Quote Originally Posted by Headshot View Post
No it's not.

This whole thing was complete bullshit from the start and you have to be a homeschool hyper-nerd (who happens to play poker and gamble for a living) in order to freak out over something as trivial as a 400 person mostly microstakes "unlicensed" online bitcoin poker room. The whole thing is a huge fucking joke and the Nevada AG is an embarrassment to everything related to law & government.

These assholes sent their posse to kick down Micon's door with automatic weapons and swat gear like they were coming in after Bin Laden or something. They knew who they were dealing with (not a violent man obv) and they still went out of their way to be as obnoxious and intimidating as possible. This bunch of complete fucking goons want to parade around at a press conference like this means something only to turn around and get bitch slapped by Chesnoff/Micon like Bobby did Whitney.

What a fail on every possible level. Druff, your bias makes it too difficult for you to process this because an objective stance would support the "Micon is gangster" theory the way he just owned their gook faces.

Bitcoin poker should be legal everywhere, too. Even though that's beside the point.

I liked what Cmoney said -

Quote Originally Posted by cmoney View Post
I thought he was going to do some time in jail, but I thought the fine is what would have been steep. I guess i should have learned by now the extent in which government agencies will waste resources to accomplish absolutely nothing. This was all political and the gaming officials wasted tax payers money for their own political gains.

I am glad he can move on with his life. The real criminals in all this is Nevada gaming, as it now so transparent what this all was really about.
I don't think anyone is freaking out over Seals. I don't think anyone in this thread was arguing that it was a horrific crime for which Micon needed to be prosecuted.

However, the bottom line is that it's illegal to run an unlicensed online poker room in the US (especially Nevada), and Seals enjoyed a huge competitive advantage because they were the only ones based in the US willing to break that law.

You say Bitcoin poker should be legal? I agree.

You say real money poker should be legal? I also agree.

But I don't think either should be allowed to be run by anyone who can simply fire up a website and process payments. There needs to be a licensing process, and these licenses need to be granted only to entities with the proper qualifications to be trustworthy and accountable.

The "let anyone run a poker site and look the other way" model has already been tried.

AP and UB both cheated their own customers (separately) by looking at their hole cards.

Full Tilt stole the money on deposit.

Countless other unregulated smaller sites did other shady and scammy things.

The unregulated model was a failure.

And even if it wasn't a failure, when you reward the law-breakers, you punish the law followers.

John wants to run an unlicensed bitcoin gaming site, is capable of doing so, but he doesn't want to break the law, so he doesn't. John makes $0 from his idea.

Jim wants to run an unlicensed bitcoin gaming site, is capable of doing so, and he knowingly ignores the law, and sets one up. Jim makes $1,000,000 from his idea.

In the above situation, the only thing separating John and Jim is their willingness to break the law. Yet Jim, who BROKE the law, is a million richer for it.

Are you saying that the government should be totally cool with that?

If so, why do we have any laws?