 |
June 09, 2012, 09:23:47 PM |
|
First of all, anyone in the US playing at our site is strongly advised not to do so because we may ask for ID verification at any time to prove you're in the country of origin of your account and your IP address.
There's no "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" here. We really don't want Americans on the site.
@IveBeenBit. Here's our perspective.
1. We really don't know if UIGEA applies to running poker games in Bitcoin. No one does, at least until it's been to court. My best guess is that it doesn't violate the letter of the law, but that the Justice Department will certainly find a way to make it prosecutable if it takes off. In my opinion the shutdown of FullTilt and other sites was commissioned by the Vegas and Indian gaming interests, who within the next 1-2 years will sweep into a brand-new online poker market in the US. They're going to impose a 20% tax or more, meaning rakes on poker games are going to go up to 20-25%. And they have a captive audience, because poker players in the US are basically like poker players in prison who value cigarettes at $1 a piece. Anyway, the USDOJ is basically their bitch, and the last thing any of them want is to have some startup site operating in Bitcoin, and they will bend or break any law to nail the fucker down before D-Day when Caesars and Wynn open national online poker rooms; which is coming really soon.
2. We are not only a poker website, but a full casino. No one credible has done a legal survey of what it means to operate a poker site in Bitcoin under state law in the 50 states, let alone blackjack and roulette games. However some states make it fairly clear that it's criminal to accept anything deemed of value on a game of chance. Leaving aside whether poker is a game of chance or not - which still hasn't been fully decided under states' laws - we don't make money on poker; our revenue is from games of chance. So in states like Washington, Louisiana and Minnesota, we would almost certainly be illegal no matter what currency we took. These states have the power to extradite people from other states, and in theory the power to even extradite people from other countries.
Therefore it's not worth the risk. We'll be happy to see what happens with inifiti poker and if it turns out the USDOJ can't make a case against them, we'll move our own poker software into the market. Our software is available for licensing and we hope that small operators in Nevada, New Jersey and Washington, DC will consider licensing it for legal games, as it's superior to much of the software out there and available at a significantly lower price and overhead. But there is no question that we will bar the US market for the foreseeable future, because the tangle of laws in place between states and the federal government would make involvement irresponsible for us, our investors, and ultimately for our players whose money we hold in safekeeping.
|
