The answer is easy. Those sites operate their games in USD and not in BTC or "chips". Thus they are protecting themselves against movements in bitcoins exchange rate by only allowing deposits but no BTC withdrawals. Basically they are (probably) auto-exchanging BTC for USD at the time of deposit.

Now, imagine you deposit 1 BTC which is converted to approx $450 balance. Over night BTC goes up $30 and the player hits the withdrawal button. The site lost $30 on the spot for no reason. Bitcoin poker rooms who ONLY operate with BTC don't have this problem because 1 BTC will be always 1,000 chips (or whatever) and thus they are not subject to any volatility, the player is.

However, BTC poker has one great advantage. It's almost like playing live at the casino. Buy your chips, play and cash out at the end of your session for almost 0 fee. Trustless. To "manage the bankroll" I recommend setting up a dedicated address for each site in ones wallet and use that to manage the roll, not the site(s).

Yeah, he tried this last year already with a backdated PGP key and was outed to be a fraud. He now tried again and failed again. Wright is not Satoshi. Not last year, not now and he'll never be. When his latest stunt was torn apart by the community he quickly updated his blog to "this":

http://www.drcraigwright.net/

In general you shouldn't trust an online wallet or keep your coins with a 3rd party longer than needed. Defeats one of bitcoins core principles which is "being your own bank". Check out Electrum for your computer and Mycelium for your phone and BACKUP THE PRIVATE KEYS for any address in use.

http://bitzuma.com/posts/six-things-...-private-keys/

Embrace the financial freedom the way it's meant to be used and think outside the box of bank accounts,financial regulation, limitation on how YOU can spend YOUR money, online wallets and co.

I recommend checking out this well written article on Khan's site.
http://professionalrakeback.com/how-...nline-gambling

-HammerMan

Currently use Electrum, but seems like lots of people recommend blockchain. Is there much difference in what wallet is actually used?

Yes very big difference. Electrum is a light-weight wallet that puts you in full control of your keys and you don't need to trust a 3rd party to sustain their service or, worst case, get hacked.

People are accustomed to other people (their banks) holding and working with their funds. So when making the transition to bitcoin it just comes naturally to use a online wallet. However, over the years people have lost thousands of coins to online wallet providers for one or the other reason.

Blockchain.info is certainly one of the best online wallets especially since their recent upgrade to HD wallets but still defeats the purpose of being your own bank.

I've been in BTC for a good 5 years now and I NEVER lost coins but I also never used a online wallet and there is plenty of advantages of managing your own private keys (cause that's basically all it is) rather than using an online wallet.

Going back to private keys, if you run a local wallet and you keep "offline" backups of your private keys you'll be ALWAYS able to restore access to your addresses and coin even if your HD dies, your wallet backup gets corrupted, your phone gets lost or whatever.

In addition you can import the same key to several wallets. For example you can import the private key of an address in Electrum to Mycelium on your phone which gives you access to your coins via both apps.

So yeah, I don't do online wallets.

HammerMan72, i just did my first bitcoin withdrawal from acr yesterday and i didn't create a new wallet with blockchain, instead i used the same bitcoin address that i used to deposit funds. Now that I've read your article, i will create new wallet going forward.
However, I haven't received the funds yet from acr and wasn't sure if its to soon or because i didn't create the new wallet?
I use circle, then blockchain, then poker and reverse for withdrawals.
thx

If you gave them a BTC address then there is no reason why you shouldn't receive the funds. I suggest you contact their support and ask them. The address to which you've requested the withdraw to shouldn't matter. However, I don't play on their site so I can't say, sorry.

As for Blockchain.info, great wallet but like mentioned above I prefer using my own wallet(s) over 3rd party providers. It's just more convenient and if you ever really lose access to an address you know who to blame.

Andreas Antonopoulos just gave a great speech about bitcoin and "having a Swiss bank in your pocket" and how "Bitcoin is not FinTech" to a room full of Bankers at the FinTech 2016 in Zurich. Check it out, it's a great speech.

https://youtu.be/pKs5JSh3z7A

when is stars going to use bitcoin. would make life so much easier

Why would they when having plenty of reliable and fast payment methods already anyways? They have zero reason to add the volatile Bitcoins tbh.

Stars will not be the innovator for something like this. It will always be the competitors. For the record, the benefits are

• very low payment processing fees
• eliminates the need to "park" your bankroll on a poker site
• very fast transfer of funds
• greater player anonymity

The importance of some of these depends on your jurisdiction.

They could easily use Bitpay or other as a payment processor and never even have to deal with bitcoin. Any btc deposits by users would instantly be converted into fiat for them. Processing fee maybe 1% instead of 2-3% like with credit cards.

Not sure if Bitpay offers same service for withdrawal

Every currency is volatile. Just because you don't notice it in your native currency doesn't mean it's not there. Feel free to look up the Forex charts for the Euro and the USD for the last 3-9 months. However, "this" is far from being "volatile". BTC 3 months.



Bitcoin doesn't play by the same rule as the fiat markets do. It's value increase is "mathematically" given since it's directly related to the networks overall hashing power, the cost to maintain the mining equipment and "block rewards". With the upcoming block halving from 25 coins per block to 12.5 coins per block BTC will actually take a nice pump over the next 8 weeks.


@VP$IP well said.

---

No they can't unless Bitpay receives a license to process gambling related transactions in the USA and why would anyone who's using BTC pay a 3rd party 1-5% to process their transactions?

I am aware of this, however you gave the perfect example just below why Bitcoin should not be taken as a serious and long term option. Virtually printing more money and having a potential huge influence on the currency from one day to the other doesn't create much faith, now imagine if some hackers have fun.

Bitcoin doesn't work like the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank. The bitcoin network does not simply "print new money". The supply of new coins is limited and declines every 4 years when the block reward is halved, like in 8 weeks from now, when block rewards will drop from 25 coins to 12.5 coins per block "fixed" for the next 4 years. This is why bitcoin, as decentralised network, has a "controlled inflation curve" which is streamlined with growing adoption of the "currency" and growth of the network.

Check out this article, and perhaps more of the wiki, to learn more about the eco-system and how it's different to traditional banking or centralised currencies issued by a central bank.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply

You'll see that the bitcoin network is much more than "just printing (virtual) money".

Accepting Bitcoin is a huge (anti) money laundering headache for properly regulated sites.

Some regulators are moving towards allowing Bitcoin, but it's far from trivial how sites can meet their AML obligations in this context.

Laundering money through BTC is a lot harder than you might think. Despite what many people say, Bitcoin is NOT anonymous, it's the opposite. All transactions are on the public ledger and can be traced (unless one goes through great hurdles and knows what he/she is doing).

A great example is a recent claim related to the Panama Papers. It was said that "Billions" of dollars have been laundered through the bitcoin network which is simply mainstream media FUD. Bitcoins entire market capitalisation is "just" $7 billion, any new address popping up with "just" millions in it would raise a thousand bells among the blockchain nerds, exchanges and those who would like to see BTC regulated.

In addition, if one of the more reputable poker sites are accepting BTC deposits then the customer most likely already went through the entire KYC and AML procedure.

Question is, do I as player care about someone else running a couple of grand through a poker site to launder the cash? I myself don't care. Hopefully I get to skim some of that money from the player at the cash tables before he withdraws.

How do you prove the source of funds with Bitcoin (i.e. prove that the money comes from an account in your name)? Same question for withdrawals.

And which reputable and properly regulated sites are currently accepting Bitcoin? I'm not aware of any (but haven't looked very closely either).

Why should you have to prove the origin of your funds? When using bitcoin you "prove" that you control / own an address by signing your transactions with the corresponding private key. There is no such things as "names" on bitcoin addresses unless you decide to "tag" your address or publicly sign a message with your address to prove that you control it.

Again, with bitcoin it's not needed. All you need to find is a site that is transparent and which has a decent software / RnG. You don't have to keep a balance with ANY bitcoin site including poker sites neither should you.

The networks fee for a transaction is (in general) is 0.0001 BTC/kb or 5 cents. Thus there is no need to "trust" the site you're playing on just deposit (buy your chips, play, withdraw like you would at the casino. It's one of the greatest advantages of bitcoin.

However, if a gaming license and KYC is very important to you then perhaps bitcoin poker or bitcoin in general is not for you. I for one don't see why I would pay some US facing poker network 5-10% to process MY withdrawal just to receive it through WU or some other processor just because they have some sort of offshore gaming license. If they process at all that is which often takes weeks or never happens. We've seen that often enough.

I rather play on a bitcoin site, put my money on, play, withdraw and "manage" my bankroll through an address dedicated to bitcoin poker in my own wallet.

As for bitcoin sites, I play on Seals with Clubs and have done so for a couple of years and I also play on Cyberdeck Poker which is a newer site.

Bodog / Bovada. Also SWC.

SanchoHH

This is how you would prove ownership of an address in Bitcoin. I recently signed this message (for fun) which can be verified from any wallet or on bitcoin's public ledger.

If you don't have a local wallet, there is online tools such as http://coinig.com/ to verify a signed message. I understand that you probably asked for a different reason. However, this is how proof-of-ownership works on a decentralized peer-to-peer network.

Of course one could always include their bitcoin address(es) in their tax return etc. Technically anyone can do with their bitcoin address whatever they want.

None of them is "properly" regulated unless I missed something.

Bitcoin so much easier to track than cash or usd. It's basically the nsa/cia/fbi/mi5/kgb ultimate weapon for money tracking. Joke that ppl think it's anonymous and tough to track.

It's a transparent ledger of all transactions ever

If done optimally, I'd imagine the "anonymous" part, is in reference to who/what person(s) are actually doing the transactions and what for, rather than the transactions themselves.

Because many financial (and online gaming) regulators require you to do so - or at least require an operator to have the ability to do so.

I'm not looking for a bitcoin site to play on; I was replying to the question "Why don't Pokerstars etc. accept Bitcoin". Apologies if that wasn't clear from my posts.

I asked for examples because it was claimed somewhere that many reputable sites already accept Bitcoin. But it seems that the only sites who accept it are effectively unregulated and as such probably not too concerned about AML regulations (which supports my original argument).

So apparently Coinbase has a problem with deposits to or from Bo, ACR ...so most are going through a mediary (I use blockchain) then on to Coinbase.

Do you think they are tracking that?

I have made a number of such transactions, none very large, and haven't heard a peep.

Made a bitcoin deposit this morning and seems to be taking forever to get confirmed by the network... I thought bitcoin was supposed to be nearly instantaneous

that's usually true... however with the spike in BTC price the last week, it's taking a bit longer (bunch of transactions going through buying/selling?+). I agree this weekend it seems to be slow, but it's not the norm... also be sure you included a recommended transaction fee (0.0001BTC)

i spoke to bvada this morning and they said they are slighly backed up with BC