(Photo: Bitcoin Talk)

Bets of Bitcoin is an anonymous platform that allows users to make bets on current events--everything from hockey to war with Iran to aliens--using the peer-to-peer digital currency Bitcoin. Users place Bitcoin bets on yes or no answers to statements, and the earlier you bet the more BTC you can win.

The prediction market launched back in August 2011 and has for the most part operated under the radar since then. Though online gambling is still technically illegal in the U.S., betting with Bitcoin, which isn't recognized as an official currency, protects the anonymous operators and bettors from legal action.

Though many of the bets revolve around international events, our current favorite is whether or not an actual living, breathing, human girl will show up to the next Montreal Bitcoin meetup on April 27th:

The bet returns agree if user and host adamstgBit reports a female human attended and shows a picture taken at the time, the picture and female attendance is then verified by another forum user and attendee with >100 posts and who joined before november 2012 that indeed the female did attend.

We're happy to say the bets are currently in favor of the statement, meaning Bitcoin bettors really do think a female person has a good chance of showing up to the meetup. So you'll only win big if you bet against the statement and no ladies attend.

What glass ceiling?

(h/t Ben Regenspan)

You know what happens to Joe Pesci at the end, right? (Photo: Wikipedia)

Bad news for anyone looking to launch a real-money gaming startup: The AP reports that in a recent poll, half of respondents said they wanted sports gambling legalized--but a whopping three quarters thought Internet gambling specifically ought to remain off-limits.

Guess everyone just wants to stake their paycheck on how Eli Manning feels this weekend?

The AP says opposition is even fairly bipartisan:

"The poll also found that political affiliation made little difference in attitudes toward Internet gambling; 27 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of Republicans supported it, while 59 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans opposed it. Independents had roughly the same levels of support, as well."

Finally, something America can agree on. The poll, which measures national sentiment, comes on the heels of New Jersey state legislature Internet betting bill. It's not clear whether Gov. Chris Christie will approve it, though.

The company likeliest to be disappointed by this is Zynga, which is gearing up to offer real-money gaming in the U.K. and would sure love another way to separate Americans from their dollars.

Then again, the U.S. Congress is all too often an enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery, so who knows what they'll do. Let's not even talk about state legislatures.

They know what happens to Joe Pesci at the end, right? (Photo: Wikipedia)

Things are not going so hot for Zynga. The company bought Draw Something, and people promptly stopped playing it. Employees are complaining on Quora, and high-level execs are decamping to greener pastures. The stock is, pardon our crassness, in the crapper. Things are so bad over there, it must be enough to make Zuckerberg and Mason feel downright blissful.

Something must be done, and it looks like that something will be the time-honored money-maker of high plains drifters and mob bosses alike: gambling.

Mark Pincus first announced the company's intentions back in July, saying the company's first real cash-money offerings would come online in 2013 (regulatory situation permitting). Now, AllThingsD reports, the company has hired a COO in charge of new markets--who comes from a UK-based online betting company, no less. Maytal Ginzburg was previously SVP of regulated markets at 888 Holdings, which operates the online betting portal 888.com.

Who needs casinos on Coney Island when you can fritter away your rent money right from your laptop?

(Photo: Gamesys)

With all this spare cash we have lying around, we were getting concerned that there weren't enough outlets on the Internet for us to waste it. Luckily, Facebook has our back, and it's an even better way to spend money than on shitty Zynga goods.

According to the Financial Times, Facebook has launched its first game where users can bet real money (with the hopes of winning real money, of course). Because gambling laws in the U.K. are closely regulated and allow for that sort of thing, the game will only be available to U.K. users, which is a damn shame for those who love Atlantic City but don't feel like venturing out of their dark basements.

Facebook's first foray into gambling will be pretty staid: It's a Bingo app, built by U.K. gambling game company Gamesys, appropriately called Bingo Frienzy.

But if fellow New Yorkers were hoping Facebook will bring gambling to its U.S. platform any time soon, you might have to channel your dreams elsewhere:

In the US, where the majority of Facebook revenues are generated, the market for real-money social gaming is in effect closed. Regulators only recently began opening the door to certain kinds of online gambling, and only at a state level, presenting significant technical challenges for keeping operations within the law.

Guess you'll have to stick to wasting money on buying Farmville crops, then.

From Flickr user meddygarnet

Since 2005 New York State has allowed residents to enter their number for Lotto or MegaMillions through an online subscription. But it has also been building a much broader and more advanced online gambling system that it was reluctant to launch over legal concerns. A recent decision by the Justice Department, however, seems to have cleared the way for states to run internet gaming operations within their own borders, and New York officials are pumped!

“We’ve been waiting for a couple years,” Gordon Medenica, the director of New York State Lottery, told The New York Times. “We’re thrilled that this ruling has now come down and confirmed that our legal analysis was correct all along.”

The new ruling from the Justice Department, which revolves around the Wire Act of 1961, runs contrary to its former position, which had banned all online gambling within the United States. The clarification only outlaws online gambling on sports, paving the way for expansions of state lottery programs on the web.

Remember it was only this past April that New York prosecutors charged Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker, three of the most popular sites on the web, with fraud and money laundering. These sites had been operating from Antigua and the Isle of Man, where online gambling is legal, but serving hundreds of thousands of U.S. customers.

Experts say that the broad nature of the language in the Justice Department's new ruling may have opened the door for intrastate online poker. "

The interesting question is what the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid (D.-NV) and Kyl, the number two Republican in the Senate, will do. They had sent a letter asking the DoJ for clarification of its position on internet gambling. "They now have their answer, though it may not have been what they had wanted," wrote Professor Nelson Rose of GamblingAndTheLaw.com. "My bet is that they, and Congress, will continue to do nothing, while internet gambling explodes across the nation, made legal under state laws."