a permanent free service. Why shouldn't you be able to send Bitcoins for Christmas in July? It costs us pennies now that it's up and running; it's great publicity for the currency, and it's obviously got value to the community.

So... Merry Christmas, enjoy the holidays, and thank you for helping us get the word out to so many new adopters. We'll be here in 2012, in one form or another, launching new sites and thinking of more ways to keep building on this amazing platform.

Good grief. Either you must be the most intelligent person ever, who's finally solved all the world's problems, or you've never read a book or newspaper in your life. You'd think 70 years of corrupt communists robbing, executing and torturing their citizens would give people pause before writing something as idiotic as "a new, moneyless, society." Apparently, there's an endless supply of stupid people who're willing believe in this ****.

There's never gonna be a moneyless society, dude. So stop wasting your time and go make some money. Money = proof of work. Bitcoin = proof of work. Even if you killed 99% of the people on earth, you'd still have to give the people who were left an incentive to do things for you, or for each other, because everyone works for themselves first. That's the Big Lesson of communism: No one wants to work for you or some other guy for free. The only moneyless society, ever, was Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. And they starved and executed 1/4th of their population and put the rest into slavery for a bowl of rice a day to make them work. Is that what you call a healthy society? The opposite of the "sick" one we live in now? Go to Cambodia. Go to the museum at Tuol Seng and look at the bones, and think about whether any state has a right to dictate to other people how their freedom and labor should be used.

If you're a silver or gold star VIP player on StrikeSapphire, we've got big news... We've upped the VIP stakes to $25 on blackjack, $50 on roulette, $10 on Three Card Poker, and $10 on our craps tables. Which are, if I might humbly point out, the only multiplayer roulette and craps tables in the industry – not just in Bitcoin.

If you don't have a star yet, you'll get there. Play and find out.

Meanwhile, use the code Atchafalaya to claim up 200% extra on any deposit up to $100. See our terms for the details.

See you at the tables!

I'm agreeing with you. Read my whole post.

From the perspective of someone who doesn't have a lot of money, Capitalism isn't fair. Capitalism awards speculators, and their ne'er-do-well children, and their mistresses and sycophants and shills and hangers-on. It keeps hard-working people locked in debt, sometimes to people who don't have to work at all.

Now on the other hand, from the perspective of someone with a lot of money, awards people who think outside the box; who take risks; and it gives their progeny special advantages. To someone who haS a lot of money, it's eminently fair.

Moreover, to middle-class Americans who think that someday they might have a lot of money (writ the "American Dream"), it's also fair.

Deep down, I agree with evoorhees. It's fair, albeit in a cold and evolutionary way. But I can see both sides of the argument, including as it pertains to Bitcoin.

I guess the thing that's worth remembering is that fairness is a meaningless term when it's thrown around by parties who have something to gain or lose. In the casino industry, fairness has a specific definition: Does the customer know what they're getting? Are the rules as written the same as the rules in play? If so, it's fair. Those rules might be completely skewed toward the house, but as long as all the parties are playing by the same rules, and those rules are out there for everyone to see, then that's fair.

So don't be a cheap winner, and don't be a sore loser. Any set of rules is fair as long as the participants all tacitly agree to them.

Whatever
Any reasonable person can see the gaping hole in your comparison. I don't need to discuss our security measures here again. We don't operate in your country. What we do is legal in the countries where we operate. We respect US laws and don't take American players.

You're mistaking the laws in your country for a guide to morality. America passing a law by fiat does not automatically make something wrong that's legal in the rest of the world. Morally speaking, we don't falsely represent, lie, cheat or steal from people. We treat others the way we expect to be treated. We block problem gamblers and don't let those people sign up again. We pay people what we owe them and we treat our customers ethically and with respect.

Surely you can see the difference.

There's no country in the world where Wagner could do what he did legally. Or where it wouldn't be morally repugnant.

Anyway, I've taken enough flame bait on this.

Balls. First of all, we don't take players or bets in the US. We're the only Bitcoin casino to say that. We've never done anything illegal. Or anything unethical, I'd contend, and I'd challenge you to find a player of ours who had a problem with their experience at our site.

Casinos in general, like the ones in Vegas, are also perfectly legal under American law. And there's nothing wrong with that. Y'know why? Because the disclaim to their adult customers exactly what to expect when playing. They aren't making false representations and lying and telling people they'll be bailed out of a foreclosure. People who play at our site have disposable income, and they understand they're taking bets, risking money on propositions where they stand to lose it. In short, Our customers are adults.

Nowhere do we say our lawyers are going to help them. Nowhere do we promise to deliver loans. We give them a provably fair shot to win something for their money, and we stake our own money against it.

So I have no moral problem with what I do. What Bruce has done, at least based the judge's findings in 2006, is despicable. It's offensive and insulting that you'd try to equivocate and tar our business with that brush, when the difference is obvious to any right-thinking intelligent person.

They're free  
Yeah, more players would be nice. We haven't focused on poker, but we've been running these since we opened in July. Poker isn't a money maker outside the US market, especially if you're just looking at Bitcoin.

@btc_artist, yeah cards and chips can all be done with js-animated divs, that's what switchpoker does. Looks great, too.

Edit: @ fornit -- When I said "they're cheap" I meant, the payout's around 0.5 BTC per freeroll. They're free to join, of course.

It does. It won't for awhile, but I wrote a piece of code last year that takes the first steps toward converting Flash-like code to Canvas without having to light things up pixel by pixel. There are a few other packages out (Grant skinner literally ripped mine off directly to build easel.js, and there's rumor of a falconjs that Adobe's giving to Apache to be the ultimate Flash-to-JS converter)...but although I can code some mean ass Javascript, I recognize that the engines still aren't up to the task of giving rendered graphics downloadable or flash- or java-like quality in the browser. Which is important for gambling, especially games like roulette, craps, anything with a lot of animation. Or even nice card animations. Even though it would be barely possible now to port one game at a time from Sapphire's flash code to Javascript, it would run like a hog on an iphone, no matter how perfectly optimized it was. The javascript canvas and webkit engines are just not as efficient as the AVM2/AS3 virtual machine, or the JVM. Let alone native code.

It does have to change, and it will get there. But if the reason you don't like Flash has to do with all the annoying banner ads, it's going to get worse, because Flash almost never actually crashes a browser, but Javascript crashes them all the time. The more of those banners move away from Flash and into JS/HTML5, the slower the web is going to get.

Ten years from now it won't matter, because Javascript 2 is basically Flash anyway, and HTML6/JS2 will resemble what Flash is now pretty closely. In the meantime, it's either smooth graphics on the desktop, or shitty graphics and works on an iphone.

From what I've heard, pokermavens doesn't let operators have much access, and they seem to run pretty tight software.  I doubt it's rigged to screw over some particular player.

Is it a shitty piece of software? Definitely. But I mean, not much available on the iphone (switch, etc) in HTML5 is going to look or play much nicer. Mavens is flash, but it's really bad flash. Just like switch runs really mediocre javascript. Good flash, or good browser java, looks like a downloadable product and often performs just as well or better. I used to love playing on pokerroom.com before it got taken down by the US gov. That was all Java. I've tried to get some of that feel into the games on Sapphire. Either way, if you want to play a decent poker game, it's either going to be flash or it's gonna be an .exe download, because nothing in javascript looks very nice.