Since my original reply to this was deleted by some alleged moderator, I'll post another.

Apparently, it is not permitted to disagree that a guy who contracts hits on people for cutting into his profits is the hero of the universe, even when the OP of the thread is an insult to the character of anyone who doesn't worship this guy.

I guess that's the libertarian ideal.  Freedom for all, until someone disagrees with you.

DPR actually opposed legalizing drugs, because that would mean the horrors of regulation and taxation.


In other words, fuck all those people rotting in prison.  His personal political agenda is much more important.

Guess it depends on how eager DPR is to cut a deal.  Holding onto the proceeds of an illegal criminal enterprise, if they can prove it (which I don't know if they can) is the kind of thing that moves your sentence toward the maximum end of the sentencing range.  Considering that's life without parole in this case, he might have some incentive to deal.

I see the prosecution of people who take out, or even try to take out hits on their "business" rivals and enemies (even when those are scum themselves) as a good thing.  So if DPR is guilty of trying to do that, I see his prosecution as generally a good thing.

As for the short-term, it's a PR black eye for Bitcoin to be associated with these kinds of shenanigans, although just like cash, people will always do illegal things with it. . .and automobiles, and cell phones, and computers, and all sorts of things that are otherwise good.

In the long term, who cares?  It's not going to have much of an impact.  I predict that the successful model for an Internet black market is closer to BitTorrent than Napster, and SR was the Napster of such enterprises.  Way out of line, way illegal, and way prosecutable.  Plus you had a dude at the top who took out $80 million as his cut of the illegal business.  Hard for him to portray himself as some kind of white knight.

Done at a peer to peer level, there is no "Dread Pirate Roberts" to bust, and everyone takes responsibility for their own actions.

Actually, more like everyone's Bitcoins become worthless at the whim of an oligarchy.  As soon as the Gang of Four or whoever decide they don't like you, *poof* your Bitcoins are gone.

Never mind that the whole "stealing from the FBI" idea is just insanely stupid for practical reasons so obvious they need not be outlined.

Thanks for the bonus.

Playability issue here.  As you can see, when I split 22 against a dealer 2, I get this screen.  First, I got 29 for my first hand, but couldn't see the other one.  After doubling that, and hitting 16, my other hand is completely invisible so I have no way of deciding what to do next.



ETA:  I note that in the posting, I can actually see whatever I have is a 12, but that isn't easy to make out on the phone.  I also don't know whether it's a pair, though, so I don't know whether to split again (66 would also be a split).

Also, I made a microdeposit of .0009, and that never showed up.  I suspect it's a minimum deposit thing, which you should warn about, as when I made a larger deposit of .002, that did show up.

darkmule for new account signup bonus.  Thanks.

*shudder*

I think the last thing any of us want is for there to be an actual incentive to encourage the government to steal people's BTC.  They already do that enough with our fiat, cars, houses, etc.

potluck-bear-834

There's no direct evidence they got any evidence by compromising TOR, and it is entirely plausible they got DPR just through some elementary blunders he made.  I wouldn't rule out a compromise, though.  There is a legal principle known as "parallel construction," in which investigators obtain evidence, perhaps illegally, then realize that the evidence was illegally obtained and won't be admitted, so they go about trying to find another source for the same information which is not illegal.  In fact, the NSA has advised the DEA and other agencies to do exactly this.

Before I'm accused of ^{[citation needed]}, here's the source.

Incidentally, parallel construction is itself illegal and evidence gained or manufactured by such a method would also not be admissible under the "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine.  However, it is not unlawful to use parallel construction for other purposes, such as concealing the identity of a confidential source, or some technological capability, so long as the original evidence was not illegal to obtain.  However, the use of such prosecutorial tactics should presumptively be suspicious.  IMO.

There's nothing explicitly outlawing "Bitcoin gambling."  However, most states have laws against running a gambling operation and taking a rake.  These generally consider gambling to be for "anything of value," and anyone arguing Bitcoin doesn't have any value is not only FOS, but not going to be very convincing to a jury.  After all, why would anyone take a cut of something with no value?

The feds have maintained the position that the Wire Act prohibits Internet gambling operations (gambling operations defined as above), but it is far from certain this is actually true.  In fact, the recent Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), the cause of "Black Friday," only prohibits bank transactions connected to "unlawful gambling" operations.  So Bitcoin-only sites don't have to worry about that particular law's banking prohibitions.

So while there's no clear federal law prohibiting online gambling per se, people like Calvin Ayres (Bodog) are fugitives at present as a result of federal claims that there are.  On top of that, individual states do have much more clear laws prohibiting "unlawful gambling."  If a site is knowingly accepting visitors from a state (or perhaps is merely being willfully blind), that state can and perhaps will exercise jurisdiction under its long-arm statute, as that constitutes "doing business" in the state.

Anyone who is going zip-a-dee-doo-dah and just assuming nothing will ever happen is burying his head in the sand.

You'd rather bury your head in the sand and then act shocked when the obvious happens?

I was thinking exactly this.  It could be they actually got their information from a network compromise they don't want widely known, so instead, they went looking for plausible alternate sources of the same information, and completed their evidence collection by traditional means.  It's not a certainty by any means, but certainly not total tinfoil and worth considering.

Yes, it's actually the serious oldskool element of the video poker that I think is best about this site.  It feels like actually playing a real classic full-pay jacks or better machine.

Not quite, since the progressive jackpot doesn't really cost the site anything directly (other than putting the money slowly into a progressive rather than pocketing it).  But casinos generally love them because it allows them to offer a giant jackpot without the casino ever having to take a big hit.  And without ever losing anything, they get the excitement of spreading a game where the odds favor the players.  It's just subsidized by the people who play when the game is -EV.

Bit777: darkmule
Peerbet:  darkmule

Pretty sure I haven't requested this bonus before, but if I did, it would have been under this exact BCT username, so check the thread if you want.

Loan sharking only works when you have a pair of legs you can get to and either can break them yourself or get someone else to break them.

11K is certainly at least interesting.  For that kind of money, even a Vegas casino would be reviewing all their security cameras and bringing in the pros.  It's not absurdly out of variance, and it would be absurd, actually, if there weren't streaks like this.  IIRC, Satoshi Dice operated in the red for months at a time.

But $1,460,000+ is some serious scratch regardless.

The only problem with an open API for a poker site is that it makes it a lot easier for bad guys to write malware.  Bots are one thing, but so are programs to make collusion software really easy, i.e. rather than having to exchange it on some third-party chat program, they can actually write their own client to display each other's hole cards in real time.

Not sure how much of an issue this is, as it only makes more convenient what is already entirely possible to do without too much difficulty, i.e. sharing hole cards, and I frankly haven't seen many bots (yet) worth being concerned with outside of a few limited sets of circumstances.

Of all the idiocy I have ever seen on this site, this takes the cake.