Lloyd Christmas said:
Oh yea.. one thing I forgot to mention.. Online bookies are getting smart about getting banned via BTC (and don't want to take a chance of you getting banned), so the good ones send/receive your BTC via a randomly generated address EVERY time you have to do a transaction. Again, another reason to ditch the practice of sending from BTC exchange to digital wallet to online bookie (and vice versa).
1) It's not an urban legend, it really does happen.
2) You're acting as though setting up an intermediary wallet and using it is this enormous hassle
it takes 5 minutes to set up an intermediary wallet, an additional 30 seconds to do the intermediary transaction, and an extra ten cents in mining fees
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I can see if people get banned using BTC if they receive BTC from the same address that the bookie uses repeatedly, but the way the BTC technology is designed, you'd have to do something really stupid to get banned (e.g. - list in the message "for payout" (or something to that effect).
As for the hassle of using an intermediary wallet, yes it can be a hassle. I don't like waiting up to two hours (sometimes) to see if a transaction got confirmed. (FYI - I don't keep $$ in my wallet as I don't want to subject myself to any risk with network hacks.) When I get paid via BTC, I cash it out ASAP..
Don't get me wrong - using an intermediary wallet does work (obviously) - but if you understand how BTC works from a technical perspective, it's virtually impossible to get banned unless 1) your online bookie sends/receives consistently from the same digital wallet address and 2) you mention in some comments in your transaction that the transaction is gambling-related...