Sure, that's all fine. The issue is not taxation or tax-evasion. My question is basically: how does the gov draw the line of what's considered play-money and what's considered real-money? This is clearly relevant since gambling with real-money in the US is only legal in select physical jurisdictions, yet playing poker on Zynga, as noted above, is perfectly legal despite the fact that there is effectively an exchange rate between USD and Zynga chips... But, if a poker site denominated in Euros allowed US players, it would pretty quickly get some Department of Justice attention. So where's the distinction?
This might be the reason:
Zynga is the only authorized seller of Facebook chips (or MySpace poker chips, etc.) in its games. Everyone else is engaging in fraud and/or breaking various laws.
http://www.zynga.com/about/poker-chips.phpAny buying and selling of the chips is ilegal and thats why they dont care. They are hard to sell. Its not really competition for the dollar.