At an extreme, Congress could ban merchants from accepting crypto as payment and bar US banks from receiving funds that have been converted from crypto, requiring them to do due diligence to know where the money is coming from.

The DoJ has been looking into illegal price manipulation of crypto. I suspect at some point, we will get Congressional hearings on the use of crypto by terrorists and Russian hackers (when Dems regain control of the House).

Which is rather irrelevant, because even pre-UIGEA most sites weren't based in the US.

You've mentioned this more than once, and it's very odd. What makes you think the existing sites are the ones stopping others from starting their own? You've already been told some of the reasons others aren't jumping in. You also don't seem to appreciate that starting a poker site can mean a lot of capital, and to start a site in a business that isn't exactly growing over the last few years, and has some well-established competition.

And finally, have you heard of Global Poker?

Are you saying that the US Gov will cite terrorism as a reason, and then ban all crypto in the USA?

No, I'm saying the federal government is already looking at crypto and an even more intense examination is coming. The result could be the scenario I suggested.

I think the future of cryptocurrency could be to go away from anonymity and instead use cryptography to create a secure trail of information in transactions so that money laundering becomes impossible.

Bill Frist, he's the shill that started all this crap. He wanted to run for president so he became Adleson's lap dog.

You are right, was just about to say something about Bill Frist, and you have similar screen name to mine, this is surreal, no wait... it's Wild! hehe
Bill Frist is largely to blame for the UIGEA, but the people who paid him to do it were the land based casinos.
So as long as land based casinos in the US are scared of internet poker, this is going to be a problem (they will continue to use their power and influence to find their next Bill Frist, whenever they need to). It's kind of sad that laws are made in this corrupt manner.

Anyway we have to work with what we've got, which is the UIGEA.
The UIGEA is about prohibiting the 'accepting and processing of payments' in connection with gambling and bets/wagers.
This is were I think crypto could come in. It has no bank, and there is no specific company or person that the government can strong arm.
It's even argueable that certain types of crypto are not money, currency or security.
The censorship-resistant coins are way too volatile for use and probably always will be. I think the current stable coins could work, something like Tether which is based in Hong Kong (that sounds far enough away from the US DoJ, right?).
Or maybe the better solution would be a crypto that doesn't exist yet: one which is as censorship-resistant as bitcoin, but is also somehow pegged to the dollar without actually using any dollars anywhere (or perhaps pegged to the euro or GBP, since US land based casinos & DoJ are the problem), but that doesn't exist yet

There are two major problems with crypto-currency based solutions. First, it's too complicated for the average user. Second, at some point you will want to convert to / from fiat currency or it's just a play money game. If you're regularly moving significant amounts of US currency then failure to comply with US government financial regulatory requirements is going shut you down quickly, painfully, and permanently.

I feel like this horse was already beaten to death in multiple threads, so sorry for the derail.

OP question is fairly easy to answer:
1. Launching and sustaining a poker site is difficult and expensive
2. Complying with US government regulations is difficult and expensive, and regulations preclude (1) prima facie

How did you come up with that?

Try opening up your own casino in the US and if somebody comes knocking, you tell them your players are only allowed to play with British Pounds or Euros.

Using crypto on a decentralized network might be an option, it's just not a business case right now. The day your local plumber accepts crypto to repair your broken toilet is the day he's willing to deposit some of that coin to play online poker. Let's see when that day will arrive.

Having a fast, secure (feeling), easy to understand way to deposit money is the #1 factor for a successful poker site. If you can't provide that, almost nothing else matters.

Sorry, I should have stated that of course you would have your business based outside the US. I thought this was obvious and not worth mentioning.

Yeah I agree, it should be easy to use (has to really), like i was saying in my first post.
We're just discussing how it could possibly be done, I think we can all see that things exist now, that have some potential in the future.

I think the crypto poker site would come before your plumber accepting crypto though - there already is a bitcoin site, Seals With Clubs. But that site isn't decentralized (as far as I'm aware) and bitcoin is far too volatile, slow, expensive transactions (sometimes), & too complicated for averge people.

A decentralized system would mean the DoJ would have no cause they could be claim to be fighting against. On Black Friday they seem to be protecting players from fraud. But decentalized, as I'm sure you know, would mean we hold our own digital wallets. So there is no pot of players funds, that could be lost, transfered, or 'not segregated'. I mean at least it removes the possibility of the same scenario happening again - which means the DoJ have no reason to even start investigating. Whether another scenario could happen I'm not sure, perhaps we can discuss that.

Yeah it's all theoretical, but I don't see the harm in discussing it

That website isn't exactly a success story though.

The plumber needs to accept crypto so he has some to deposit on the poker website. If your website can't get plumbers to deposit, it's not attracting enough recreational players. That sets us back to step one. No easy deposits -> no recs. No recs -> no games.

It’s seems strange to me that OP is having such a hard time accepting this.

As Carl Trooper has said. If you do not want to use existing sites, such as Bovada, ACR, Global, SWC, Carbon, or the rest, then just get a trusted agent to hold your money and play on the PPP app. Its in the app store.

There is no market here. If there was, then any of the above would thrive. They do not thrive.

If the rake was reasonable, I would drive 2 hours to the casino. The rake sucks ballz, so no visit from me.

Agreed.
It's not very busy. Pretty sure they don't advertise. I was suggesting earlier that what we need are two things really, a site that uses a stable coin and it has to be easy enough for average joe or his grandmother to use.
Of course, on top of this whoever starts such a venture really needs a lot of money for advertising and promotion. And they need to be able to put together a good team and pay them. But this last part about needing starting capital, the same could be said about any business, if you want it to take off in a huge way and be known by everyone.

There is some truth to number 2.

But imo number 1 isn't really a problem. It only takes me a few minutes to go from USD to BTC and back to USD. BTC isn't so volatile that I'm going to be destroyed in just a few minutes. Not to mention that these transactions are essentially free.

I play poker everyday. I trade cryptocurrencies nearly every day. But there is zero chance that I would ever buy and hold USDT or any of the other crypto's that you label as "stable". Holding those ****coins for months, or even years in my poker account would, imo, be far more risky than the volatility of BTC, BCH or ETH.

It's true that I had to jump through KYC hoops to be able to do these transactions. But that's just the way it is, and the way it's going to be. Instead of trying to find ways around it, and complaining about it being such a terrible barrier to entry, I think we'd be much better off if we simply educated the general public as to why these things are necessary, and why we should be happy that they exist. It wouldn't be such a barrier if everyone understood it and expected it.

And just maybe someday the mindset of the general public would be wise enough to allow poker sites to adopt KYC policies that would make it much easier for them to detect and deter bot's, colluders and multiaccounters.

That plumber mentioned above does need to know how to easily, quickly and cheaply move money to and from the poker site, this is true. But more importantly imo, he needs to be convinced that he is playing in fair games, with real people, not bots, not people with real time computer assistance, and not colluders. The only way that is every going to happen is if the poker sites can adopt much more stringent KYC policies, even more stringent than the crypto sites. The plumber needs to be convinced that it's all in his best interest, and that it solves the problems that deter him from playing today. Everyone thinks this is impossible, but it's not imo, because it is in his best interest, and it literally can solve many of the problems that deter the plumber from playing today.

Hi, thanks for your post, you make some good points. This is a good discussion

I think the reason you see it this way, is because you are a trader.
I'd say, even if there ever was a time when 'your plumber accepts crypto', it will always be the case that practically all 'plumbers' are not traders. (and by 'plumbers' we mean the average guy )
The very thing that makes it good to trade is volatility - the exact same thing you do not want in your bank account, bankroll, or wallet.

I think you might be ignoring the Convertion Fees. But you'd have to explain exactly how you trade for 'free'. All exchanges charge money, that is how they are in business. Maybe you waited 1 to 2 weeks to link your bank account. You're probably using an exchange that is centralized and uses it's own internal price matching system, so they can offer good trade prices at transaction speeds not possible on the blockchain. And if you keep any money on these centralized exchange's 'wallet' for any amount of time, we are back round to the same problem that we started with in the first place.
The crypto poker site has to be decentralized, so that the customer holds the digital wallet, not the exchange.

For those who don't know, KYC means 'sending your passport & driving license over the internet' where it is stored by a company who you then have to trust/hope/pray that they don't lose, steal, or sell your identity docs. Would you trust Facebook with your data? They seemed like a trustworthy company to people at some point in the past, but not so much now. I think most people, quite rightly, don't want to do this.
So you're different in that your great desire to become a trader outweighs this risk for you personally (and you may well be a good trader), but I think most people don't want to be traders, so they will not take that risk.

You are right that educating the public would be a really good thing. I don't expect that to happen though, I reckon improving the technology is easier, so that they don't have to understand it.

I disagree with your idea of KYC being any use for bot detection, collusion etc. Just because you and your friend sent in a passport photo, doesn't mean you aren't colluding with each other, it doesn't stop either of you running bots. I think the current methods that already exist and that they use right now are much better.

I'm curious about your view on stable coins, tell me about that?

I'd say the main problem is attracting customers. I guess good software wouldn't be that cheap either, especially if you want something proprietary, but how do you attract customers without a massive marketing budget?

Essentially free, not completely free. My most recent withdrawal from Ignition cost me a total of $1.23 to go from my poker account to my bank account. I was at risk of volatility for a total of 24 minutes (the total time spent waiting for blockchain verification of all transactions = 23 minutes, plus 1 minute for me to convert to USD). It's just not much risk to volatility imo. Total time from the moment I clicked "withdraw" at Ignition, to the moment I had spendable USD in my bank account = 41 hours, ...with a total cost of $1.23 (total cost = the USD difference between what was subtracted from my poker account, and what arrived in my bank account). I consider this to be "essentially free", your opinion might differ.

As for KYC at poker sites, I said "more stringent KYC". As in webcam verification of not only identity but also of poker skill, mouse usage, etc. So unless you can build a bot, or collude with a partner that matches exactly with how you play without those things, then you're going to be caught. And if you can build a bot that plays exactly as you play, then I don't really care, from my perspective it's not different from playing you, except that it won't improve and you might.

I do agree that having it all be decentralized is even better. But that is even more impossible to do without educating the public to an even greater extent. I think our biggest difference in opinion is that you believe that the plumber doesn't play internet poker anymore because it's too difficult to move money around. While I believe that he doesn't play internet poker anymore because he knows he's being cheated.

One last thing worth mentioning imo, is that if we would get away from using the conventional payment processors and use cryptocurrencies instead, then the costs for the poker sites are greatly reduced. And this in turn would/could/should mean lower rake, which in turn means better games for everyone.

I'm certainly not qualified, and this is not the thread to explain how to move cryptocurrency with minimal costs. Nor is it the thread to explain my opinions of your "stable coins". But there are currently about 2.4 billion USDT tokens in circulation, can anyone show me the $2.4B USD that backs these tokens? And sorry, but I'm going to need a bit more than the equivalent of another Kahnawakee inspection to trust that the $2.4B actually exists.

This is a good discussion in the same way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discussed Hamlet in Tom Stoppard's absurdist play:

"The action of Stoppard's play takes place mainly "in the wings" of Shakespeare's, with brief appearances of major characters from Hamlet who enact fragments of the original's scenes. Between these episodes the two protagonists voice their confusion at the progress of events occurring onstage without them in Hamlet, of which they have no direct knowledge. ...

The duo appears on stage here when they are off-stage in Shakespeare's play, with the exception of a few short scenes in which the dramatic events of both of the plays coincide...."

"[F]rom Rosencrantz's and Guildenstern's perspective, the action in Hamlet is largely, from their point of view, nonsensical, but they cannot help but be carried along by events. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenc...stern_Are_Dead

haha sounds interesting I'll check that out

I think we are completely on topic here:

OP asked: how do we start new sites that accept US players, that are based outside the US?
What problems/barriers are involved?

The very next post nailed the answer: Payment processors.
The next post brings up a good point: Advertising problems.
The 4th post suggests using BTC. <---- I am continuing the conversation from here.

Carl Trooper makes a good point. You got payment processor problems? Crypto could be the answer.
I make just two main points about it. 1.) BTC is way too volatile and we should use a stable coin.
2.) high bar for entry i.e. crypto is still too complicated for average people right now.

That's interesting. I can't actually view ignition, it blocks my location.

What about the time between buying BTC and finishing a tournament.
Let's say you buy $30 worth of bitcoin. And there is a ($30 equivalent) tourney with a prize pool of 0.5 BTC. It starts in 2 hours.
You transfer from the exchange, to your wallet, to the poker site. Let's assume that takes 23x2 = 46 mins transaction time.
It then takes you 6 to 8 hours to reach the final table. After that amount of time all of the prizes are different values (in $).
(because BTC is now more or less than it was 6 to 8 hours ago. Or maybe 11 hours ago).
It changes the whole proposition that you thought you were entering, right?

No, not at all.

I don't play poker with BTC. I play poker with USD.

If I buy $30 worth of BTC, and I send it to ignition, they give me $30 USD. They don't give me BTC.

They don't have BTC prizepools, they have USD prizepools.

And if I win $1000 in the tournament, and I withdraw $1000. They send me $1000 worth of BTC, at whatever the current price is, so if the price has changed, it makes no difference to me, I still get ~$1000 when I sell my BTC.

And fwiw, 23 minutes was the total time of all transactions, not the time per transaction.

Alright, this is really interesting to know! As I said, I can't see any of this because they block out the rest of the world.
Sorry for any confusion, but I had no way of knowing this without asking someone who has access.
Do they offer a fair exchange price? It would have to always be as good as the cheapest/best exchange price available, to actually work.
If the exchange price is always good and they never cheat you on it - then it sounds like you were right, thanks for letting me know

Do you happen to know if SealsWithClubs avoids that problem I mentioned? It looks like they don't avoid it, because the FAQ says 1 chip = 0.001 btc
I really like the general idea of SWC, no dox required, huge range of poker variants (these are huge pluses) - I keep meaning to try it one of these days
Also the rake looks way better than anywhere else.

Had a quick look at ACR, and it says it does accept 60 types of crypto (even Tether ). But do they accept people from outside the US in 'America's Cardroom'? This is not clear. From the site name you might reasonably guess that they don't.

They all definately suffer from severe advertising problems. In my previous post, I was mainly dreaming of a decentralized poker site, that brought together the whole world Europe, USA, Russia, Asia and all the other places that got cut off like Italy, Spain, France. That should solve any player liquidity problems. Maybe start a boom
Does anyone know about the advertising rules relating to this in different parts of the world?

Yes, I do. I literally said "People need to stop being so afraid of meeting someone who has good feedback in a public place."

People are ****ing cowards, cuz the media makes them think everyone is a serial killer. I've met some of the coolest people in my life by traveling to meet random strangers. If you take a chance in life, something wonderful might happen.

99.999999% of these scams were people trying to use localbits to buy with ONLINE methods, like a bank xfer. There's been very few (if any) scams where the people used it to meet face-to-face.

Word for word this ^.

Yes, they offer a fair exchange price, and they do it in a fair manner. I don't know if it's the best possible price at any moment, I seriously doubt that it is, but it doesn't have to be the best, it only needs to be fair. And they assume any volatility risk involved in depositing, as they tell you the price at the time you click deposit, and they guarantee that price for a decent time period, 30 minutes I believe. So if the price changes negatively during your deposit, they incur the loss, not you. Of course it's the opposite on withdrawals, but that seems fair to me. And of course, the price can always change in a positive manner also.

I've never played SWC. It is my understanding that they play with BTC and only BTC. Which means you're at the exact same volatility risk that you would have if you simply left the BTC in your wallet. It's not more risk, it's the same risk, at least in terms of price volatility. If you had no intention of holding BTC, then I'd advise not playing poker on such a site.


ACR accepts players (and bots) from almost anywhere in the world, including everywhere that you named. As does every other WPN site, as far as I know. And yes, they do all accept several different cryptocurrencies. However, not all cryptocurrencies have the same transaction costs, nor speed of transactions.

I promise you* that you'll be much better off using things like BTC, BCH, ETH, or even ETC, as opposed to something like USDT. Regardless, ACR is going to give you USD to play with at their tables. I don't know if ACR accepts all of the crypto's that I mentioned, but I would assume so given that they're accepting 60+ in total.

There might even be some others that they accept which have very low transaction costs and reasonable speed of transaction. I don't hold or use NEO for instance, but it's my understanding that it is completely free of transaction costs and very quick as well. There are probably other similar options as well. But now you're dealing with trying to buy, sell and transfer altcoins that are far more likely to have the problems that concerned you in the beginning.

* This might not be true, if you are already involved in cryptocurrencies, but if you're just trying to play poker, then it's certainly true.