IamHIV is already all over Bitcoin Poker.

You misunderstood what I said. Bitcoin is not intended to be a Ponzi scheme. But how it plays out as a currency and store of value will determine whether or not it is.

The issues are volatility and confidence of currency holders. Bitcoin is backed by nothing, and all it will take is a few more of these scares to make its value plummet beyond repair.

Bitcoin exchanges operate with the consent of federal govt. If DOJ wanted to they could instruct banks that transfers to bitcoin exchanges are in violated of UIGEA.

While virtual currencies may operate outside the influence of governments no virtual currency is useful unless you can
a) convert dollars (or some other national currency) into virtual currency
and
b) convert virtual currency into dollars.

Doing so requires linking with existing "real world" currency networks via banks, credit cards, and other payment processors.

The federal govt controls that link.

Yeah nothing says stable non speculative currency like a 15000% increase in value in a few months.

What is gold backed up? Whatever people value it at.

Same thing with Bitcoin, I understand though how it can appear to be a ponzi, but that would be the same thing as a business failing.

Well considering that about 75% of your post was explaining about bitcoins, perhaps the point was that posting in that thread where there's already some discussion would have made more sense, or at least providing a link to it. Seeing as this poker site and another were mentioned in that thread as well, I don't see the point of parallel conversations, aside from causing confusion, so I'll help you out and merge them.

Media attention caused this by basically advertising bitcoin.

Look I love bitcoin. I mined $487 out of thin air last year but there are two major issues with using bitcoin for poker.

a) you need some way to convert real world assets (gold, dollars, visa credit line) into bitcoin and if the govt gets interested that link is where they will attack.

b) bitcoin has a lot of volatility. Say a pro decided to play poker on a bitcoin site. He deposits $15,000 gets 1000B and turns that into 1400B. yeah 40% return except if the volatility means exchange rate is now $12=1B when he converts back into dollars he only made $1,800 profit or 12.8%. A pretty tough pill to swallow.

Bitcoin has a lot of advantages and I think it will continue to grow and expand. Maybe someday "traditional" poker sites will accept bitcoins as payment. Personally that would make it a lot easier, cheaper, and faster for me to fund new accounts. Plus how cool would it be to mine my own bitcoins and then deposit them to play on say Carbon poker.

That is not encouraging.

Lol, like any other currency is different.

Bitcoin is a funny initiative but because people are hoarding it all for speculation it will fail as a currency.

bitcoins are good for nothing. Its nothing but a giant scheme. The early adopters and creators are the only ones that are gonna get any money out of this fake hodge podge currency.

If this currency ever caught on there would be a bigger **** storm down the road then the DOJ shutting down the big 3.

If you cant realize why this is maybe you should go ahead and invest in some bitcoins then.

All money supplies grow. The US federal reserve created trillions of dollars out of thin air. Actually if money supplies don't grow at least fast enough to keep up with the output of the economic system then they will face crippling deflation.

With bitcoin the ability to inflate money supply is limited by computation power not governmental fiat making it distributed. Anyone can produce bitcoins but doing so requires resources (computation power and electricity). As more bitcoins are created the ability to create more becomes exponentially more difficult. If there is a computing breakthrough that allows coins to be mined 10x as fast quickly new coins, enough people would exploit that and drive up the required computation for new coins to 10x previously level making the new hardware no more effective than the old hardware.

One of the major exchanges for Bitcoins was hacked yesterday, causing a flash crash:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...d-exchange.ars

Realtime YouTube of the crash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1X6qQt9ONg

BitTorrent is mainly used for stealing pron from porn-studios. Bitcoin is not gonna be used for stealing? Fat chance, I don't buy it.

they are reversing the transactions that happened
right now BTC is at around $11 on tradehill

are you ******ed? wait, don't answer that

the thing i dont get, is how do u withdraw the money? say u have 1 million bitcoins, how do u get the amount of money it is worth?

1. exchange like tradehill and get dollars/yen/euros/whatever
2. go to the silk road and buy blow
we JUST need a hooker service in bitcoins and we'll be all set

LOL silk road jacks people so bad. Any idiot could find better prices anywhere, and could transact a hell of a lot more anonymously with cash.

that's only because people are willing to pay higher prices

Via exchanges. People buy and sell bitcoins for various local currencies. Various different options involve bitcoins -> cash, bitcoins -> prepaid visa, bitcoins ->paypal.

For larger amounts of money it is usually bank wire.

Unlike an ewallet there is no "one exchange". Anyone call buy and sell bitcoins.

I know now is probably a bad time to post this as one of the bitcoin exchanges was hacked recently but has anybody out there ever thought of poker sites using bitcoin as currency?

It makes a lot of sense as the usage of it puts a 3rd party, completely unrelated to gambling, in the position of dealing with the money. With the fluctuating exchange rates, obviously this is a new and risky proposition for potential internet poker companies but they might offer monetary "credits" on their site that correlate to how bitcoin is exchanging to real money.

There would be benefits the other way around too. Bringing a large group of players (and large internet poker companies) into the bitcoin market would help stabilize the exchange and promote its use. The currency can be secured and rendered untraceable.

Just a random thought I had and didn't know where to post it.

there's a thread in business on bitcoin

try using the search engine, gimp

Sigh not again

I have bolded the problem part of your post.

Post your screennames, stakes you play, opinions of the software, etc. here:

my sn is rounderZero; usually play 5/10nlhe when there's a game.

The software, while a bit laggy, has never cost me a pot because I can always close and reopen the game before I time out.


For those of you who haven't had the fortune of discovering the bitcoin yet:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30...rency-1011408/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...ayers-1021284/

Bitcoin is a decentralized p2p currency that has blowing up this year. Read a detailed description here.


Poker sites could, with very little effort, allow nearly instant bitcoin withdrawals without having to deal with the volatility of holding onto a bunch of bitcoins. The process would be pretty simple:

1. Deposit USD onto the mt gox exchange
2. Instantly buy bitcoins and send them to the players bitcoin address using the mt gox API when a cashout is requested. The coding for this is pretty simple – basically something like BUY [cashout amount], SEND TO [player bitcoin address]. The fee is only 0.65% to buy bitcoins.
3. Player receives bitcoins in wallet, which takes about 10 minutes to be confirmed.

At this point the player has complete control over the money that was just on the poker site minutes earlier. Once you have bitcoins you can use them to buy goods or services that people are selling in bitcoins. You could have someone buy something from amazon for you for a small fee, for example. You could also sell the bitcoins on an exchange for a small fee (0.65% or less) for USD then cash out using one of the available methods. These methods are much better than waiting 2 months for a check, look at tradehill’s withdrawal options.


Here is an example of how you could turn poker site money into USD in your bank account as efficiently as possible using bitcoins:

1. Request cashout
2. Cashout shows up in bitcoin wallet in 10 mins
3. Deposit onto mt gox, wait about an hour to have enough confirmations on your deposit so that you can sell.
4. Sell bitcoins for USD @ 0.65% fee
5. Transfer bitcoins to dwolla ewallet for 0.25$ fee, which shouldn’t take more than a few hours
6. Free ACH withdrawal from dwolla to bank account (2-3 days).

In this example you are only exposed to about an hour of risk in holding bitcoins and having to deal with the fluctuations of the currency. The probability of losing any meaningful amount of money in that hour is very low.


A problem is that there is probably not enough liquidty on mt gox to deal with huge cashout amounts. Sites would probably have to place weekly bitcoin cashout limits, depending on how much interest there is in them.


There is also the possibility that mt gox doesn’t want poker sites using them to send bitcoin cashouts to players. However, I don’t think it would be too hard for sites to find ways to get around this. WU probably doesn’t want to facilitate poker cashouts either, but they still find a way. The anonymous and virtual nature of bitcoins will make this much easier.

Obviously if you think bitcoins are worthless/fake/scam/whatever you can just ignore the option and wait 3 months for a check.

Any of the poker site representatives want to comment on this? I think everyone should email the US poker sites asking for bitcoins as a withdrawl option. There is little risk for the players/sites and the potentially huge reward of fast cashouts.