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January 16, 2007
Neteller Founder Arrested
When you can't win the war on terror or the war in Iraq the logical solution is to step up your efforts in the war on online gaming. Because we all know gambling is a serious addiction that ruins families and frays the moral fabric of our society, or whatever the hell that moron Frist said, and without the internet nobody would have access to any form of gambling.
So in your opinion what does this mean for us? The end of Neteller for Americans is near by? The end of all online gaming? The end of Neteller's respectable share price? Nothing at all?
Here's my uneducated guess. Trading will reopen for Neteller stock, share prices will plummet, and some private concern will quickly snap Neteller up. It will be business as usual for us. I feel bad for anyone holding a large chunk of their shares right now though.
Posted by themaroon at January 16, 2007 1:01 PM
Comments
Trading will reopen for Neteller stock, share prices will plummet, and yet another overseas entity will bend over and take it up the rectal canal from the U.S. Neteller will ban U.S. citizens from using its services, not wanting to take the risk.
Ultimately a private entity will step into the void and fill the need. Just too much money to be made. Perhaps it will be that group that is trying to buy the island (Sealand?).
Posted by: Michael at January 16, 2007 2:32 PM
I fully expect Sealand to be destroyed if Pirate Bay or some gambling organization sets up shop there.
Posted by: scott at January 17, 2007 7:42 AM
As humorous as Sealand is, it isn't really relevant here. It isn't Neteller's home country that's causing trouble.
I do wonder about those Pirate Bay guys though. I'm curious what ISP they plan on using for all of this. I assume Sealand has some cable running to the shore, so I'd imagine they're at the mercy of the UK there, and I doubt they'd get much cooperation. It shouldn't be too hard to prevent Sealand from getting the bandwidth necessary to host a site like that.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at January 17, 2007 8:14 AM
I wonder if it would be a good idea to plow some money into Neteller stock after it potentially plummets. It might recover in the long term as other markets for poker continue to grow elsewhere outside the U.S. Also, I am interested as to how quickly the share price would pick back up if it was acquired by another private company.
On a somewhat unrelated note I wanted to get advice about another dependable way to fund my pokerstars account. I am pretty sure that Neteller will be gone after the next three months. Yesterday I asked during a help chat session on their website how they would contact me about any policy changes and they said they had no plan for any such action.
Posted by: Mike at January 17, 2007 4:03 PM
Well their stock would cease to exist if a private company snapped them up, which is what I expect to happen. In that case the shareholders will likely get a slight premium over the trading price when that happens, which will probably still be far below what it was at last Friday.
And I like ePassporte better than Neteller by far, thanks to the virtual visa that works on Amazon. I hear the load fees are absurd though.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at January 17, 2007 4:40 PM
It looks like Neteller just decided to stop Americans from using the service. Can't be good for poker. I just wish that the sites had done more to get people to switch services. Seems like a nice bonus that you could not get using Neteller would have encouraged people to look into things like ePassporte.
Posted by: Joe at January 17, 2007 8:12 PM