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Prediction Market Site InTrade Bans US Customers
MyFirstNameIsPaul writes "In an announcement dated Monday, Nov 26, 2012, Dublin-based InTrade stated 'that due to legal and regulatory pressures, InTrade can no longer allow U.S. residents to participate in our real-money prediction markets.' The Washington Post reports that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint in federal court against InTrade for 'illegally facilitating bets on future economic data, the price of gold and even acts of war,' demonstrating just how far the long arm of U.S. law can reach."
"InTrade can no longer allow U.S. residents to participate in our real-money prediction markets"..."demonstrating just how far the long arm of U.S. law can reach"
US law being applied to US residents?! Outrageous!
Why is it illegal to wager on a prediction?
Or is this just being treated as a special case of on-line gambling, which apparently the world would end if allowed.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Is the long arm of the law reaching too far? Sounds like a gambling company was operating in the US, or at least for US customers. Gambling is illegal (unless the government is in on it, a discussion for another day :) in the US. Therefore they filed a complaint. Sounds like everything is legit.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
The US law affecting the US citizens, what's that got to do with "long arm"?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I have said it and will say it again. You with your vote (or your non voting) got the people into Congress who limited your ability to bet on future events. Don't complain about the laws Congress makes!
I, for one, am very glad these unlicensed options traders are getting stamped out! There's no room in the economy for these shenanigans! Just think what could happen if people started massively trading options on unregulated exchanges - people would start speculating, maybe betting on, say, housing prices going up or down, and before you know it, we could have a housing assets bubble that would burst, bring down the economy and require massive government bailouts! I'm so glad that options trading is restricted only to regulated, licensed exchanges where such things couldn't ever happen......
The lesson here is this: if you're a small person trying to speculate - that's bad! If you're a giant investment bank trying to speculate - go right ahead, just as long as your dealer^H^H^H exchange is "regulated".
Yeah so when the German government decides to go postal on Google for not censoring Nazi-related searches on Google.de, which may or may not be hosted from US territory, I'm sure you'll be more than fine with Google having to bend to the will of Germany, right? Or how about China...? Ohhhh and what about when Pakistan decides to charge YouTube executives with blasphemy for being "incorrigible" about allowing blasphemous videos on YouTube?
Not really. The CEO of Bet on Sports, was a UK Citizen, living in Costa Rica and was arrested while changing planes in the US just because some of his customers turned out to be US citizens. He spent 33 months in jail, as I understand it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
No brokerage in the UK will allow a "US person" to open an account. This has been true for at least 3 years and probably more.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I have said it and will say it again. You with your vote (or your non voting) got the people into Congress who limited your ability to bet on future events. Don't complain about the laws Congress makes!
Voting or not voting has nothing to do with complaining. At this point, we are too far gone for 'elections' to make any difference. Our freedom went out the window when we decided that 50+1 % can make law. That is called the tyranny of the majority. For some it takes away freedom to intrade, for others freedom to smoke pot, for some the ability to buy and sell raw milk, or sleep on a mattress without fire retardants, or continue to purchase incandescent light bulbs.
It is becoming more and more obvious that these restrictions are not for our own good, or even for the children. It is simply about control - getting millions of people to do or not do something at the will of our leaders. When we as people do that to animals, it is called a farm - and they are called cattle. What does that make you?
I had money down at InTrade betting that this was going to happen. Now how am I supposed to get my money!?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"Listen, the government gave you a choice between Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs in the last election, so you can't complain that Goldman Sachs is raping your future!"
Yes, that follows logically . . .
http://betsofbitco.in/ has no restrictions on location. They're probably totally legal here as well, because except for sports gambling, and futures markets specifically, there are no US federal laws prohibiting gambling. Several laws (The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, The Federal Wire Wager Act, 18 U.S.C. 1084) prohibit the transfer of funds by wire for purposes of gambling, but gambling itself is only regulated at the state level (with the two specific exemptions above.)
InTrade predictions are less gambling than the stock market. At least the predictions on InTrade are less affected by random unscrupulous manipulators. Take the predictions of the ice cover on the Arctic, for instance: if you did your homework, you knew there would be very little ice cover on the Arctic this year, and could bet accordingly.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Hello, anyone in there??? How would people buying and selling EVENT futures based on housing prices, on an Irish exchange, affect the ACTUAL prices of housing? Housing prices were driven up by low interest rates, lax credit qualifications putting more people into the market, and HOMEBUYERS SPECULATING on the homes themselves. No futures market is going to affect that. The only affect is in the other direction. That's by design.
Do you have any idea what Intrade does, and what their contracts look like? It sounds like you don't.
No of course not, actual prices could never be affected by futures speculation, this has been proven over and over again, just look at commodities, say precious metals like silver, er... Never mind, I meant the energy sector, look at crude oil and gasoline prices, where you can clearly see that... No, wait, wait, I uh... Surely there must be, um, something,,, /sarcasm
Seriously, you honestly think the packaging of real estate mortgages into futures-like securities had no effect on the actual prices of homes during the run up to the meltdown??? Or that what's being discussed here is so very different from that?? Are we living in the same universe? In my world the real estate bubble was almost entirely driven by the big banks and big institutionalized traders, the poor home owners mostly just got taken along for the ride, either intentionally or by happenstance.
Unless "the law" means "whatever the U.S. government wants." They filed a complaint in their own courts, which have no jurisdiction over Ireland, and an Irish company caved in under what was an empty threat.
Liberty in your lifetime
You can't open a foreign bank account
That's a GOOD thing. It keeps the rich bastards from laundring money and evading the taxes they don't pay enough of anyway. Whether or not there's a law against opening a foreign bank account, normal people never were free to do so. See, that's one thing wrong with mainstream libertarianism, it's freedom for the rich to do whatever the fuck they want. Any "freedom" I can't have I have no trouble with the government keeping from your rich ass.
however business cannot abuse you if you don't want it to
Mitt, is that you? Or are you Don Trump? I see you've never had the misfortune of being out of work and hungry. Tell that to your average WalMart worker. Tell that to anyone who lived by a Monsanto plant before the EPA. Tell that to someone who earns their living fishing in the gulf when BP ruined it.
But where are you going to go if your government abuses you?
To the polls. Where am I going to go when Amerin abuses me? I have no other choice of natural gas.
They are certainly now making it harder and harder to drop US citizenship.
Wow, a patriot. You rich boys really have an entitlement attitude, don't you?
I like the idea that Americans can't do intrade, because those who can't afford it will try to and be victimized, and the rest, well, fuck 'em. Let them gamble on the Chicaho futures exchange; that's what it's for.
If you want to work for liberty, work for liberty for EVERYONE. Abolish the TSA, abolish the border "no 4th amendment zones". Abolish drug laws. Intrade doesn't affect me or any other of the 97%, so you know what? We don't give a flying fuck about your "rights" because if I don't have that right, neither should you.
Free Martian Whores!
Oddly enough, in most countries tax evasion is considered a civil matter, not criminal. The US is the only nation rampaging around the world looking for US bank accounts hiding in Switzerland or the Cook or Cayman Islands, threatening to imprison anyone who doesn't spill the beans on every American's private financial details.
The first American convicted in this most recent witch-hunt was the son of a holocaust survivor who's father told him to always keep some cash overseas because you never know when tyranny will come knocking and you'll need that cash to buy your way out of the country before the ghetto walls are sealed.
Most people aren't even aware of the bizarre means with which they can end up "owing" tens of thousands of dollars of US taxes. Say you visit a hospital and somehow or another there is some miscommunication between your providers and your insurance company...or an outright scam...that leaves you owing $100k in medical debt because one of your dozen or so providers at the hospital turned out to be "out of network" (and didn't bother to even inform you that he was treating you. In fact, he may have just been 'observing' you in accordance with state law, and now you're stuck with his bill). Outraged, you refuse to pay, and after 2-3 years of dealing with collection agencies, refusing to pay one penny, they realize that even if they sue you they will still not get paid. So they decide to "forgive" your debt. Which, depending on your income and net worth, could leave you owing $50k in federal tax since the forgiven debt is considered taxable income for that year. This is just one of literally dozens of scenarios thousands of people wake up to in horror every day. In fact, most people who owe thousands in back taxes usually made rather simple decisions in ignorance, and the government doesn't simply allow for transactions to be reversed. It's one of the reasons why most smart people hire well educated CPAs to file every tax return because making just one mistake on a tax return could land you in jail for years and leave your family impoverished for decades. Even though they read the tax language in plain English to mean just what it seemed to be saying, the words used by the IRS rarely follow any of the definition's found in Webster's dictionary.
Taxpayer: "But form 58495 said I don't owe tax as long as I followed rule 3.5.a" .... "
Taxman: "But form 99867 says you do owe tax if you meet condition (b) in tax volume 64, page 973"
Taxpayer: "But how am I supposed to know this when it's impossible to even read one time through the whole tax code in one lifetime?"
Taxman: "Ignorance of the law
I believe in the value of a broad and effective social safety net and I understand that probably means we can't enjoy the benefits of a small and efficient government that doesn't have power to control every detail of a citizen's life. But what has the US become? And yet look at the tangle of strings they call a safety net? We have one of the biggest and most intrusive governments that controls its citizens even after they have permenantly fled the country (try not filing your taxes after moving to Sweden or France and see how long before you're threatened with criminal charges and they try to get you extradited for prosecution). The compromise between Reps and Dems is a big and powerful government that doesn't help it's citizens until they have been means tested into poverty.
The right to flee this country should be added as an amendment to the Constitution. I thought only Communists restricted their citizen's ability to leave their borders.