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Any enterprising cypherpunks in gambling-friendly jurisdictions interested? I figure it would make ecash take off.. and you'd get rich. -- sameer Voice: 510-601-9777 Community ConneXion FAX: 510-601-9734 The Internet Privacy Provider Dialin: 510-658-6376 http://www.c2.org/ (or login as "guest") sameer@c2.org
sameer@c2.org writes: > Any enterprising cypherpunks in gambling-friendly > jurisdictions interested? I figure it would make ecash take off.. and > you'd get rich. Good idea, I'd gladly provide (read sell ;-) know-how :-) dl -- Laurent Demailly * http://hplyot.obspm.fr/~dl/ * Linux|PGP|Gnu|Tcl|... Freedom Prime#1: cent cinq mille cent cinq milliards cent cinq mille cent soixante sept DST Kaser Sose Panama Castro Khaddafi Ortega arrangements
In article <199511291640.IAA28114@infinity.c2.org>,
sameer <sameer@c2.org> wrote:
> Any enterprising cypherpunks in gambling-friendly
>jurisdictions interested? I figure it would make ecash take off.. and
>you'd get rich.
>
Does anyone know what jurisdictions allow lotteries/gambling?
Here's an off-the-cuff idea:
[Disclaimer: The following post is a gedanken experiment. It should not
be interpreted as condoning or encouraging anyone to break any
laws, no matter how stupid the laws are.]
Anonymous email lotteries:
Advertise the lottery (and include a public PGP key) through some remailer
in one of the above jurisdictions. Use a remailer that allows pseudonymous
replies. In the announcement, include a secure hash of the next drawing's
winning number (appended to appropriate amounts of random noise). Advertise
to a mailing list or a newsgroup, like alt.anonymous.lotteries.announce.
People pay by sending:
{
A payment made out to "@" (the ecash wildcard)
Their choice of lottery ticket number
A PGP Public key
}
encrypted with the lottery's public key, to the remailer address.
A lottery consists simply of displaying the winning number and random
noise, whose hash was previously posted (so the participants know
you're not cheating).
Now: there's likely no Web-of-Trust to the various PGP keys involved,
so the lottery's Reputation will have to be built up. A good way to
do this is to have smaller prizes being won fairly often (e.g. by matching
the last digit/few bits), so that it's obvious the lottery is not just
collecting money without awarding prizes.
The lottery pays out by replying to the winner's pseudonymous messages
with their payment (made out to "@"), encrypted with their PGP key.
There can be other variants on the lottery. For example, the participant
whose ticket is _closest_ to the winning number wins all the money
in the pot (minus a cut for the house). A problem with this, and various
other forms of the lottery, is that it's hard for the lottery to prove
that it's not cheating (either in the amount of money it took in, or
that the losers of the lottery actually lost, etc.).
In this model of payment, no participant knows anything about any other
participant except a remailer's Reply-Block, and a PGP public key.
However, using the features of ecash (from what I know of how it works,
which isn't all that much (yet)), a payer can, in collaboration with the
bank, identify the payee. This may be undesirable for the lottery operator
and/or the participants.
If (when) details of ecash are published (by Digicash or by someone else),
it would likely be easier to work out how to achieve all-way anonymity with
ecash. I seem to recall some mention of how this would be done here
a while ago, and Lucky said he was going (before he started working for
them) "to write some scripts that will lay the groundwork for some of the
more unusual applications of Ecash".
Follow-up thought:
The lottery operator, instead of depositing the coins he receives
from the participants, stockpiles them, and forwards them on to the
winner(s). If a participant complains to the bank, and the bank traces
his payment, it is likely to merely identify another participant
(who is not doing anything illegal, AFAIK (IANAL; it's illegal to _run_
this sort of thing inside the US, not to _play_ it, right?)), and the
lottery owner can even claim he is merely a participant, in the chance event
that he _is_ the one identified, and he happens to be in the US...
As far as I can tell, then, with this sort of method, the only way the
lottery operator could be caught (technically; he could be caught in
non-technical ways, say by being overheard bragging about it (Don't laugh;
it's been done.)) is by having the remailer (or remailer chain) compromised.
So; is there a problem with the implementation outlined above? If it were
implemented, would people play it?
- Ian "Still not sure he wants to get an ecash account"iagoldbe@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Goldberg) writes: > So; is there a problem with the implementation outlined above? What about the income tax on winnings? > If it were > implemented, would people play it? I probably would, if I get off my lazy ass to get an ecash account. :) --- Dr. Dimitri Vulis Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
> > So; is there a problem with the implementation outlined above? If it were > implemented, would people play it? > I think it would be easier if the lottery owner was just in a safe jurisdiction. Then he wouldn't have to worry about the legality of it, and not worry about his anonymity. Gambling-safe jurisdictions *do* exist. There lies a problem if *playing* a game is illegal in the US, which I beleive it may be. If the winners can be revealed by bank/lottery collusion, then in order to protect the winners the lottery can't collude with the bank. This may not be a problem, because the lottery isn't subject to US law, so there would be no way to force the lottery to collude with the bank to reveaol the identities of the winners. -- sameer Voice: 510-601-9777 Community ConneXion FAX: 510-601-9734 The Internet Privacy Provider Dialin: 510-658-6376 http://www.c2.org/ (or login as "guest") sameer@c2.org
Deja vu? On Wed, 29 Nov 1995, sameer wrote: > I think it would be easier if the lottery owner was just in a > safe jurisdiction. Then he wouldn't have to worry about the legality > of it, and not worry about his anonymity. Gambling-safe jurisdictions > *do* exist. Wasn't www.casino.org a participant in the ecash trial run? I remember them having a highly entertaining disclaimer. They're somewhere in the carribean, I think. Supposedly (so said the cbc news last year) some gent here in Ontario (where non-licensed gambling is of course illegal--the gov likes its monopoly) set up the domain and the webpage and sold space on the "Virtual Strip" to interested offshore governements. Since the actual casino sites aren't in Canada (and probably offshore gov run) it is legal for the operators. It is illegal for us North Americans to use though. I just checked the site and saw quite a few casino operations on the strip. I didn't notice the ecash logo this time around (I'm doing this off lynx, it might only be shown in the graphical version). > There lies a problem if *playing* a game is illegal in the US, Which is what the casino.org page says. > which I beleive it may be. If the winners can be revealed by > bank/lottery collusion, then in order to protect the winners the > lottery can't collude with the bank. This may not be a problem, > because the lottery isn't subject to US law, so there would be no way > to force the lottery to collude with the bank to reveaol the > identities of the winners. And no economic incentive for the lottery. What are the regulatory hassles of setting up a gambling operation in one of the US states where it's legal (ie Nevada) ? I take it it would still be illegal for someone outside the state to gamble using the service. Isn't there also some Scandinavian bank that's handling ecash? It might be hard to explain to US tax authorities how large amounts of anon currency are ending up in one's marktwain account. In that case it might be interesting for someone to setup an anon service provider along the lines of c2.org which would allow users to run java scripts, no-questions asked (presuming this is a legal gambling jurisdiction). Java-based casinos, anyone? (or just normal unix c progs, given shell access) Of course life will be much nicer when Chaum sheds his (*ahem*) ethics and starts licensing to offshore banks. (I take it Scandinavian taxes are far worse than American ones. I would think they'd be less drug-money-laundering paranoid than the US however. Makes you wonder how much attention the Fincen boys are giving marktwain at the moment).
Ian Goldberg writes:
>People pay by sending:
>{
>A payment made out to "@" (the ecash wildcard)
>Their choice of lottery ticket number
>A PGP Public key
>}
>encrypted with the lottery's public key, to the remailer address.
You still have the problem that the lottery agency gets to hold the
money until after the drawing. It's reasonable to expect that they'll
eventually take advantage of their anonymity to just skip the drawing
and abscond with the bucks. There's some incentive for them to *not*
do this on the first few drawings, but only so they can get a good
enough reputation so when they *do* skip, they'll get a lot more
money.
The problem with this whole scheme is that there has to be some
*non-*anonymous party to enforce the contract.