I would go in the mindset that bitcoins are very expensive play money chips.

If I were running a poker site I would put up some micro stakes bitcoin games. There's not much risk in hosting 1 btc buyin or less games and you will get some good publicity.

I can see why they wouldn't want to risk having thousands of bitcoins on their hands, but running some small btc games... worst case scenario no one plays them or they lose a few bucks to the exchange rate.

Some random merge skin should do this.

You mean like https://betco.in/ ?

From my post:

• There's an artificial hard limit of 21M bitcoins
• Creating bitcoins becomes exponentially more difficult as time passes

Other currencies do not have those characteristics that exist and are designed to make bitcoins work like ponzi scheme and make the first adopters of the currency rich at the cost of the late adopters.

That'a a pretty terribad analogy....first of all, when you own a stock you own a piece of the business and it's profits.

Wow, people are so reactionary and stupid sometimes. I don't know why it continues to surprise me.

It's not an easy solution imo: in newest polish regulations they say that it is forbidden to play online poker for money, or any other things of value..

(this btw shows to me how full of crap and lobby-driven these regulations are, since it perfectly possible now to sell for real money the 'gold' acquired in online MORPG games - or even the whole users' accounts there - what the hell 'thing of value' mean? don't all the posts in this thread have some 'value'?).

Another problem is that Bitcoins most probably violate the usual states' monopoly on creating currency; not much of a difference then issuing you own 'Bob Joe Dollars' made on your desktop printer - which might work perfectly well if they are accepted by others - except that its illegal.

(then again - what if I use - say - cigarettes for buying some stuff - did I just 'created' illegal currency?)

The legislators just seem to have too much power to handle, I’am looking forward to the solution which they simply will not be able to control despite of their best efforts.

What makes you think 'Bob Joe Dollars' would be illegal? I can't speak for all 216 countries but private currencies aren't illegal in the United States.

There are restrictions on what you can't do. You can't for example imply that the not has any connection with United States, or is backed by the US govt. You also can't imply any guaranteed exchange rate. Private currencies in the US are somewhat rare but they aren't illegal.

One local physical private currency would be BerkShares
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BerkShares

No that would be barter. You are merely using $5 in cigs to purchase ~$5 of some other product. The implied relationship of cigs:stuff is the value of both items in underlying currency.

That is the rational for a decentralized p2p currency like bitcoins. The largest problem w/ bitcoins is the high volatility. It would suck for example to buy bitcoins at $15 per coin, double your coins playing poker (100% ROI) then try to cash out only to find out that bitcoins now trade at 1BTC=$6. (That was just an example the daily volatility of BTC isn't that wide but swings that wide are at least a risk).

You keep claiming that but it doesn't make it true.

The difficulty to mint new bitcoins has risen because that amount of computing power available to the bitcoin network has risen (and risen significantly). The algorithm adjusts the difficult of block verification UP OR DOWN so that regardless of how much computing power is available across entire network verification will take on average 10 minutes per block.

If I were to dump a super computing cluster into bitcoin network tomorrow that might mean the average verification time would drop to about 5 minutes. This would give me a short term profit as the computing power I control verifies a significant fraction of all transactions however I couldn't "game the sytem" as ever 2016 blocks (roughly every 8.4 days) the algorithm adjusts and the "difficulty" of a valid verification would double (because I have doubled the amount of computing power available). So even with super computing cluster the network on average would verify one block every 10 minutes.

There is no requirement for difficulty only to rise. IF people took computing power OFF the network then the difficulty would decline because the average solution time would be longer than 10 minutes. The system is self stabilizing. This scenario could happen if the difficulty became too high relative to the return on investment. Computing bitcoin validation hashes requires computing hardware (high end graphics cards) and electricity. So it isn't "free money". Now there is a hefty return on investment however that return varies based on the current solution difficulty and current performance of graphics cards (computing power in terms of GHashes/sec per $).

Bitcoins are too unstable right now. Instability is good for speculators and bad for people who are exchanging it for goods and services.

Bob Joe Dollars would be illegal because it would confuse people to think they are real dollars.

Creating your own currency is plenty legal. Dave and Busters does it, Chuck-E-Cheese does it, even some cities do it.

At least not in the US, maybe in some backwards Eurotard countries, that is.

I admire you that you solved this legal problem during your short internet poker brake (and I guess that if you are able to confuse Bob's dollar with US dollar then more power to you), but indeed, one few months work study shows that issuing private currency isnt generally prohibited in US (restrictions like prohibition of coinage, interstate regulations and more may apply). (http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/loca...ncies/Book.pdf)

One thing to worry less then..

whats a bitcoin?????

Bitcoin is a stupid idea. Anytime a system can be hacked (no matter how difficult) and money can be stolen, without anyone being responsible and or any recourse or a way to get it back, is s dumb system. period.

and the recent hacking of Bitcoin is the beginning of its demise. eot

No one hacked Bitcoin, they hacked a site that had them. This is like saying cash is pointless since someone can break into your house and steal it.

If someone is capable of hacking Bitcoin, they would have also broken encryption that banks use, etc... There's a lot more money to steal there than in Bitcoin.

This is an interesting idea.

I stopped playing on mainstream sites after my last boom and bust (up to $1500 then busto again heads up). I've not been on twoplustwo recently as I've been into the bitcoin forums since April.
I was pretty surprised to see this thread get picked up after 2 months, given there is an ongoing bitcoin thread on twoplustwo anyway.

I've been playing on bitco.in and actually making some coins. It's nice to know your roll is increasing in $ value even when you're not playing!

The main value in bitcoin comes from the following:
1. Fixed number of coins - no other currencies around the world have this hardcoded. Look at the Euro, the Dollar and other currencies. Expect rampant inflation to pay back the bankers in the years to come. This is a form of tax or robbery depending on your political view.
Bitcoin can never inflate this way. That's the reason its dollar value is rising and will continue to rise. Put the other way the dollar will become less valuable against the bitcoin due to dollar inflation over time.

2. Decentralised - no one country can take over bitcoin. Think of the number of countries where currency is abused by incompetence or cynicism by those incharge.

3. Pseudoanonymous - it can be exchanged for cash or received for goods and services without a log of the owner's name and details. It's like cash that cannot be forged. This allows various 'grey' uses. Most importantly to those in this forum - internet poker. This alone could help it succeed.

Disadvantages:
1. Liquidity - currently low, especially with problems with exchanges. Governments can shut down exchanges. They cannot however stop bitcoin working by going after a central issuer or guarantor.
2. Volatile - this will improve in future, although shocks to Dollar and Euro currencies will translate into bitcoin exchange rate volatility.
3. Security - the default client and its wallet is extremely insecure. Future usage of bitcoin may involve a mixture of banks based bitcoin use with home or mobile based 'wallets' for small cash, in a similar way that people use fiat currency now. What is different is people will have the choice to manage their money themselves without a bank if needed.

Anyway I'm aiming for 2000 coins and am not even close yet. See you on the tables. PS they are as soft as 888 in 2005!

bitcoins?

how can anyone seriously see this taking off? the whole thing sounds very dumb to me.

As a full time player I'm willing to jump through the hoops for bit coins. But I doubt the average drunk recreational player is.

Add to that the untested nature of bitcoins (50%+ mining capacity can take over the network, hacking at mtgox, extreme volatility, and other unforseen problems) and I doubt it'll ever take off.

Im drinking right now and playing bitcoin poker

It was easy to get the 1.75 coins but took six days

I am up at the table and on the bitcoin market

cheers mate

If you watched the games at betco.in, you'll see that there are plenty of terrible players with coins.

Shh....

Pay no attention to this guy I think he is a troll or something. The players at betco are hardcore nits.

cant tell if ur serious but not alot of nitting going on

Come watch me Im Donkiam betco.in


dont need to setup an acount to watch table im at

Just thought I'd take a look and this is the first hand I see in the "Poker Live Show" window:

Sweet Jesus!

Juk

woo hoo that was me Donkiam