Bitcoin Poker Website Shut Down After Raid By Nevada Gaming Commission

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Tuesday, February 24th, 2015 | Written by Lucy Brown

Up until recently, poker professional and businessman Bryan Micon had been the chairman of the bitcoin-only poker website called Seals with Clubs (SWC), but after being offline for one week Micon surprised customers by announcing the site would now cease all operations. As a notice posted on SWC, explains:

“On approximately February 11th, 2015, several events occurred related to operational security that we consider to indicate Seals With Clubs now operates in a perpetual state of jeopardy. This event has made the majority vote of the ownership and team agree shutting down operations is the best move for safety and security purposes.”

However, the site owners moved swiftly to reassure its customers of their belief that none of their Bitcoin wallets had been “compromised or lost”, and that players would be able to withdraw their funds for “a limited period of time.” With Micon elaboarting no further on the cause of the breech, naturally the sudden news caused much consternation amongst interested parties, but now he has released further details on the situation which was apparently due to the Nevada Gaming Commission raiding his business.

NGC Raids Bryan Micon At Gunpoint

According to SWC chairman Bryan Micon, ten armed men serving a warrant on behalf of the Nevada Gaming Commission were sent to raid his home while his wife and their two-year-old daughter were inside. Micon subsequently decried the “traumatizing” effect the raid had on his family, and wondered why the authorities decided on such a heavy handed approach when they would have known Micon is a reasonable person, been aware of his whereabouts via his social network feeds, and known he would have let them enter his home had they simply knocked. Instead, as Micon explains, he was led out handcuffed and “half-naked” onto his front lawn by the armed men, who for the next 8 hours proceeded to remove most of his electronics, in the process “seriously hindering” his output as an online reporter and blogger.

SWC Management Team Quit

The very same day as the Nevada Gaming Commission raid took place on his home, Micon said one of the bitcoin-only poker site’s servers in Romania experienced an irregularity, and that he was unable to determine its cause. In any case, even though Micon was apparently charged with no crime and says he doesn’t believe he had done anything “unethical”, the series of events was enough to persuade the SWC management team to quit. Nevertheless, Micon said he has every intention of carrying on, albeit from another country. As he explains:

“It was pretty clear that it was proper to leave [the US] sooner rather than later. I didn’t really want my 2-year-old daughter, who I love very much, to grow up in a police state where creativity is often met with guns. That’s not the environment I think is proper for my daughter. It’s not what I want to teach her is proper.”

Stating that “math does not bow to guns”, Micon has now opened a new site called SWCPoker where said he will honor all player loyalty points earned at the now defunct Seals With Clubs.

Bitcoin A Controversial Currency

While the peer-to-peer digital currency seems to provide a solution to processing anonymous, fast payments whilst also hugely reducing transactions costs, Bitcoins also can potentially by-pass banks and other payment processors, thus putting them in direct conflict with governments and authorities. Another hazardous element to Bitcoins is the volatility of the currency, which in 2011 was valued at $0.30 per Bitcoin, before reaching $1,200 by the end of 2013, and are now currently trading at $237 each. As well as wiping out many websites along the way, the cryptocurrency has a controversial past, including having been the currency of choice for Dark Web site ‘Silk Road’ whose illegal activities covered the selling of weapons and drugs.

Another controversial case involved Tokyo based Bitcoin exchange site Mt. Gox, which between 2010 and 2013 grew to handle around 70% of all global Bitcoin transactions, before in 2014 the company lost 850,000 of its customers’ bitcoins valued at around $450 million at that time. Even to this day the reason behind the disappearance/theft has never clearly been established and in 2014 the company was liquidated.