As I have posted in the past, the players need to control the next incarnation of online poker for it to be outside the reach of the US or any other government. It has to be a peer to peer, distributed system with some sort of cryptocurrency.

Development of these systems is currently under way. The PPA needs to get in front of the development of this system. Only after setting something up that is outside the scope of the government will we have the degree of leverage that will ensure that we really get the kind of regulation that we want. However, we may not need any government regulation at that point as it will be irrelevant.

Think about using the funds that the PPA has spent on failed attempts to lobby Congress and the Treasury. We could already have a system in place.

I agree.

Bitcoin anyone?

NOW, you're thinking. NO REGULATION. Genius Techies at Piratebay, anonymous, and such could move the whole thing out of reach if they wanted to.
To hell with legalization.
They can stick it in their ear.
Maybe they have bitten too many hands that fed them.
The last straw that broke the camels back is either here or about to be laid.

tell us moar?

i posted this 2 weeks ago in Leg and the mods deleted my post.

lol

Subscribing. And congrats on 4k posts. By whom?

There are plenty of developers that are working on distributed systems. The PPA is aware of what is going on; they need to endorse one or more of these efforts. The PPA has concentrated on regulation of the existing sites instead of going to the root of the issue, which are player controlled systems and technologies.

Think of it in terms of game theory. If the PPA were to endorse several distributed poker systems that would have the potential of being completely disruptive, would every existing stakeholder (B&M casinos, existing sites, Congress) suddenly get more motivated to get something done? Win-win.

Yes, Bitcoins are one such crypto currency. There are others. Having Paypal or some other processor telling what I can do with my money is deeply offensive.

Over what time period do you think its feasible to get the casual online poker player to be comfortable with Bitcoins/cryptocurrency?

Its creative, Im just not sure whether its a solution 1 year out or 20 years out.

That is an interesting question. I think that it will be driven by how fast the US dollar declines. If there is significant inflationary pressure, these alternative currencies will have increased appeal.

Remember that the first online poker site was started 1998-ish; the business has grown considerably since that time. Rush mobile poker was in beta on Android platforms in 2011.

I agree with the thrust of this thread and with the bolded part.

If the government does not want our tax money, fine.

If the PPA really wants to push regulation over the edge, prove we don't need it. We will then get regulation.

Actually something like this has already happened in gaming. States (like Oklahoma) liked to drag their feet on compacts for class III gaming, but technology made peer-to-peer slots almost as good as Vegas-style, so the tribes started cleaning up and not sharing revenue with the state. So, voila, super-red state Oklahoma now has a crap load of casinos because they finally negotiated in good faith with the tribes.

PPA could learn from this.

very interesting idea and i could def see it working. we should try to get PPA into this (if they already arnt) and see if we can get anywhere.

whoa. i'm pretty sure your winnings would still be taxable.

Obviously, but you can see the layer of temptation for voluntary participation, and the increased difficulty this kind of system would add to the collection aspect.

Of course, not paying taxes here could lead to an Al Capone moment....and even if you do pay them what of the RICO statute implications?

You're going to get entangled in the same mess the major poker sites got into trying to do a peer to peer payment system. I've had various people contact me trying to pitch their 'peer to peer' transaction system and ultimately I turned them all away because there was no way they could ensure me it wasn't a complex system for money laundering or gambling.

There's not a processor in the United States that is going to touch a peer to peer client who can't 100% show where those transactions are going and what they are for. Yes, you can go overseas but when things go awry and they abscond with your cash and reserves (we've seen this before) good luck getting it back.

Feel free to try and hide what it's actually for or make a shill and see how that ends. In this country it comes down to the fact you have to get the funds transferred from the major players (Banks, Credit Card Companies) into virtual funds either directly or via third party processors. Can you dupe the major players and pull this off? Yes. Then you will get hammered when it gets discovered.

It's not us telling you what to do with your money, it's the banks fearing reprisal by the federal government and the credit card companies refusing to engage in gambling. In the processing world there is essentially a persona non grata list that you can end up on if you are caught committing fraud, violating the card holder agreements, or violating federal law. Ending up on this is a death warrant for your company and processing so you have to play by the rules of the banks and the credit card companies.

Issues I see just off the top of my head.

If the software is peer to peer then how do you handle discrepancies? For instance one or more clients disagree about the community cards. Without a central server who gets the final word?

How do you plan to fight collusion, multi-accounting, chip dumping, etc.? Who has the authority to ban players?

How would the transactions be handled? Who holds the money in play? Who checks if there is credit card fraud, stolen identity, etc. going on?

Who would provide general customer support?


I'm sure there are plenty more issues that a peer to peer system would bring up.

Peer to peer means that the system components are all a part of the peers. One peer is designated as the server, though the problem of who has access to all of the cards is a technical issue that can be solved.

How do the sites do it? How does 2+2 do it? Would a reputational system work for a peer to peer structure? Here is an interesting site http://trustcloud.com/ The more important question is what assurances would you need in order to sit down? Are you typical of what everyone would want?

You send your bitcoins to the site and they transfer it internally. You can request a cash out. There are no credit cards, just crypto currency.

Who provides general customer support for Linux? Do you understand what a community system entails?

Keep the issues coming, because without defining the issues, we have no idea if it will be feasible. Normally, there is something called the "profit motive" that incents an entrepreneur to figure these things out. As the feds are bent on outlawing anything related to poker, there needs to be other incentives, such as altruism. Remember all the lefties saying something about shared sacrifice or "it takes a village"; so step up and do your part.

Whoa. Who said anything about personal income tax?

I was referring to the tax a regulatory scheme would place on the system. The tax on deposits or cash outs, or whatever. A peer-to-peer system would not be subject to a regulatory tax because it would not be regulated.

If people don't trust the sites now, you can be sure they wouldn't trust some random person hosting a game.

They pay a security team to take care of it.


I can't imagine joe fishbucket being interested in that.


Depends on if you paid for support for a specific distro or if you're just using a free version.


I don't think it's even close to feasible at this point.


A big problem IMO is trust. Plenty of people won't play on the sites now because they don't trust the random deal, they don't trust their money is safe, they don't trust that they aren't playing against bots, they don't trust that a big collusion ring isn't making the games unfair. A lot of what the sites are trying to provide is that sense of trust. A community that is open to anyone is far more difficult to trust IMO.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/45...tware-1021113/

Trust is a problem, that's why you play with people you trust and have a reason to be trustworthy. There are downsides, but there are offsets too.

So, we should all just play homegames and forget about online poker?

There are so many hurdles, legally, technically and socially. I think this is probably a long way off.

I think in that case the "trust" is bestowed up on Pokerstars or whoever else to regulate the game ensure they are safe. We trust them due to their track record and the fact that we know customer service is in their best interest.

I don't know much about peer-to-peer. I guess I could see it as having a smaller following. Without a strong marketing presence I doubt the games would be very good though.

Hey there,

I also am interested in peer-to-peer poker and the possibilities of backing it with cryptocurrency. As a start, I wrote a poker app using the DataChannel API of webRTC. My implementation is purely peer-to-peer poker (except for the signalling that has to occur to connect peers at the beginning). Messages are encrypted and sent in a mesh topology over webRTC connections, just like Google Hangouts. I haven't attached cryptocurrencies yet, but I'm looking for feedback on the app as it stands.

Check it out! http://www.peerpoker.co

It is all up on GitHub too, if you are interested in contributing: https://github.com/chadlieberman/peerpoker

Good luck on the tables,
Chad