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I was playing Texas Hold'em poker with my son and he was asking if I could get an API from a wallet provider to integrate sats into a poker app that he could build.
I was saying that there could be legal implications with playing with sats and he reminded me of the loophole in Japan, where they play with ball-bearings and just conveniently there is a shop nearby which converts them to cash....more eloquently explained below...
I wonder if @koob knew of this when introducing cowboy credits?
Gambling for cash is illegal in Japan, but the widespread popularity of low-stakes pachinko in Japanese society has enabled a specific legal loophole allowing it to exist.
Pachinko balls (cowboy credits?) won from games cannot be exchanged directly for money in the parlor, nor can they be removed from the premises or exchanged with other parlors.
However, they can be legally traded to the parlor for so-called "special prize" tokens, which can in turn be "sold" for cash to a separate vendor off-premises.
These vendors (ostensibly independent from, but often owned by, the parlor owner) then sell the tokens back to the parlor at the same price paid for them—plus a small commission, creating a cash profit—without technically violating the law.
60 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 10 Jan
This a common scheme in many places/situations where allowing people the choice of what to do with their money is forbidden. In contrast to the ball-bearings, we can't legally establish a primary exchange of CCs for real money directly or indirectly afaik (if people treat them like real money because they are promised to be redeemable for real money the state legally treats them as real money and us as money transmitters). We can however accept CCs ourselves as if they were an equivalent amount of bitcoin.
One of my favorite examples of in-game currencies is QQ coin which became so popular in China merchants began accepting it. China came to view it as a threat to the reminbi and Tencent had to enact controls on its transfer.
In either case, CCs differ from most in-game currencies in that they are merely a stop gap for us, intended for minority circumstances, and we allow, prefer, and will incentivize stackers to use real money in their own custody/control. We'll do everything we can make CCs obsolete and in the longrun I think we will succeed at that.
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🚩 This post might be more relevant and engaging in the ~meta territory.