Bitcoin News
Daily diary of what's happening with Bitcoin.
NPR aired a Morning Edition segment with host Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar) in which Jerry Brito (@JerryBrito) was interviewed about online gambling and Bitcoin. Excerpt:
“The U.S. Justice Department has made it very clear you can’t just open an offshore casino online and start taking bets using actual money from the United States. But last year a couple of entrepreneurs asked themselves ‘what if you were only betting with Bitcoin?’.”
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“Noone knows if bitcoin is money, a financial instrument, or something else.”
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“[Bryon Micon of SealsWithClubs.eu] says it might be tough for the feds to regulate what is just a piece of computer code and not real money.”
- http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/02/06/171182974
- http://bit.ly/UXWzZ4 (MP3 download)
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141530.0 (Further discussion of this broadcast)
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Steven Stradbrooke posted on CalvinAyre.com (@CalvinAyreNews) regarding Bitcoin’s advances made in use for online gambling. Excerpts:
“Bitcoin seems an ideal payment solution for online gambling sites, yet adoption has been confined to the sector’s smaller operators. None of the major gambling sites we spoke to would even cop to having had internal discussions regarding offering a Bitcoin option to their players.”
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“SwitchPoker’s use of Bitcoin was not without its challenges, such as the fact that ‘all payments are final.’ Bitcoin’s ability to forego the use of banks and online e-wallets by sending payments directly to the consumer eliminates the ability to reverse a transaction. ‘This means that fraud issues need to be handled differently. Extra checks are performed before sending Bitcoin payments out.’”
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“‘Bitcoin’s potential pitfalls are vastly outweighed by its strengths’ [says MacCarthy]. ‘Unlike almost every payment method, if we receive a Bitcoin payment we are certain that the funds are deposited legitimately. Overall, Bitcoin has reduced our fraud-related costs significantly.’”
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“McCarthy says once users give Bitcoin a try, ‘they tend to stick with it, whereas customers who do not use Bitcoin would often switch from one payment method to another.’”
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“Micon [with SealsWithClubs.eu] told CalvinAyre.com that it was currently easier to convince Bitcoin devotees to play online poker than it was to convince poker players to use Bitcoin. “We are still only to the early adopter stage of this technology.”
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”Seals ‘does no banking whatsoever’ with US institutions, ‘only Bitcoin in and Bitcoin out’,”
- http://bit.ly/Q3VDBh
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124437.0 (Further discussion of the topic of Bitcioin and gambling)
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A post on CalvinAyre.com, a popular online gaming news site, addresses Bitcoin’s growing role in the online gaming business. Excerpts:
“Because bitcoin transactions bypass traditional financial institutions, there’s less need for operators to collect reams of data from players. Indeed, many of the sites take undisguised pride in the fact that they require little more than a user name and an email address before letting a player wager.”
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“While some bitcoin gaming sites spell out in detail that they don’t accept players from certain countries, others don’t appear to care where a gambler might be located. That could bring them to the attention of US law enforcement, particularly those sites with .com domains.”
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“There’s no doubt that going forward, virtual currencies such as bitcoin will play an increasingly larger role in both the online gambling world and in the overall online economy, but for the moment, it’s still not quite ready for prime time.”
- http://bit.ly/O5NKey
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105663.0 (Further discussion of this article)
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A post on Bitcoin Money (@BitcoinMoney) blog points out the reason why Bitcoin’s transaction volume has gone stratospheric. Excerpts:
“While the daily transaction volume had been steadily growing at a casual pace since October, there’s been a development in the past weeks that has had a significant impact. The ten-day-old service SatoshiDice.com has been growing at a blistering pace.”
“There to be nearly four thousand blockchain transactions resulting from Satoshi Dice for the most recent 24-hour period.”
Satoshi Dice allows the Bitcoin wallet, whether it be the standard Bitcoin.org client or a hybrid Javascript-based browser wallet like My Wallet from Blockchain.info, to function as gaming terminal. What sets Satoshi Dice apart from most other Bitcoin-based online gaming services is the ability to play in an instant and to receive winnings back within seconds.”
“What may be occurring then is that Satoshi Dice is seeing some level of participation by those intending to alter the makeup of the coins held in their wallets. Satoshi Dice in its present form makes a poor solution for mixing however.”
Todd Bishop (@ToddBishop) in a post on GeekWire reports that Coinlab has raised $500K in seed funding. Excerpts:
“CoinLab has raised $500,000 in seed funding from a group of prominent angel investors, including Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, Seattle’s Geoff Entress and others”.
“Under the plan, game makers will offer their users a chance to voluntarily install a program that makes their idle computing resources available for use by CoinLab, in exchange for in-game virtual goods and points”.
“CoinLab has signed up two game companies so far, GraFighters and Wurm Online, and is talking with others”.
“Co-founder Peter Vessenes said ‘One of my goals is helping Bitcoins get legitimized in the U.S. It’s a big goal for our company. Bitcoins have a branding problem right now, in my experience’.”
- http://www.geekwire.com/2012/bitcoin-startup-coinlab-lands-funding-tim-draper-monetize-games
Basketball fans should be all over this! BitMadness is offering a free-to-enter public pool for selecting winners in the NCAA College Basketball Tournament brackets leading up to and including the Final Four Tournament.
With a 100 BTC pot there is incentive to enter as this site was not promoted widely and there aren’t very many other entries yet. The selections must be made soon as games in the bracket begin on Thursday March 15th at noon (EDT).
Blogger GoWest provides an update on the online gaming community website Ogrr.com which has been growing at a rapid pace. Excerpt:
“Ogrr’s growth can be attributed to the fact that Bitcoin is hands-down the most efficient and inexpensive means for gamers to move their online wealth from one virtual world into another (or to the real world).”
“Bitcoin isn’t (yet) the easiest means of transferring wealth between the United States, Europe, or Japan, but it is definitely the easiest way to transfer wealth between Britannia, Norrath, and Azeroth.”
Josh Strike, operator of the Bitcoin-only Strike Sapphire online casino (@StrikeSapphire), posted an article in Casino Meister. For the post, the operator opens the books — showing total drop, customer counts, deposits and the bottom line (a net loss). The service is not accessible by those in the U.S. due to online gaming regulations. Excerpts:
“I thought I’d share the results of my little experiment. Keep in mind this doesn’t include the external costs — I spent 3 years programming it on my own time, then about $7k before opening it, plus $15k in for the initial float, and I’ve dropped $8K on servers and other bills since it opened”.
“[The deposits per member metric has] a lot to do with Bitcoin’s instant deposits and withdrawals, and the fact that there’s no minimum deposit. Players can deposit as little as $0.05”.
“I just need to be able to take other payment methods, to reach a bigger audience”.
Excerpts from a post on Bitcoin Money blog:
“Crowdpark, the maker of the Bet Tycoon game on Facebook may be considering adding Bitcoin as a virtual currency used by the game’s half million users. Louis Bedigian (@LouisBedigian), on staff at Benzinga, writes that the startup’s Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer “would love to [implement bets made with bitcoins]”.
“The report follows Crowdpark’s announcement that it had received $6 million in new funding.”
The article further addresses other services in the same space but which already accept bitcoins.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/11670058837
- http://bit.ly/qFNRnu (Article on Benzinga)
