Online Gambling Site Bets On Bitcoin To Avoid U.S. Laws

SomePgmr writes with a story about an online gambling site planning to use Bitcoin to sidestep U.S. regulations that effectively ban online gambling. From the article: "Michael Hajduk had sunk one year and about $20,000 into developing his online poker site, Infiniti Poker, when the U.S. online gambling market imploded. On April 15, 2011, a day now known in the industry as Black Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the three biggest poker sites accessible to players in the U.S., indicting 11 people on charges of bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling. ... Infiniti Poker ... plans to accept Bitcoin when it launches later this month. The online currency may allow American gamblers to avoid running afoul of complex U.S. laws that prevent businesses from knowingly accepting money transfers for Internet gambling purposes. 'Because we're using Bitcoin, we're not using U.S. banks — it's all peer-to-peer,' Hajduk says. 'I don't believe we'll be doing anything wrong.'"

Comments

Re:Another idiot buying into the bitcoin scam.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin is controlled by the consensus system that underlies it, if you decide you want to violate the rules then you are split off automatically into a parallel universe where whatever you do won't be recognized by your trading partners.

Yes, because what we need is a trading system where a bunch of drug traders and antisocial nerds can decide to entirely devalue someone's life savings on a whim one day because that person doesn't have as strong of opinions on whether or not Han shot first than the rest of the collective.

Oh, wait, that's right, "that's no different than the US dollar, derp derp". I keep forgetting that the currency system we've had in place, tried and tested, for around a hundred years or so is now rendered invalid because a nerd has paranoid conspiracy theory fantasies that he really REALLY thinks are real. Herp. A. Derp.

Re:Another idiot buying into the bitcoin scam.

[TheCarp]

> Is the US going away tomorrow? No.
> Are they going away next year? No.
> Are they going away in 5-10 years? No.

So is there evidence that we should know 5-10 years in advance when the US government IS going to fall?

You can put your trust where you want, I don't expect anything is so set in stone. Not that they wont go away, and not that they wont fall apart to the point that their own currency becomes untrusted and worthless....it could very well happen, and it could happen in less than 5 years.