Very nice. Bitcoin has some stiff competition from commercial online game payment and economy systems and imho it's by far the best option even at this early stage, hope some of the attendees are thinking the same thing now
Have you see the rates for those payment processors? They are in the 10% to 20% with all chargebacks deducted and most require a hold of some % of funds for 90 days (a chargeback reserve).
I would say those stop gap payment processors face stiff competition (i.e. an extinction level event) from bitcoin if/when it ever reaches critical mass. A site like Party Poker or Pokerstars could save a hundred million dollars a year (and no that isn't an exaggeration) simply by having a low cost, high speed irreversible payment method. Hell BitInstant's ~5% fee is downright "free" compared to the costs that gaming sites currently pay. A gaming site could offer to double the fee for customers (i.e. we will cover BitInstant's fee plus give you a bonus 5%) and still come out way ahead given the irreversible nature.
Also that doesn't include things like your "trusted" payment processor disappearing with the money. In the Full Tilt Poker case it came out that two of FTP processors simply stole the money. The link below is for one which stole $42 million (and IIRC there was another "smaller" theft which involved something like $20M more).
http://betting.betfair.com/poker/poker-news/full-tilt-poker-robbed-by-payment-processor-010911.htmlDespite these costs online gaming is hugely profitable because the average drop (% of funds deposited which end up in the house's pocket) is something like 50% to 60%+.
Still the potential to cut out the largest two costs (payment processor and fraud losses) is something no business is going to ignore for long. There still is that huge chicken and egg problem. Accepting Bitcoin does little good if almost nobody has them. There is no reason for someone to have them if nobody accepts them. That problem is slowly solving itself.
