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RE: Hello Steem! I am the founder of Etheroll, an Ethereum based, provably-fair dice-game with 50/50 odds and a low 1% house edge. This is my story.
This was hugely positive for you. If the Crowdfunding campaign had succeeded you might have been in jail by now for offering illegal gambling. If not yet, it would be rather soon. Now you still have the option to turn your skills to something creating value that will also be legal.
Thanks for your support. However, my website operates from Panama, a jurisdiction which considers online gambling to be perfectly legal.
The situation with online gambling is, it does not matter where you operate from, an operator of an online casino still needs to respect local laws of its players (hiring $1000/hr online gambling specialist lawyers gets you this sort of information).
Thus, by restricting access to players from countries such as the U.S and Australia, country based IP restrictions can be an effective pro-active measure one can take to respect those local laws, much in the same vein as Satoshi Dice.
Remember, we do not live in 'planet USA' and actually, online gambling is legal in many jurisdictions, all across the globe. Also, I am not a US resident, in fact, I am Australian, and Australians are allowed to operate an online casino, just as long as the product is not offered to Australians, and I respect local laws all across the globe, as I had previously mentioned. ;-)
Not to mention, Bitcoin is not money.
However, yes. I am trying to port my skills over into something more suitable, like a de-centralized Uber, or the like.
Again, thanks for your support, and I appreciate your concern (this is my other account).
p.s Are you the European gentleman that contacted me previously via email regarding this issue re etheroll? Your name looks familiar. ;-)
Ha, yes, I am the one who has already contacted you about this. Thanks for your answer here. Very productive.
I agree that not serving the U.S. helps a lot in not landing in jail. Still, in all other jurisdictions you also need a license to operate. And since your identity can easily be looked up (I think it is not the case for Satoshi dice), that makes law enforcement easy. It needs just one country deciding to put an end to it and asking Australia's police to go and get you.
It will also not help to operate from Panama. Law in nearly all countries look at point of consumption and not at point of service.
(You paid $1k/hour for advise on this? I receive way less to educate those lawyers via articles and talks. I am clearly on the wrong side of the industry as a researcher.)
I will be restricting access to all countries via IP that do not allow online gambling without a license. Also, the site is not even up and running, it has all been only testnet Ether, which certainly holds no real value. So absolutely 0 laws have been broken.
Yes. Thus, country based, blanket IP restrictions.
I am currently looking to let go of the website, domain, and all IP as well. As I have suggested previously, I am looking into other opportunities.
p.s regarding the $$$ lawyers. I have some very good legal contacts here in Australia, if not the world. Those are base market rates. I do not pay market rates. ;-)
Not serving countries where a license is needed will certainly keep you out of jail (you would not have needed a lawyer for that; that is what I wondered about, not the rates but that you pay them). The problem is, that not serving these countries will keep you out of all lucrative markets. So it is either operating illegally with profit or legally without profit.
Selling sounds like the best option. Good to hear that you think about moving on.
so, remind me again, about how the gummint is protecting us from bad guys?
It's a good reminder for me why I don't want to get into this kind of business. I prefer to do something no law exists for anywhere. Then after the profits roll in, and trolls pop up trying to misinterpret laws to get a piece out of me...
oh yeah! bring it baby! Not only will there be the expensive lawyers specialised in the jurisdiction, there will be me running the campaign to squash these roaches.
I am not a vindictive person but if I'm doing something, and clearly by its' earnings, a lot of people like it, i would be very happy to not just own every troll's house, car and savings acconut, i'll make their relatives want to disown this pos as well.