Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] Someone just sold a Bitcoin business for $11.4M! It's a first, but the buyer's anonymous

Typos, misspellings courtesy of iPhone word & thought substitution.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <
Date: July 19, 2013, 6:58:57 AM CDT
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Someone just sold a Bitcoin business for $11.4M! It's a first, but the buyer's anonymous
Reply-To:

Someone just sold a Bitcoin business for $11.4M! It's a first, but the buyer's anonymous
By David Meyer
July 19 2013
<http://gigaom.com/2013/07/19/someone-just-sold-a-bitcoin-business-for-11-4m-its-a-first-but-the-buyers-
anonymous/>

SUMMARY:

Bitcoin may be a young phenomenon, but the SatoshiDice or S.DICE Bitcoin gambling site, set up by Panama-based Erik Voorhees, has already gone from being listed to getting sold and delisted — for a respectable amount.

Erik Voorhees, the Panama-based Bitcoin entrepreneur, has sold one of his ventures for 126,315 bitcoins or, by my calculations at the time of writing, around $11.4 million. The business is a Bitcoin (BTC) gambling site called SatoshiDice or S.DICE.

The identity of the buyer has not been disclosed although I suspect BitCapital MD John Bridge, quoted on the Coindesk website, is on the money when he theorises it's an established gaming company looking to branch out into Bitcoin. (If you need a primer on how Bitcoin works, incidentally, click here — you will note that the name "Satoshi" refers to the pseudonym of Bitcoin's creator, and also the smallest current unit of the crypto-currency.)

S.DICE's model is simple: players send bitcoins to S.DICE's addresses, each of which carries a different percentage likelihood of doubling the player's money (or returning a "you lose" micropayment). Those addresses rank as the most popular in the whole of Bitcoin-dom, so it's no surprise that S.DICE is reportedly the leader in this field, with rivals including Just-Dice.

As U.S. laws forbid businesses from taking money for online gambling, many see Bitcoin as a possible way around such regulations — although it should be noted that SatoshiDice blocked U.S. IP addresses back in May, based on legal advice. The site itself is hosted in the Netherlands, Iceland and Ireland.

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