Bitcoin Forum

And I shall try and answer you as honestly as possible :)

One question we often get asked is what coin is do you see used the most ?

Currently its:
Bitcoin == 40%
Litecoin == 50%
PPCoin == 10%
Terracoin == 0%
Novacoin == 0%

Litecoin more than Bitcoin? Somebody have invested lots of Bitcoin on Litecoin XD

The traffic for LTC is frequently higher its true, PPC is quiet but gets regular traffic.

What is your programming background?

How did you approach the problem of raising capital for this venture and collateral for the house in the improbable likelihood of someone exceeding the amount the casino has?

Also, I'd like to understand the process you go through to allow an alternative cryptocurrency to be used on your site.

Are you annoyed you spent a decent amount of time implementing those other two currencies only to see no traffic :P

Great website btw, have played quite a lot

My own is rather limited, Monkey has been quite good at teaching me the basics so I can hack away at the frontend (I added the coinflip history for example).

CodeMonkey has extensive experience with C, Perl, Bash and MySQL and some other languages that I cant recall atm. The backend engine which does all the real work is written in perl with several bash helper scripts syncing information between the backend server and the frontend (web server). The frontend is all in PHP (mainly so its more accessible for myself, I like php it blends well with simple to advance webpage design.

It was a luck more than anything, Im a speculator and a nerd from way back (I used to play on the e-gold casino's). I saw bitcoin come along and started mining 2-3 years ago and also bought some off mtgox back when the price was only $5 per coin :).

I had been sitting on my pile of coins ever since and enjoying the easy access of bitcoin gambling playing games such as satoshidice. I know CodeMonkey in real life and when he asked me to test his bitcoin coinflip script I did then quickly organized a meeting with him afterwards. I offered him a flat 50/50 split on all profits if he would continue to improve the script to meet my list of wants (done) with myself backing the casino entirely.

I wanted to invest in other start ups but not knowing any of the people behind them in real life and the many many scams perpetuating bitcoin I thought it best to go with someone I trusted and had a history with.


Supporting altcoins has become rather trivial in the last 6 months for us. The engine works of config files which allows us to set rules for each currency eg: txfee, max bet, etc.

Regarding the addition new altcoins we like to observe them for a bit once they are released. I like to see:
* an active community
* Innovation
* Some sanity behind the coin, coins with extremely fast block propagation make for high IO usage on our server, this is acceptable only if the coin is extremely popular. I wouldn't want to see more than 1m / block personally and thats based purely off litecoind and our the engine running litecoin games performances on our server when idle.

There have been cases where we add a coin and its dead for months, this actually happened with PPCoin, our first risky add (low interest at the time).

Speaking strictly for PPCoin, the engine could sit idle for days/ weeks and on a one occasion a month, but then use slowly built up to where we now have a few regular players. The engine rarely idles for more than 1 day before having a few games played.

is there a particular altcoin you would like to see added ? We are always receptive to new suggestions.

CodeMonkey was when I tasked him with adding PPC as it is a slightly different beast to btc/ltc, but now its a trivial process, in fact even I can do it :D.

* run create_db.sql ALT_DATA username password
* copy BTC-DATA to ALT-DATA
* modify ALT-DATA/config
* run bulk address changer on ALT-DATA/games
* run super_satoshi.pl /super-satoshi/ALT-DATA

I add about 3 lines to our satoshi_libs.php and the new currency is supported.

Synching the blockchain takes way longer than adding a new commodity  :P.

I have a few questions -

1. How long did it take you to go live from the moment you decided to start the site to when you accepted the first payment?

2. How much of 'reserve' money do you have in case someone has a lucky streak for longer than you'd like?

3. What's the value of bets placed every day (approx)?

4. What's your estimate of the amount of money it would take today to hire a programmer who could make a similar site?

5. Do you have an affiliate program? :D

You sure do :P, I shall answer as best I can below:

1. How long did it take you to go live from the moment you decided to start the site to when you accepted the first payment?

Its hard to say, perhaps 2 months of private testing and one month of unofficially open testing before going live.

2. How much of 'reserve' money do you have in case someone has a lucky streak for longer than you'd like?

~1000 BTC give our take.

We operate our casino so that can afford to payout 30-100 (max bet * max payout) wins depending on the game odds.
As some players may have noticed, our bets are dynamic, they grow/shrink if the hot wallets balance has grown/shrunk ~10% (configurable per engine instance).

3. What's the value of bets placed every day (approx)?

you could estimate/calculate that from here:
http://satoshiroulette.com/game-history.php?game=.*&DAYS=7&mode=BTC&REGEX=1

at a guess, the average bet is ~0.2 BTC.

4. What's your estimate of the amount of money it would take today to hire a programmer who could make a similar site?

CodeMonkey has sworn "never again" which honestly shook me when I was asking about follow up casinos. Due to accepting zero conf bets (still) you need to be on top of your security and always watching the forums and github for the latest exploits/ etc. So while the initial package may not cost too much, the on going maintenance would be costly unless your coder is reaping dividends like mine is.

That being said, the engine has been built to work as "a engine" in that you can feed it game config files which it will load and support "like magic". Its been designed from the ground up to be non programmer driven so I myself can easily add new games with no programming knowledge being required. We would eventually like to sell this or open source for a sufficient bounty as a complete software stack.

Here is an example game file so you get how easy it is:




5. Do you have an affiliate program? :D

unfortunately due to how blockchain betting works we do not have a way of tracking referrals to bets played.
However we are working on an addition to our casino which will add a login/account system so we can support betting "off the blockchain" for those that prefer it, this will include referral support :D.

Thanks for your responses, very insightful.

I also want to ask, what's the future with your website and partnership with your code monkey?


If it's not too much to ask, would Freicoin be an option in the future? The demurrage feature in the currency makes it ideal for spending. Having a casino to spend it in would be great.

Are you thinking of adding a deposit/withdrawl system, for small bets the transaction fees (especially on LTC)  make itr eally hard to win any money currently

Yes:

"Only way to make money in a casino is to own one."

Congrats!

Do you have extensive experience with python?

I personally have little to none, CodeMonkey has used it on previous projects he has worked on but prefers perl.

Thanks for your answers!
One more question - why do you call your partner CodeMonkey?!

I think that's his handle/alias. right?

Are you raking in the dough? How much capital did it take for you to launch?

Very nice work. Congrats to you and CodeMonkey! I enjoyed reading your comments.

He is paid in banana's :P though seriously It's from a youtube amv he likes, he thinks is a suitable title for what he does.


It ebbs and flows, our capital is ~1000 btc though we usually only run the hot wallet with ~20% of that amount. The rest staying in cold storage.

Oh lol really? That's a lame question then! :D

As a BBV$Ler [from 2+2]:

Has anyone put it all on Black yet?

Why did he partner with you? Why not just release SatoshiRoulette on his own?

Bets with Bitcoin... cool!  ;D
Something similar using Litecoin on the horizon?

Hehe, several times.


he needed capital which I had :)


We Have supported litecoin for nearly a year now :)

We also support: TRC, PPC & NVC.

How many Bitcoins have you had bet on you since launch?

hrmm, off the top of my head I honestly couldnt say - we do have a SQL query I run to find out, I'll see if I can incorporate that into 1 of our stats page.
Any other statistics you would like to see ? Im loving google chart, so easy for me to use.