Would this be a legal idea for a Web site?
What if there was a site that handled personal wagers that people make? The site would take money in advance from each party and would pay the total to the winner. Determining the winner would be easy in the case of events from the news. In other cases, both parties to the wager could agree on a set of one or more third parties who would announce the winner. The idea would be to prevent people from welching on wagers. The site might be able to get by without making any charges, making interest on the money that it holds.
Another possibility would be for the site to be used to record small loans between people in order to keep a record, so the person loaned the money would not be able to deny it. I don’t know how the site could make money on this other than through ads.
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6 Answers
Nope. Online gambling is a no no.
If you want to get into legal speculation, look into Lloyd’s of London. They speculate on ventures every day and millions are won and lost.
Just don’t host it in the United States. Costa Rica seems to be a popular choice for avoiding US laws and taxes.
Offshoring gambling sites has come under a huge crackdown – so I wouldn’t even do that (it seems like it wouldn’t generate enough profits as it sounds like you’re working with casual bets, anyway). Your second idea has more legal merit, but I think there are lending aps on sites like facebook that would be killer competition – plus, the loans you’re talking about covering are generally casual, so people don’t want to deal with formalizing them knowing the risk. I don’t know how you’d get these people to utilize the site you’re talking about.
Well, maybe I could get away with it, I’m a member of a recognized Native American tribe, so there might be some way to finagle it.
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