Bitcoin Forum

It's been a year since I've joined this forum and I was somewhat reluctant in opening an "Ask me Anything" thread due to all the spam going on in the gambling section, but several users requested it, and I've also enabled self-moderation to battle the spammers. Hopefully it will be a fun exercise where we can all together make this section more interesting.

So, I've been in this industry for a while now, I'm part of a team that operates several brands, and have also worked within other operations, including MGA, UKGC and Curacao licensed brands. I would say that I know the ins and outs of most of the operations out there, including some high end competitors, and I would love to share any insights or answer any burning questions that someone outside of the industry has. I'm not the owner of the casino though, so I'll not be able to answer questions targeted towards that area of the business, but I can try to shed light on anything else.

I can cover almost anything, game selections, bonus methods, VIP players, troubles with the law, license structure. You can ask anything, and if the questions are really interesting, I'll include them in this post as an edit.

Regarding the self-moderation aspect of the thread, I will not abuse it. I don't mind entering a proper argument, maybe you'll learn something new, maybe I will. But if I smell an AI-written post, or a random one just to boost your campaign numbers, I will delete it. I already created more than enough cool threads that got eaten up by spammers, I don't want this one to be another of those.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: How much money do you need to open a Crypto or Fiat online casino?
The minimum recommended amount for an experienced team starting an online venture would be in-between 3.8 Mil and 5 Mil, all depending on the team and their salaries. Most new casino operations get profitable anywhere between 14 to 18 months, so you would need enough money to survive that period. However, that's for people who have previous experience with managing a casino operation and are bringing in a lot of contacts from the industry already. If you're starting from scratch, with a junior team, you will need to set more money aside for consultants and failed campaigns.

Q: Can I open an online casino by myself?
I wouldn't recommend opening a casino by yourself or even with a team of junior people, the market is so competitive that you will either be eaten up by the competition, or by scammers. It's a tough job with a lot of stress. If you would like to enter the industry, and do something by yourself, you can always open an affiliate site with Wordpress and work your way up.

Q: How many people do work at an online casino?
Smaller operations usually have up to 15 people, medium operations up to 500, larger can go up to 5000, it all depends on how many services they do in-house. If you're outsourcing almost every aspect of your business, then you can work with a smaller team, but if you have your own customer support or your own casino platform, then we're talking about several hundred people for just one department.

Q: How does a regular online casino work?
Most smaller to medium operations work in a so called puzzle-style operation, that means that you, as the operator, are made up of several pieces that are completely separate from your business, with which you either partner up or you pay them for the services they offer.

#1. The Casino Platform itself, the key element. Same how there are platforms like Wordpress and Kentico, there are also finished solutions for your Casino, usually built either in Angular, React or, sometimes, in Next.JS. Those are companies that are known within the industry and usually manage everything for you, but for a fee of course.
#2. Game Providers, the most important aspect of a casino, there are over 100 different gaming providers on the market who take care of the games, their quality and security. So instead of making your own games, you just plug them into your casino.
#3. Payment Providers, you usually do not process payments in-house, and it's also not recommended since it's a lot of money in question, so you rather let a professional manage that. This is why you get payment providers like Mastercard, PayPal, GooglePay, ApplePay and similar services.
#4. Affiliate Platform Provider, instead of having your own system for onboarding affiliates, you usually outsource this as well.
#5. Customer Support Providers, again, instead of hiring 30 employees of your own, you just find a company that can manage this aspect for you, usually it has to be an experienced or iGaming dedicated company because there's a lot of lingo going on. However, this is also one of the reasons why some smaller operations have bad customer support = because it's outsourced. [/li][/list]


So, basically, the smaller you are, the more you're outsourcing, but the more percentage of your winnings goes to the providers. The bigger you are, the more stuff you're doing in-house.

Q: How much money does an online casino earn?

There are tons of casinos that are publicly trading, so their earnings are available to the public. For an example, you can Google Betsson AB Quarter Report, and you'll see that they are ranging around 50 Million per quarter, but they are also a huge operation that eats a lot of money by itself. Smaller operations usually earn anywhere between 250.000 to a million per month, but since it's such a volatile market, you have to have a fat war chest for hard times.



 

1. What do you think about a casino that allow a country to gamble in their site, but gambling is actually illegal in that country?

2. What the owner did to decrease the forbidden jurisdiction (before (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5481354.msg63487137#msg63487137), after (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5481354.msg63512315#msg63512315))?

3. CMIIW In my observation Curacao license is useless since they're not responsible if the casino turns scam, is there any strong license for crypto casino that can fight against exit scam casino?

4. How much the average cost to create a good casino? excluding the bankroll.

5. I knows every centralized sites will need to comply with KYC when they're become big, does the owner receive a report from authority something like "You must add mandatory KYC rules, if you fail to meet it until the next year, we will shutdown your casino"?

Countries are divided into legal, grey and illegal markets, how you categorize them depends on the country itself, and if they have a legal framework setup or not.

If the country doesn't have a legal framework, but you have a casino license to operate there, you can go and operate. An example would be the Malta Gaming Authority system, with which you could, technically, operate in the whole EU. However, during the launch some countries didn't had a legal framework (like Sweden back then), so you had a lot of online casinos operate in Sweden as a grey market.

A legal country would be the one that has the framework and licensing in place, like the UK which has the UK Gambling Comission.

An illegal market would be the one strictly banning your type of operation, like the US, with which you don't want to fuck around.


You can get more licenses, Gibraltar, Estonia, UKGC, MGA etc. With more licenses you get access to more countries. There are also shady practices with some operators who decided to let in some countries due to the profitability of the players base, but those players are not protected by any laws then. Only play on operators who are operating legally within your country.


Curacao isn't useless, it still creates some sort of ownership and responsibility, not as much as MGA or UKGC, but it's still something. If I would choose between playing on a completely unregulated casino and a Curacao licensed one, I would always go for the Curacao one. However, to answer your question, no. MGA is currently trying to implement crypto casinos, but it's a slow process. What some operators are trying to do (which we did in the beginning as well) is to try and operate a crypto casino per the MGA laws and instructions, and then hope once MGA recognizes crypto casinos as regular casinos, we would get first entry. However, the situation is more complicated than we first thought.


Depending on your platform and game providers, as well as marketing suppliers and the size of your team, anywhere between $3.5 to $5.5 million. Whoever tells you less never operated a successful casino. 


Yes. Basically the less rules you follow, the less providers and suppliers want to work with you. You want to have the best games and best payment solutions? You need to follow more rules, and unfortunately KYC is one of the mandatory things if you want to have flagship games and flagship payment providers. Also, not having KYC means a lot (and I mean *a lot*) scammers, so by not having KYC, you need to have a strong legal/customer support team to manage the influx of scammers.

Nice to see you create a thread like this. This is my first time commenting on your post, but I have read your posts a few times and you are an expert on casinos and all things gambling.

Of course, we have lots of questions about casinos and gambling, how the business works, whether every casino must make a profit or whether casinos can also lose money like companies in general. But for now I'm not asking specifically but honestly I'm glad to see you making a thread like this. I will follow your thread and learn from the knowledge you have

People think that all casinos are pure money making machines, but at the end of the day it's an entrepreneurial venture like any other, and as with any other company, you can go bankrupt and not earn anything with a casino as well. There are certain things that we do to guard ourselves from these.

#1. Implementing KYC if you don't have a good team that can manage a high influx of scammers. There's nothing worse then 1000+ accounts jumping on to your newly opened casino and using up all the bonus funds. The bonus that we're giving out isn't something conjured out of thin air, it's an amount we pay to the game provider. So if you have a no deposit bonus offer, and that one is being misused, you can easily screw up your trajectory.
#2. Implementing a withdrawal limit on big wins. Big wins are an essential part of a casino experience, and you need to pay them out. However, if it so happens that you get 10 big winners within one week, that could drain out your bankroll and risk the salaries of the team. To battle that, we add certain rules in the TOS, one of them being a limit on weekly withdrawals.

One funny thing that I remember that happened to us with our last casino -  it was our last week, just before closing, when we stopped all traffic and marketing, one guy from BitcoinTalk came, played for a few days and triggered a massive win : ))) We've already calculated our losses and were ready to close it, then a member comes and says "no no no, open up the books again, I won" ;D But there's nothing that you can do except communicate the weekly maximum pay out and pay out everything in "installments".

1. How intrusive, serious or damaging are the economical sanctions from the United States and the European Union against an specific country when comes to the operation of a casino in that country or the availability of a foreign online casino to that country sanctioned by both of those jurisdictions? It specifically affects game providers based on those countries or the casino/ gambling platform as a whole cannot participate in that national market, otherwise would be subjected to serious consequences?

2. Why most of the mascots of casinos are anthro animals? I have seen several casinos to have some designs and catches my attention many of them for that kind of mascot. Is there a chance there are many members of the furry fandom among casino operators?

3. How difficult is for a properly registered casino to accept Monero for both deposits and withdrawals?

Yes, I remember you have the signature design competition and campaign as well.

1. How big is the budget to operate a full blown online casinos? Do you need to give the specifics, maybe some numbers will do. But if you don't feel comfortable answering it, that will be find.

2. How you hire support and technical staff?

3. How you go if there is a scam accusations against you and you think that the gambler is just trying to squeeze money from you?

4. As far as gamblers though, who do you think gamble the most, no need for specifics countries, but perhaps you can say if they are from Asia or Europe?

Thank you for your answer, I am very satisfied with your answer.


That's a good story, and I don't think "installments" are a bad thing and are part of the casino's commitment to still paying users' winnings even if they can't afford to pay them outright.

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Let me ask you something else, most of the casinos use third party services or game providers like PP, Bgaming, PGsoft, Play'N Go, No limit, etc. Can you explain how the contract between the casino and the game provider works? I once made a question about this here: Who is the money manager? is it a casino or game provider? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5481148.msg63477143#msg63477143)

Same as with any business, you're made out of several puzzle pieces. To have a full-fledged casino experience, you need;

#1. The Casino Platform that will host all of the puzzle pieces, this can either be your own, in-house solution, where some major operators like Betsson hae their own, while most start-ups usually use SoftSwiss as their casino platform solution. Then once you get that platform, you need to "assemble" the rest, which is:

#2. The Game Providers, usually the casino platform will have their own "default ones" that come with each casino, but for better game providers you will need to have better licenses. The relationship between the game provider and yourself is in % of rev share, monthly commitments and bonus costs, the amount and the exact deal depends on you and how you agree on it, but you will always be paying money to them. No one will onboard a game provider for free.

#3. The Payment Providers, these also depend on the type of license you have. E.g. if you have a UKGC license and are operating in UK legally, you can apply for several well known payment solutions (Paypal, Visa, Mastercard etc). But if you're operating without a license, you're usually depending on crypto or low-end payment solutions. Curacao is somewhere in the middle. You're legal enough to have bank transfer options, but grey enough to be ignored by some bigger payment providers.

#4. The Affiliate Platform, this is mostly tied to the casino platform, but can also be a separate solution (or a custom-in house solution). Basically a platform with which you're managing the affiliates and the deals that you have with them.

#5. Customer Support. This is also mostly outsourced, there are several providers on the market, one of the best is actually coming from Betsson who started outsourcing theirs just a few years ago. Sometimes 50+ casinos share the same customer support provider, which is the reason why we're getting such mediocre results as players when reaching out to the CS.

But basically all of the above things ask for money and sometimes a percentage of your revenue, it all depends on the agreement.


To answer your question though, who dictates the success of the casino? It's mostly the casino owner who either from experience or luck knows which combo of the above is best for a certain market. You need to find a balance, you can't have the best games paired with the worst payment providers, or the best payment providers with the worst games. There has to be a balance of good games and good payment solutions, and then throw in good bonuses and marketing.

From my experience the best approach is to just have a good, human approach to the business, through good VIP and general support, and a balance of providers, and the players will recognize it and appreciate it over the long term. The trouble is that most of the happy players aren't vocal, but the scammers are.

OMG, this sounds so complicated and explains how you understand this business so well. I've only heard about Betsson and SoftSwiss from you but I'm guessing that they are also third parties to create a casino. To be honest, I don't fully understand what you're explaining, but I can more or less understand it. This sounds very complicated and makes the casino require a lot of capital. As far as I know, casinos also require a lot of funds to carry out promotions, so in my opinion the casino business also has quite a big risk, even though at first I thought casinos were money-making machines.

Once again, thank you for the great answer you provided

I don't know but I think am just getting to read your thread for the first time and it's interesting to see how delightful you are to give answers to certain unanswered questions about casino's that may be bothering many gamblers minds.

1. From your years of experience with different casino's sincerely speaking, can you tell us if casinos put the interest of gamblers as a salient priority in their operation. I am asking this question because I have always believe that these gambling house in general don't have our best interest in mind in all their operation.

2. I have always wondered why casino give a blind sight to a gambler that might have erred against any one of their ToS maybe ignorantly or knowingly and instead of the casino to point out their offense immediately  and serve the gamblers' account the penalty deemed, they would rather ignore not until the gambler might have fund good sum of money into the account or won a bet and about to withdraw that's when they would raise the issue and sometimes this might have taken months or so. I want to know what's the idea behind that mode of behavior by casinos.

Would be pleased to receive honest replies from you Sir.

You are welcome, it's very nice that you came up with this idea to create an AMA thread!

1. How long do you plan to leave this AMA thread open?
2. Do casinos sometimes use KYC as an excuse to not pay to the user? With the hope that user won't submit KYC to not reveal their identity and casino won't have to pay winnings.
3. Why do casinos register in Curacao and not use their local license? i.e. Why does Malta based casino uses Curacao license instead of local Malta license?
4. Do casinos often hunt to hire employees of their competitor websites?
5. How to be sure that casino games are actually 100% provably fair? I mean this[/rul]. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5097164.msg49253796#msg49253796)

I know that this will be hard to understand at first, but try to look at this in this way.

You know about the game Tomb Raider from Square Enix, right? What's the purpose of the game? To entertain you and get paid for that, right? It asks for $39 for 20 hours of fun. Was the game good? It was. Will you buy the next one? You will.

Now to the casino, same thing, let us say that you have Betsafe.com that is managed by Betsson. What's the purpose of Betsafe.com? To entertain you and get paid for that, again.

The only difference her is that the Video Game has the story element, while the Casino Game has the thrill element. Those are the USP's.

So with that said, the goal of an operation that wants to stay on the market is always, and I say *always* to give a good player experience. If you lose that player you've lost an ongoing income source. Most of us would rather have 1000 players that gamble $20 per month, every month for the next 36 months, than 1 player who loses $50.000 in one month and disappears after that. Evergreen businesses are built on good quality service and a constant influx of players who like your brand and spend regular time with you.



It's called a KYC matrix. With a huge influx of players you can't manage each of them individually, and you (as the casino) can't get into any legal trouble if they just spent the money on your casino, so you create a KYC matrix that checks every player that joins the casino and rates them. However, if someone is from an illegal country like US, and they deposited $100 and won $100.000, and all your red flags point out that that money will go to a US based user, you will rather refund him the $100 than have problems with the FBI.

Fines in this industry are huge, and I could write a whole article just about the legal issues you can have. For an example, I have a lot of friends in the industry who can't travel to Turkey anymore, because they operated a casino business there and the government decided to ban them from entering the country. So, in other words, you don't want to fuck with a jurisdiction in which you can't operate legally.


#1. Up to you guys, as long as it doesn't get too spammy and it's fun for everyone.
#2. It depends on the operation, check what I wrote above about the KYC matrix. The "grey zone" here is that no one will bother KYC'ing a losing customer, but once the money from the casinos bank account needs to go to a forbidden countries bank account, then that's an issue. Also, as a casino, it's not your fault that someone from a restricted country decided to gamble, and you have the full right to KYC them before sending them a larger sum. Our own practice is to not even enable the possibility of a user from a restricted country to join in, but affiliates sometimes push whatever towards us and then you need to rely on the matrix.
#3. Uf... this one is complicated. Basically every license has its own countries in which you can operate, and every skilled team within this industry is usually (usually) specialized in just a few markets. So if I'm starting a casino with a team skilled working on Asian markets, or in Sweden, I will not have any use of an MGA license, I will need to pick the licenses for those markets.  Also, Curacao was one of the few licenses that were easier to acquire than MGA, and most new teams would first go with a Curacao operation, and then move on to other operations. Still, easy doesn't mean non-regulated, there's still a lot of paper work and responsibilities tied to owning a curacao licensed entity.
#4. Oh yes, people here usually jump every 6 to 12 months to a new company, but I wouldn't recommend hiring that type. I personally, when I hire, I'm selling the vision and trying to get a long term talent into the house, but that's getting harder and harder since the pool of skilled iGaming workers is small, so the salaries get astronomic. You want to find a Technical SEO person skilled in Angular and React platforms who is also well connected for Off-Page marketing in New Zealand and you only offer $40k salary per year? Well, good luck with that :D
#5. The casino games are here to entertain you, not to give you money. Imagine if the core business would be giving money, how much sense would that make? ;D As soon as you switch your mindset and you're completely aware that the core business of that slot game is to entertain you, not to make you rich, you will stop caring about these things. However, to answer your question, if it's a licensed casino, it has to have provably fair games, the regulator will not permit it other wise.

First of all this is very helpful thread and I hope you will leave this open permanently and answer question whenever you have time. Your insights is significant because of your experience because we are all just speculating here and referencing previous issues to our knowledge.

I’m very eager to know answer to this question:

1.)Does Curacao doxxed the casino properly?
2.) Is it true that casino tracked every players win rate and mark players that win frequently that later get restricted or limited?
3.) What country casino pay their taxes?
4.) Is the casino the one paying win from 3rd party game providers?

#1. Can you elaborate here? I didn't understand what you mean by this.
#2. I worked for over 10 different brands and am surrounded with a large group of people from this industry, and I can tell you that's completely not true for licensed operators. The thing is, in most cases the house is the one that wins, and even if there's an individual here and there that stands out of the crowd, if it's a legit way of winning we let them win and offer collabs, especially if it's a twitch streamer or influencer. There's no value in limiting an active player. However, if they are constantly winning due to a loop hole, then yes.
#3. If the license is from Curacao, it doesn't mean that the operation is based in Curacao. So, wherever the operation is based, that's where the taxes are being paid. That's for Fiat operations, for Crypto I don't think I need to explain you anything since we're on a crypto forum :P
#4. I didn't understand the question here completely, but if you're asking me who's paying for a win, the casino is always paying for it. There are some shared pools in some games where major jackpots are being divided, but those are rare. The casino is always the one that pays out the win.

Such a helpful and interesting topic here!


To get licensed with Curacao, what documents casino have to submit? I think that's what he meant.

This is a great topic and you are very expert and knowledgeable about casinos.

May I join in asking? Who determines the win rate in a game? Like the RTP on slot machines and can the casino set the win rate or is this determined by the game provider? and if I play at a live casino (blackjack at a pragmatic provider) and get a big win, who will pay me? is it a casino or a third party (pragmatic)?

The root of my curiosity about this is how does my country for example Philippines will benefit by accepting license from Curacao. I thought somehow casino pay taxes to all the government which they have players from that specific country.


This is what I actually mean to seek. I remember some issue here before that casino claims that the provider didn’t pay the jackpot. And I encounter some problem before on a live games provider which my bet didn’t reflect to my balance after the round ends. The casino tells me that game provider is the one handling the payout and they don’t have any control on it. Is your statement limited only to slot games?


Yes. This is what I’m trying to express.

#1. Who pays when I win, is it the casino or the game provider?
A: It depends. If it's a solo game, then the casino pays. Like a slot game hosted on the casino, or a regular jackpot, or a regular live casino game. If it's a progressive or multi-game offer, then it's the game provider since several operators chip in to make that bucket huge. E.g. if you have a progressive jackpot of $12 Mill, that's not coming out of one casino, we all chipped in a bit to get to that number, and then if that win is triggered at "my casino", I don't pay a cent on it, it all goes from the game provider (who took it from 1000+ casinos). So it all depends on the system, game and deal the operator has with the game provider.

#2. Which papers does a Curacao license need?
As I mentioned in some of the posts above, it's one of the "easiest" licenses to acquire, and you just need a proper business plan and your regular KYC that every country asks when opening a business, additionally Curacao asks for a clean police conduct. If you google this topic you'll find several takes, and the reason I'm not going to write down more details around this is because the process is changing, and it might be different in a few weeks. Netherlands are restructuring how they are operating Curacao licensed entities so the process will change.

#3. How does my country for example Philippines will benefit by accepting license from Curacao?

Philippines is a restricted country per Curacao laws, but if you want an answer regardless of that, no, it's not benefiting at all, this was one of the main issues with Sweden and Poland here in the EU.

Basically both countries didn't want to introduce an online framework for casinos, but actively blocked all other casino providers from operating there. What that did is create a huge black market. After years and years of losing those tax funds to black market operators, they finally smartened up (Sweden at least) and introduced their own license framework, and can now offer proper licenses and tax those operators.

In my opinion, every country should introduce a legal framework for operating an online casino within that specific country, create a licensing structure and force the operators to open local offices and employ local people, and encourage competition. That way everyone would benefit, and you would see less Curacao licensed brands.

I have no questions right now, but this thread is surprising me very pleasantly. As mere users, our knowledge on how these services work behind the scenes is mostly a mystery, so thank you SirJohnVonSlotty for so generously sharing your knowledge with us.

Thanks for doing this:

1: Does token swapping inside the site require seperate exchange license and it's that harder to come by?
2: How do you require starting capital for house bank? And can you get any kind of insurance for it?
3. How do you spot laundered money, and accounts involved in money laundering? For example if i loan money from someone who has been using mixers, or they are otherwise linked to shady sources, will you freeze my account or is there a rule that how many links can my account can have to the possible laundered money account?

This if probably one of the most useful and helpful thread on the gambling board. I highly appreciate OP's efforts to create this thread and answer all the questions with professional answers. I'm impressed that how useful information we are getting by reading this thread. Each reply from OP is helping us to understand the details of the online casinos and how they operate.

Here are my questions:

1. Why most of the casinos that run poker games have most countries in the ban list?
2. How those casinos host their site which type of web hosting services they prefer to use?
3. Can you also tell me that how powerful VPS machines those casinos need when they have more than 1000's of concurrent players?
4. Is the KYC data of the customers safe on the online casinos? I mean won't they share it with third parties for profit?
5. How do casinos find scammers and hackers who wins by finding bugs in the games or casino's web applications?

#1. I'm not familiar with this practice so I can't say anything about it.
#2. In most cases you have an already established operator investing into a "satellite" brand, that satellite brand is operated by a completely new team that was initially pitching the idea. So let us say that you and your friends are really good at managing other people's casino departments (e.g. you work for Bet365 or Stake), you've already outgrew the positions available within those companies, so you decide to open up your own casino that has some special marketing formula, you would then pitch your idea to operators who would be willing to open up a satellite brand. Sometimes even platform providers or game providers decide to act as investors, and you obviously have a lot of crypto exchange investors. If you would like to connect with these people, you would need to attend conferences and mingle around igaming events.
#3. Uf, also a complicated issue. The money laundering matrix is huge and can spot it from miles away, but although it's a smart little tool, I assure you that people who launder money are usually very, very stupid. Last time I had to deal with an issue the gentleman opened up three accounts under e-mails like "name.surname@gmail.com" + "surname.surname@gmail.com" and "namesky.surnamesky@gmail.com" under the same IP address, and claimed that those accounts aren't his, although it was obvious by just looking at the mails that it's the same person. But keep in mind that not every individual casino does the money laundering check, it's on a group basis. So if 1000 casinos have the same platform provider (SoftSwiss), the platform provider checks the players on a group level, with group level data, and then flags them. With that we can spot a money launderer even before he deposits on our casino, because he has a track record on other casinos.


#1. It's extremely hard to find a reputable poker provider, like, really hard. Pokerstars is dominating here and there's nothing that we can do about it. Because of that you'll not see that many casinos with live poker games.
#2. It's usually offshore dedicated servers with cloudflare, DDOS attacks and similar are common things so you want something reliable. But the industry is slowly moving towards headless solutions, but it's hard to find hosting providers that want to host a casino, you can't just go to your regular godaddy or a2hosting provider and host a casino there.
#3. Most of the solutions are web apps made in angular and react, so I'm not sure a VPS is the ideal solution, but overall a 6-8 core CPU and 32 GB RAM could do the job (I think).
#4. It really depends on the casino, some operators share your KYC data across their brands, others don't, but I assure you that it's in no ones interest to make problems for the players.
#5. That's probably a good question for game providers, I don't know the answer, but I'll try to find out.

Dear SirJohn,
Can you give me any advices and teach me how to avoid getting blacklisted in banks as high risk customer because of my previous working connection with clients from certain risk countries?
I am asking for one friend who needs urgent help with this :D
Hope you can help.

Hi, sorry if I am being a little insensitive here or being a little bit nosy but I just gotta ask, what happened to coinslotty.com? I mean, I remember your last post on the coinslotty.com ANN thread saying that your team would not be moving forward with the project anymore(I assume you were discontinuing the operation of coinslotty.com) but I just checked the website just now and it seems to be operational, did a new management take over the website?

also, I really commend that your team was very generous to the signature campaign participants after you decided to stop the signature campaign.

That was a good read! Allow me to chime in  :D

1. What do you think of bitcointalk as a platform in terms of promoting casinos? and how likely are you to run or recommend to run more campaigns here?

2. I've seen fellow members using amlbot.com to gauge an address' risk score on custodial platforms. Is it popular in the industry?

3. With the increasing regulatory pressure on crypto, what's the most thing you're worried as someone who is in the industry of online casinos supporting cryptocurrencies?

thanks for doing god's work 🙇‍♂️

Im gonna ask a simple question

How much revenue that gambling site can earn in a year? Because some companies is not publicly trade then the data is not be shared anywhere So I'm just curious. are they can be loss in revenue or just always profit


and Im currently gonna ask the same question nowadays crypto regulated is very tight and I do believe in coming year this gonna be more tight is there any movement from the crypto gambling provider or they are gonna fully comply with the gov.

I only have one question: what do you think of big names in the crypto gambling industry that operate without any licenses such as bustabit? Are they automatically in the radar of law enforcements of the countries they serve in because they are operating without any official licenses? I'm still confused as to how a license affects the operations of a crypto casino since these guys are operating for too long without one but are still compliant to KYC/AML regulations.

I mean, in short, both me and the team are from the fiat world, but we thought we could take on a crypto project and make it successful. Just six months in we figured out that it would be smarter to just focus all of our resources into a fiat brand, instead burning money on something that we're not skilled at yet. It wasn't a pump and dump scheme or anything like that, all suppliers, partners and players were paid out, with some of them being on this forum, so it was just a business decision.


Because they are playing with a loop hole, same like skin gambling. Inventing your own game or method of gambling is one way how to go around all the licenses and nuisances of the legitimate world.


There are hundreds of casinos that are a publicly trading company, but people don't know that, and as a publicly trading company they have to disclose their EBIT-a. Betsson is one example, and you can always check out their investor calls and how much money they make. Just keep in mind that they own 10+ brands. In their latest report from last year, they've earned a bit more than 50 Million in 1 quarter, so within 1 year that would be around 200 Million. Here's a link to it: https://www.betssonab.com/en/press/betsson-ab-publ-trading-update-second-quarter-2023-2143785


#1. I think 75% of the participants are destroying the gambling board with their campaigns since people just randomly write shit to meet their daily quota. However, I do think that if you're operating a crypto business, that you should have some form of presence on this forum. For now I have no projects to advertise.
#2. I see that the project is just a few years old, I never heard of it though.
#3. I'm not that worried about regulators, if you're working like a regular business and follow best practices the regulators can't do anything to you except help you get more licenses, what I'm worried though are the huge price differences that the crypto world is bringing in. A player or an affiliate could get $500 equivalent in bitcoin on Friday, and on Monday that could turn into $1500 because of a BTC price hike, multiply that with 100 people and you're out of business. It's really hard to do book keeping and keep a healthy bank roll if you need to work with both fiat and crypto. If it would be a crypto only business like bustabit then that's a different thing.


Tell that friend that he's fucked, nothing else to add :D

Quite a decent amount of money, if you think about it that way. It seems to me that with this amount of funds it is possible to open not only an online casino. There are many business options available. Why am I doing all this?

By what criteria does a person decide to open this particular type of activity? What makes him consider this business option and not another. If there are answers to these questions, then I will carefully read about it.

How I understood it, most of the investments from this industry come from "old casino money", basically generations of people who worked within this industry.

Those people then transferred from offline to online, and offered great salaries to their workers.

The workers were introduced and trained in casino operations, and slowly as they progressed through their career decided to open up their own casino, and also offer great salaries to attract talent.

Then that talent again went through the same cycle and decided to open up their own casino.

Rarely I meet someone who woke up one morning and said "hey you know what, I'm gonna go open a Stake competitor" and succeeded at doing that. Sure there are some unicorns here and there, but in general I think that the trajectory was the one from above.

Thanks for answering my previous questions, I truly appreciate those useful answers. I have a few more questions that I want to ask you.

1. How can someone possibly join a casino as a team member and get paid for it?
2. How casinos know if someone is from US and is using a VPN? There are many VPN providers that work in sheath mode where no information about their data centers or other details is available. You can't track those VPN's or proxies on any of the tracking sites then how will the casino be able to know that the user is from USA or from the country whose IP he's using?
3. Let's say if someone has good a good domain name that can be very useful for a casino and their business. Then how should that person initiate a deal with a casino to sell that domain name?
4. I would also like to know that how much does casinos pay the team members on weekly or monthly basis?

Cool thread, let's give it a try.

I have never had a positive opinion on casino bonuses. They are usually followed by high wagering requirements of 20-30x if you are lucky and can even go up to 200x if you are not lucky. Then there is the no wagering bonus where the casino doesn't require that its players roll over the winnings (acquired from bonus funds) an x number of times. But these bonuses have even higher initial wagering requirements than the wagering ones (without counting rolling over the winnings) or other restrictions like lower maximum win limits, lower maximum bets, etc.

If there are a few bonuses issued by certain online casinos that you personally believe are worth it, which ones would those be? 

#1. Develop a skillset needed within the industry... development, marketing, customer relationships, card dealers etc. Google for "iGaming jobs" in your area and you'll get a better picture.
#2. Game patterns, log in patterns, group info etc... There are a lot of breadcrumbs that lead to the conclusion, and a lot of group data. Remember, one casino rarely operates alone, it's mostly 1 brand owned by a company that operates several brands, that is hosted on a platform that hosts 1000+ brands, and they have group data.
#3. You can list the domain on GoDaddy Auctions or HugeDomains.com, but overall most casinos go with the path of least resistance, if domain A is taken, they go for domain B. In most cases people in this industry are not that creative, so even if you have a really, really good and creative name, they will most likely ignore it and go for something generic like "luckyspadecasino" - which I personally hate. With our group we're trying to get some unique stuff going on.
#4. It's regular employment that ranges between 25k to 150k per year, depending on the person, their seniority, skill level etc. Google "iGaming Jobs Average Salary" and you'll get a better overview.


Remember what I told you in the start; a casino is here to entertain you. It wouldn't be that much entertainment if you would deposit $50, put it all on one spin, lose $45 out of it and then withdraw the remaining $5. This is why bonuses and wagering come into place. A casino is not here to make money for the players, it's here to entertain and give that thrill of a possible win. What is the goal of YouTube? To entertain the user and make money off of them. Same with the casino industry. We are basically fighting for the same thing, a users time.

Usually if I feel like gambling or want to introduce my friends to the industry, I go to an offline casino, and there aren't that many bonuses there. So I'm really the wrong person to ask about bonus recommendations :)




Ah, I had an extensive post about this a while ago but I can't find it now... Basically the RTP is set by the game provider by default, the game provider is the one who wants to keep a good reputation, since the players mostly join a casino because of a specific game. The RTP in online casinos is much higher than in offline casinos, and it's better regulated, so if I would want to play slots, I would definitely play them online where it ranges in the mid 90%, than go offline where it ranges in the lower 70%. Live casino winnings, if not a progressive jackpot, are paid by the casino itself.

People usually think that we hate winners, but it's the opposite. Since the house has an edge, we don't worry that much about the winners, we actually welcome them, since winners share good reviews, recommend other people and so on.

At one point I was working with an operation that used to give out Teslas and create major marketing campaigns around it, so basically winners are good for the business.

SirJohnVon, nice stories ;)

What is the most bizarre thing you have encountered while doing this job?

How do these various methods and winning strategies look from the casino's side, which certain users brag about and even resell? I have seen many times how someone sells a winning method, where it is possible to earn 200% or xx% a day, plus everything is legal and the casino does not recognize it and does not punish it. Example (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5482406.0)
I know it's bullshit, but experience from the casino side could be interesting.

p.s. Do you perhaps have a winning strategy that you are willing to share, of course with compensation  :D

I'm most experienced in acquisition through organic (SEO), and have been ranking casinos for a while now. The main issue here is that not a lot of them can be in top 10 on Google for the term "online casino", so sometimes competitors get a bit naughty and try to use negative SEO attacks against you, which mostly includes sending low quality porn links pointing to your site. Now, this in general isn't something new, negative SEO attacks have been in the industry for a while now, but the bizzare thing that I've encountered was a targeted negative SEO attack. The owner of the casino that I've managed was Muslim, so the person doing the negative SEO attack decided to build 1000+ links by using his name + surname + pig meat as anchors. You would see a lot of anchors like "pork burger" or "pizza with pineapple and pulled pork". Imagine a porn site writing about an intercourse with a pig, and linking to your casino under a nasty anchor, or an overspammed recipe site writing about best pork recipes, linking to your casino under the anchor pig meat. It was really a bizarre negative SEO attack that I haven't encountered before (or even since). Luckily I know how to manage them so I've quickly removed most of it, but some webmasters are hard to reach so there are still articles with his name + pig intercourse out there.

Overall it's a very competitive market where everyone has the same games and almost similar budget, so it's about who's gonna do what with it. I personally go the more creative route (if you remember, for the previous casino I've did "golden chocolate coins"), but there are competitors who just don't have the brain power to invent something that can go viral, so they approach it from the darker side.


Martingale and d’Alembert systems in live casino games are proven, but you would need to have a good budget and nerves of steel, card counting in blackjack is also proven to work if there are just a few decks (which is rare). However, I do not promote gambling as an income source, it always backfires, it's best to keep it for fun. I usually just shrug the other methods off, everyone is trying to get on the money train so a lot of bullshit is out there :D Just note, if you do plan to enter an online casino operation with a system in mind, make sure that you've read the TOS and have all the KYC in check, because if we find out that there's something fishy, like arbitration or some other form of rule bending, the department responsible for fishing out the scammers will be on your neck :D

Basically think of it like this, a casino platform has 30 years of data on casino scammers and a whole legal team that they use to battle them, you have 3 months of internet/youtube data on how to scam a casino with a forum account to "blame and shame them because you did nothing wrong" = who do you think will win?

At one point I was active in the scam accusation sub here on the forum, but figured out that in most cases it's just scammers trying to name and shame casinos who figured out that they were going against the TOS.

What have been your major difficulty since starting your business until now? And how does running an online casino influence to your personal life?

Dealing with scammers and people who want to get money out of you, instead of being creative around marketing activities. It doesn't matter if it's the players, the suppliers or just random people, if you're in this industry, everyone wants a piece and sees an opportunity in you. There's also this thing called an "iGaming tax", which means that once a supplier smells that you're in iGaming, there's a higher price just for you there, and everyone wants a piece of your revenue. Sometimes I'm ok with it, other-times I'm annoyed by it. Additionally, to prove my point, after opening this thread I've gotten several pm's with random offers.

But basically, not having the room to use my core skills enough due to the high amount of scammers and red flags.


You need to stick "to your own people", otherwise you'll be judged constantly, so most of my friends are in iGaming as well. I rarely tell someone "out of the circle" what I'm doing since it's stigmatized, especially my aunt who's husband (my uncle) gambled away a huge amount of money and risked bankruptcy because of it. Telling her that I'm on the other side would probably create more drama, and me telling her that my uncle is an idiot for expecting to get rich from a casino would probably kill of the whole relationship.

But otherwise, as an operator you're in a some-what power position within the industry. We have the largest budgets, largest operations and without us nothing else would move, so if there are some conferences or networking events involved, usually everyone wants to hang out with you, which makes it easy to sort out those with good intentions and befriend them. People in this industry are also fairly young, so finding friends is easy, but finding smart friends is hard - most of them experience money for the first time and start doing stupid things with it, so overdrinking, overeating, spending money on drugs or other stupid shit is common.

I do plan to decouple from the industry in a few years though, I'm currently saving for my video game studio, I have a few JRPG's in mind that I would like to create, so 5-10 years from now I would see myself less involved, maybe as a part-time consultant, but not full time like now. I think that the video game industry is a bit more forgiving, although it's almost the same mechanic.

And you would need luck on your side. Even though it sounds highly unlikely looking at it superficially, it can happen that you get into a losing streak that lasts 7, 8, or even up to 10 rounds. If your initial wager was $5, you are looking at a huge amount of money you have to wager to stay afloat. But not only that, you have to ensure that the game's betting limits will allow you to make that next big bet. If not, you just wasted thousands of dollars for nothing.

Speaking of using such systems. Do online casinos have automated systems in place that can recognize wagering using the Martingale system to limit you asap or is that a manual decision by an actual casino representative?

Depends on the platform, some have it, others don't, but have limits in place that block the system entirely, or go through a manual review. Most live casino game providers offer you recordings of the session that was played, so you, as a manager, can review it and see what happened. If you're using a system and score big, but your funds are not immediately available for withdrawal, you're most likely under a manual review, with several tickets and departments checking if all is cool with you before releasing the funds. Sometimes it happens that a player thinks that he's "playing the casino" but actually just gets lucky, and then they go and brag on the forums or write tutorials about it, without knowing that it was just pure luck and that it can't be replicated.

I really appreciate your answer. Im now a year in this industry and im not finding ways to grow up and really see the money come, you know?
I work with an operator since last year as affiliate manager. I was at Sigma São Paulo last year, because im from Brazil. Now im hoping they invite me to ICE at UK next month. Do you have any tips for a person that is already connected with this world, but doenst know how to grow up?

Ping me over PM and we can talk, overall I think that Affiliate Management is the most stressful job in the line, but there are people who really enjoy it and can grow a lot with it. I was meant to go to ICE but had some other obligations, if you wanna hang out during Sigma this year in Malta let me know.

Absolutely agree with the most stressful part. Almost losing my mind with some affiliates, now we are living a transition to a regulation of online casinos in Brazil. And a lot of influencers are afraid of what theyre gonna do. Im gonna keep this thread safe and focus to have the opportunity to meet you in Malta!
Thank you!

For everyone else to understand this part: basically a casinos success lies with the affiliate team, since they are the ones who are "purchasing the players" from other affiliates, negotiate the rates, babysit the success rate as well as scam rate, and overall keep the casino alive. It's one of the most stressful jobs since there are changes 24/7, 7 days per week, and you're managing huge budgets and mistakes can easily happen. Also, if you're working within a startup environment, people are constantly pinging you over and over and over and over again. The affiliates, the scammers, your boss, it's constant daily communication, and if you don't know how to manage those lines of communication, stress is guaranteed.

I'm happy about this discussion because some gamblers on this forum are privacy enthusiasts but didn't understand the casino operator's stance in the area of KYC implementation.
To be more clear about the rules, KYC, and law implementation on casinos. Does this mean it's the casino owner who creates the rules and the document required for KYC or there's specific rules every online casino must follow in such area?
About casinos that operate with Curacao licensed but later scammed their users. Is there a way to make them pay by law?
I ask this question cause there's a specific casino that starts with 1 on this forum that never ceases to scam people every year.

It's understandable cause every business makes a loss at some point. Is the house edge not reducing the chance of the casino making a loss?
How can someone become a casino affiliate team?

I guess my big question is how do you sleep at night with so much of other people's money in your hands?  Do you invest heavily in security and testing?  Are you regularly attacked by malicious actors trying to hack their way to riches?  Do you have insurance to cover the funds of your site's users or another plan if the worst should happen and you wake up with no money in your hot wallet?  Was it difficult maneuvering around regulations when starting or did you takeover an existing entity?  How do you trust developers to work on your code without inserting backdoors? 

I always wondered how many employees are working there in an online casino.

To run a casino it requires a huge amount of manpower and a lot of effort to manage the players and mostly it will be more than 50 people will just be working for security alone, then dealers and inside jobs like money management teams, etc. While in an online casino, these will be eliminated and most employees concentrate on the security of the casino and funds.

On the topic of the licenses in the gambling industry, I have a quick question I'd like to ask.

I've been seeing a lot of casinos nowadays, even the most obscure ones and more importantly some that are tagged as scam in this forum or somewhere else be able to get their seals of approval from Curacao (like the notorious 1xb_t which received quite the backlash in this forum) and other license providers in the industry, and to that my question is, is it even worth it to grab licenses from these figures at this point? If it is, why? And what are their processes of granting licenses like, if it's okay for you to tell us.

Asking cause to me it feels like the value of licenses at this point has become so low that it's way more economical and smart for a rising casino to just establish reputation by word of mouth than get themselves licensed by Curacao or whatever. And how long do you think it would take for this leniency to actually affect the general public's perception of gambling licenses and in turn casinos who get themselves licensed by these providers?

Thanks if you're able to answer this, thank you anyway if you couldn't as I saw you being very smart and eager to answer the people's questions here which I truly appreciate.

These depend on the amount of internal services that you have. If you're a large operator that doesn't outsource anything except the games (e.g. you have your own customer support, your own platform, 10+ brands) then the employees range from 1000 to 5000.

If you're a smaller operation that outsources almost everything to different providers (read some of my posts above), then a team of 10 can easily manage day to day tasks, but I would say that a perfect startup team would consist of the following:

2x Casino dedicated workers, one head of casino and one casino manager
2x VIP relations , one senior and one junior
2x CRM, one manager and one coordinator
2x Affiliate relations, one manager and one specialist
1x Marketing Manager, to push the story of the brand further  
1x SEO manager, to manage agencies and freelancers
1x Content manager, to also manage content agencies and freelancers
1x Project Manager, to keep platform updates, tickets and other communications in line
1x Payment Solution Specialist or Manager, to keep payment providers in check
1x Free Spot Open depending on the nature of the operation, where you're either aggressive on the acquisition side so you get one more SEO/Affiliate person, or on the retention side and you get one more CRM/VIP person.

So just by looking at that number you can already get a feeling of how much money you would need just for the salaries in the first three years (cca 2 Mil give or take), and I did't even include the C-Suite in that (CEO, COO, CFO etc) so I always laugh when someone on this forum writes that you can open up a "garage casino" for $150k max. No, you can't ;D


I'll answer the rest of the questions soon, for everyone else, if you have a question, try to be concise and ask it properly so that I can answer you quicker. Placing 10 questions in two sentences will take me ages to dissect and answer :)

I haven't been around that much the past few months, but why is no one writing the full name of the casino? Was it banned mentioning them? You're the third person that doesn't write it's full name.

Anyhow, to answer your question.

Yes, it's still worth getting a Curacao license if you're planning to operate with crypto. However, I would need to sit down and write a 3000 words article for you to explain the process and which steps to take to get licensed, so for now I think it's better if you just google the term and research it yourself. But the consensus is, if you want to operate a crypto casino, Curacao is (for now) the only way to go if you want to have a reputable operation.

Yes, there are issues that the department is going through, but there's a huge re haul of the licensing agreement going into place right now, so the Curacao licensing scheme will change for the better in the upcoming months. However, improving from one side means more regulation from the other. If you want less scams, it means more KYC's and limits. But then again, I think that it's better to have some type of a license than no license at all.

The challenge with this forum is that everyone wants a no-kyc casino, and in most cases the no-kyc casinos have questionable practices, and then you as the player get scammed.

Personally, if I would like to gamble with Fiat, I would go for an MGA licensed casino, and with Crypto I would go with a reputable Curacao operation like Stake. In both cases I would fully verify and look at it as a long term past time instead of a short-term quick-rich scheme, because it just isn't.


It does once you have a legit player, but scam players can suck you dry through bonus costs, and you (as the operator) can get unlucky and have several jackpots triggered within a week. It can happen, it's RNG.


Enter the industry somehow, check what your current skillset is, apply for low-level jobs in iGaming, attend conferences and learn it.



That's not my job, there's a whole department whos job is it to watch over it, and if they fuck up, they are the ones responsible for it, we as the operator and you as the player are secured.



Every day, every hour, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it's an ongoing battle. Since the introduction of CDN's like CloudFlare there have been less DDOS attacks, but it's a constant thing.


Funds are not held in one wallet, I don't know about others, but that's just stupid. It's a regular business with regular bank accounts.


No, we are experienced since we all come from MGA and UKGC licensed brands, so working with the regulators was not an issue. The goal is to keep everyone happy, otherwise you'll not stay in the game for too long. Once regulators start kicking in and fines start to accumulate, that's where you start eating shit. Just one example from an industry colleague, they just shut down their whole operation: https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/gaming-regulator-cancels-genesis-global-licence.1078203  (https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/gaming-regulator-cancels-genesis-global-licence.1078203)

So, again, no, you don't want shortcuts, you don't want any maneuvering around regulations, you want to work with the regulators in tandem with your players, and create a healthy, evergreen base of players who will advertise the business for you. Look at Stake.


You don't hire off the shelve developers from Fiverr, you work with a reputable platform provider that has their own dev team, who is then in charge of all the changes and improvements. That's for the platform.

For payment providers, I mean, you just implement a specific code that the payment provider gives you. Same like with a webshop that adds paypal as their payment gateway, you don't work with paypals code, you just implement it.
For game providers it's the same, tinkering around the code of a specific game is not possible from your side, and the game provider themselves takes care that their team doesn't do anything stupid. That's not your issue.

 

Great subject and initiative to start such a thread. A large number of my questions have already been asked by other users; thus, I'm not going to repeat them. From what I've noticed, only one question is of similar subject but doesn't analyze the same concerns with mine.

We've seen quite a few reports in scam accusations of users claiming that a casino is withholding their earnings. A large number of times, the casinos claim that it was due to a bug that the said user took advantage of, which is the reason their funds were withheld during the withdrawal process. With that being said, how often do you or the casino's users come across such bugs, how do you deal with them, and can you recall if someone managed to get away with abusing one and withdrew his money before the casino realized it? Moreover, is it actually possible to happen, or is it an excuse from some casinos to avoid paying users with questionable earnings?

Out of 10 scam accusations that I was part of in this forum, just 1 was kinda legit and on the players side, but just kinda. It's mostly the players trying to take advantage of the casino, not understanding that we're here to entertain, not to triple or launder your money with a kiss on the forehead. The issue with this forum and the scam accusation section is that the casino doesn't have any incentive to reply or play along with the games of a scam player, there are just too many of them. You would need to hire two workers who would only deal with forums and website comments, just to figure out that out of 10 of them 1 was maybe, somewhat right. It just doesn't make sense, so you rather return him/her the money they deposited and you move along. 


It really depends on the platform provider, the payment provider, the team that does the QA and so on, but bugs are common, and mistakes are made when there's an overwhelming amount of things happening at once. However, the platform itself is build like an airplane, sure it can fail, but there are processes in place to make it not fall down to the ground even if several "engines" go down. So they do happen, but not often. I would say I often encounter 1 or 2 per year.


By not doing anything hasty or stupid. If you're experienced, and have 5+ years of historical data behind, together with all the possible matrixes to help you with an issue, you can easily figure out an anomaly in the hourly results of the business.

#1. If there's a crazy influx of users but no registrations, you're being DDOSed
#2. If there's a crazy influx of registered users with no deposits, you're being attacked by people trying to flood you with user accounts and break your user registration flow.
#3. If there's a crazy influx of registered users with the minimum deposit, you're being abused by a handful of people that are trying to trigger the jackpot with the welcome bonus

etc etc, so the patterns do not change and you can easily spot them. So you just stay calm, pause withdrawals and manually check each and every one of them, then you trigger the KYC to further comb through the players, then you approve the withdrawals to the legit ones. It takes a bit of time and causes some players to leave your platform, but your business, employees and the legit player base stay safe.

Thank you for your quick reply and for addressing all my questions in detail. I also expected that a large number of scam accusations were due to users trying to take advantage of bonus and casino loopholes. Although it's best not to put everyone in one basket, it's no surprise to me that there are people attempting to manipulate the system. It has probably worked for them in the past,, and they're attempting it again. Anyway, this is an extremely interesting topic. Thank you for being thorough. I enjoyed reading every single question and your reply.

I have two questions for you to answer if you can.

1. How hard is to create and operate casino that doesnt have any kyc verification and still be legal?
2. Can you add any coins you want on casino or some of them are blacklisted and not allowed, if so please write the reasons why?[/left]

Very hard and very unsafe.

When I say very hard.
#1. First, if you're operating a licensed casino there are scammers out there trying to get you, with a no-kyc casino that's not only doubled, but I would say quadrupled. You need to have a separate process, team and methods of managing those scam accounts.
#2. Second, the lifespan of a non-kyc player ranges between a few weeks and a few months, with an occasional player staying longer, while legit kyc'd players stay with the casino in the range from 8 to 14 months.
#3. Third, you need to operate without legit business oriented bank accounts and all your services have to have a no kyc policy (wallets etc), which means that you're open to vulnerabilities
#4. Last point, the pool of good quality services diminishes, whoever is legit and works towards an evergreen future in this business has all of the certificates and licenses, you can't build a team of 100 talented people on wobbly no-kyc legs, all of these people and their families depend on you.


You can't add a single coin (I mean, if you're a one man show and try to do a no-kyc casino and you're basically just adding your wallet and manually approving everything, then sure, you technically could).
You can add payment providers who then either have a set of coins that they have in the package, or you can request additional coins on top of what they have. However, I've tested it out and most people just use a handful of the most successful coins, everything else is ignored. 
However, the stronger the payment provider is in terms of security, warranties and coin selection, the more KYC they want. Again, no legit business wants issues with the law, and especially not FBI.

One of the issues of this "no-kyc service" rule is that most of them just end up a scam, and you can't build an evergreen company that will last 30 years on such practices. Just look at the mixer situation that we had on the forum.

I might be wrong though, but for me to change my opinion I would need to see a no-kyc money service that has been around longer than 4 years.

Additionally, from my experience, most of the players who ask for a no-kyc don't understand what a casino is for, and either try to launder money, scam the casino or any other weird combination that I'm not aware of (mix the coins?), so this is why building a whole business on it doesn't make sense imho.

Be very, very careful if a new unlicensed casino pops out and says "no KYC".

 

How much have you invested in this business - from scratch for setup?
How much did you spend on marketing and how much do you spend on management (software employees etc)?
What do you think was the most unexpected expense?
Does trading with crypto add difficulty or in some way simplify your business?
did you already have experience in this sector?
What is the best way to defend yourself from scammers (external agency that controls the game? Do you have software or an internal team?)

How do we know if casinos ensure fair play? This is I think one of the questions average gamblers wanted to have answers since we don't really know if softwares used is reputable or not.

What do you do when there's a suspected cheater playing in the casino? Do you do an analysis of how they gamble or you just detect that they're using a third-party software to cheat the games?

Does it ever get tiring to do the operating of the casino? What's it like to be an operator, what's your day to day duties and can you sum it up to a weekly?

How much money do you think is the estimate that's needed to start your own online casino?

Sorry for all these questions, you said AMA and I obliged, we need more of this kind of threads and it's a good thing that you've got the courage to finally do it, way to go and hopefully your casino will prosper.

You know everything you just need to know where to look.

If the casino is licensed and uses game providers like Bgaming, then the casino can't do anything around the game, it's all controlled by Bgaming. If Bgaming has a successful game that has a strict rule and RTP settings, then that's the rule that all casinos need to abide, otherwise they will not give you the game. And since it's a successful game, you're the one losing out. Can you trust Bgaming? Well, the RTP is always on our side, not the players side, and we all want to pay our salaries, so it's in no ones interest to create and host a game that scams people.

If the casino is unlicensed and uses their own games that they developed, then that one is tricky and you would need to check if it has "provably fair" features, but I have no experience in this field so I can't recommend anything.


Not a lot of "inovation" is being done within this industry, so most methods/systems/cheats (except hacking) are well known and an automation system picks it up, bans the player, refunds him the deposit, and closes it without you moving a finger. Then if the player decides to contest and open up a ticket, then you enter the playfield. It has to be like that since there are thousands of them every week, you would lose sleep over managing scammers.


I'm not a solo player, there are over 15 people in the team + another 15 suppliers and providers, so this question would be hard to answer. I'm personally spending my days with acquisition through organic marketing campaigns, since my background is SEO. Yes it gets tiring, but when I was a kid I was a digital marketing specialist at Nokia in the last year of their operation, that was tiring and stressful too. You need to pick your battles and join those that have a better outcome, regardless of how tiring they are.


I already answered this question, go read some of the previous answers (and I'll add it to the main post soon once I get some time). But overall it depends on your system, experience, team size and so on, anywhere between 3.8 and 5 mil I would say.


I could write a long post about this, but it's not worth it at this point. I just want to make clear that it wasn't my money, and I'm not a solo player. There are investors, a whole team and so on, I'm just part of the team.  But in general for a small time operation plan anywhere between 3.8 and 5 mil eur.


The "iGaming Tax" thing that I've mentioned already. It's the fact that for everyone else this service costs $100, but for you, since you're an operator, all of a sudden it costs $150. It makes me so angry sometimes that I go crazy.

A legit business expense was the situation with CloudFlare.com, for everyone else they have a zero dollar package, I open up 11 sites with them (out of which one was a casino on a paid plan, and 10 were just mirrors on a free plan), and then after 12 months they decide to release a policy update where all iGaming clients have to pay $275 per month per site, which introduced a nice fat invoice of $33.000 that you didn't know you will have in that year. It pisses me off, and they are not the only ones. And don't get me wrong, it's not a problem to know it upfront, that can be calculated into your business plan, but to change it two quarters into the year? It's just stupid.

In another occasion I got a really good masseuse two days per week into the office for the guys, I thought that I'm getting a bulk price since there's no fkn way that on her own she can get 30 clients in one day, two days per week, until I checked how much she charges in her own office setting and saw that she increased the price for 25%, and later on overheard how "igaming people are just suckers with money, they'll pay anything".

So yeah, the iGaming Tax.


One of the reasons why we left the crypto casino business and focused on fiat instead, there's just too much stuff going on and you can't keep track of it.


In crypto casino management no, the previous project advertised here was our first venture, in Fiat yes, the whole team and I have been in this business for a while now.


As a casino your only responsibility are the players registering on your casino, everybody else is already vetted (game providers, payment providers, customer support) and little to no babysitting is needed for them, and they are also quiet responsible since they want to stay in the business. The business itself isn't that much complicated, the slot machines are simple and need little to no updates once vetted, live casino providers have their own processes and are vetted by others, it's a neatly regulated landscape so there isn't much to do outside of your own player base.

But that player base can bankrupt you ;D So yes, a lot of it is spend babysitting scammers, patterns, updating the matrix that figures out who's cheating and who's legit, but luckily I'm not in that department. But I already wrote it in one of the answers, finding scammers is easy since most of them use common methods or think that we're a solo player with no group data of their behavior on other casinos that are also under our ownership. So some would register on CasinoA and try to scam you, get red flagged by the system, and immediately try again next day on CasinoB with the same name, e-mail and credit card. It's hilarious.

I've always wondered how big brands fail, now at least for Nokia I know who was the key person for their collapse.  ::)

Thank you for detailed answers, but let me correct you about something.
Most exchanges and casinos that exist today including Binance all started as non-kyc service and they later changed it gradually to asking full kyc verification because of regulation changes.
Binance and other big exchanges exist longer than 4 years, and many casinos today allow partial non-kyc service, with option to ask for verification at any point.
I am using several big casinos for years and on most of them I was never asked for verification.

Thanks for the Answer and I just barely knew that there is a casino that publicly traded. I just thought maybe all casinos is always profit so they don't need additional funds from other people.

But they can still lose right? I just opened the link you gave me and opened yahoo financial that they still have debt too. My imagination is when you operating gambling site it awalys give you pure profit without loss

That's what I've said, if you want to be an evergreen player you need to get regulated, but at the same time this industry is one of the few that has a huge amount of no-kyc services and huge amount of scams and hacks going on. Look at what's happening with Reddit right now.


Yes I can believe you on that, but at the same time you're a solo example of a player that didn't go through a lot of verification. On which casinos do you usually play?  


It's like every other business out there, they have debt because every big player knows how to play around with debt to create more revenue streams. Also, changes do happen, markets close etc, so they are not invulnerable :)

Sportsbet is my daily driver now, but I have accounts on other casinos when they have better odds on some events, like Stake, Rollbit, Bets.io and Livecasino is good for casino games.
I didnt found anything better than Sportsbet and they have amazing support for bitcointalk community with so many pools and competitions.
Most crypto casinos I tried and tested, and some I stopped using because of different issues they had.

For interesting games I use L0tt0.com and I updated new logo for their website :)
https://www.l0tt0.com/

what happened to the thread?

 is the AMA over?

Cheers

The thread will stay open and you can ask away whatever you want. If I don't know the answer I will reach out to some of my team members who would have it.

Great and thanks for the kind answer!

My question

I am working on a skill game and I understand that there is no need for a gambling/online casino license. Is this correct or where can I read more about it to know the latest status?

Cheers

If you're new to the industry, then I do not recommend working on a game alone without any backing of operators or game providers. Rather get a job with some of the better known providers and learn how templating, licensing and certifications work, then partner up with someone and launch your idea.

As a solo player you might end up developing a game that is not compliant with any of the programs out there, and the only place where you could place it like that would be an unregulated casino, and that's quiet a narrow market.

So:
- get a job within the industry as a game developer
- learn what a successful game needs to have in order to be deployed on licensed casinos (templating, certifications, licenses, etc)
- if you're good at developing, expand your network with people who are good at selling and amplifying
- once you think you're ready go and partner up with them and launch the game

Acquisitions within the industry are common and if a bigger provider sees that you have an interesting product that is easy to expand to other markets, then you can easily get acquired.

@SirJohnVonSlotty

Do casino holds multiple currency they are offering on their cold wallet for reserve or they have a payment processor that automatically converts your reserve tokens to the specific token which the players is using.

Let’s say, I deposit 1 ETH and won 2 ETH, then does it mean casino has Ethereum on their reserve? I’m curious about this since casino might suffer huge loss or huge profit depending on the market price situation.

Or they are using payment processor that automatically converts their token holdings(stablecoin) to the currency which the players requested to withdraw?

It depends on the operation and this was one of my main concerns when we operated our last brand since we went through one "slight" crypto crash and two major bumps. The solution to it was to keep the business crypto-only and calculate all the wins and losses in crypto, and then at the end of the quarter see if it makes sense to transfer it to FIAT or keep it in Crypto.

So basically the payment provider would have "our bank" in crypto, so if you would deposit 1 ETH, it would stay as ETH. If you would win 2 ETH, it would be taken from the ETH pool that has been prepaid at the beginning of the quarter as a "bank fund". All of this would be managed by the payment provider.

I still remember one of my main headaches which was how to say "Up to 100 EUR welcome bonus" when those 100 eur fluctuate constantly in this world and the user would need to calculate it into BTC to figure out how much they would get. Then we transferred all communication to BTC, which was easier for the user, but a headache for the promo/design materials because of all the decimals... in the end I figured out that the easiest approach is just USDT.

Regarding spikes, players rarely leave their coins with us, so you don't have to worry that much about the on-casino wallet. What you do have to worry about is affiliates. They often leave a certain amount of coins on their affiliate wallet and wait 6-12 months for it to double, so effectively instead of making $1000 they've made $2000. And you can't know that as a fresh operator without being in the industry for at least 18 months.

If I would be doing it again from scratch, I would make it more simple and do these things:

#1. The casino would be marketed as an USDT casino, all marketing and communication materials would be in USDT.
#2. On-Page calculator at the deposit/withdrawal page for easier calculations, this can be simply done through a python script
#3. Affiliate commission would be calculated in USDT as well, so that it's fixed and that there are no major positive or negative fluctuations for both sides.

One question that I often get asked is how do you trust the Crypto Payment Provider, they manage hundreds of thousands in crypto. Well, first, you don't work with a random eastern European that you've found on a crypto forum ;D after that you do your extended checks in whom is everyone else using and find a legitimate provider who knows that they will earn more in commission over the next 10 years than if they scam you one time. The vetting process is excellent, and there are rarely scam issues with providers. 

This is why I'm openly laughing when somebody tells me that Netent or Pragmatic can modify their slots RTP's daily. Why would they manipulate or try to scam you one time, and ruin their whole future, when we all pretty well know that the house will always win over the long term?

Thanks for a very thorough explanation. I’m brainstorming this question for a long time since I’m confused why casino doesn’t support crypto as much as possible.

A casino like Duelbits automatically convert all the deposits in USD value coin than let users withdraw on a currency that they want. I’m not sure how they can do this but is this same method like what you said or they are using some sort of exchange to immediately convert their USD to the crypto which players preferred?

How are you in terms of personal life when you're managing your casino? Is it stressful? Does the work overlap with personal time? What's the strategy in keeping your workers in working shape and at the same time happy that they're working for you or that you're their boss? The last question is one question that I want to know more about because it seems to me that a lot of managers aren't leaders but bosses that you are scared to confide into so I'm trying to look for the qualities so I don't stumble on the wrong one and stay for long.

You can pick what you want with the payment provider, Coinspaid (and many others) offer several approaches, the only question is how much money you want to lose at it, because those guys are sneaky and take a percentage on every little piece that goes through them, it's crazy.


It really doesn't matter what the business is, if you're the one responsible for the numbers, it's 24/7. Then the free time depends on how smart the people below you are.


Yes, a lot, but you get used to it. The motto that I sell to those who didn't get used to it is "I see that you're stressed about this problem, but you'll resolve it, and once you resolve it, you'll have an even worse problem to deal with, so stop stressing about them so much."


Same as with girls, if you offer value they will stay, if you don't offer value they will leave. Now what that value is depends on the individual, and you have to take your time, sit down and talk with them about it.

If someone is in Marketing, you offer them a good roadmap where they can quickly move up the ladder together with a good, achievable bonus strategy, and then you also leave them to build their own network that they will sooner or later transfer to somebody else's company, but that's just part of the game and you have to accept it.

If someone is in Compliance, you offer them a good training and certification roadmap for every successful quarter closed, etc. You have to have an individual approach.

And don't ask me about hiring, I've been hiring people for 16 years and I still didn't figure it out. For my last copywritter position I've interviewed 100 people, hired two, fired both of them within 1 month. Then a girl randomly messaged me on Linkedin and now she's the best performer in terms of content.

Am sure that with the years of experience, things would be running smoothly and every employee working in the casino would know how to perform their functions with or without the bosses presence.
One thing I like is the fact that this post is structured and orderly and if this is how many casinos operate, am sure users would hardly have issues except they fail to abide by the terms and conditions of the casino.

Nah, that's not the case. Everyone is out there to scam you if you're not observant enough.

CRM managers giving out bonuses to random forum members for a kickback, CS agents "KYC-ing" someone without the actual documents for money, VIP managers having a "friends account" whom they regularly fill up with money, and in the case of having an employee who doesn't do anything of that and is actually decent, you will have him poached through linkedin left and right. The employee retention in this industry is less than 12 months since the salaries are crazy.

One of my acquaintances went from a specialist to a director within 7 years just because she's doing an amazing job and was constantly poached around, she's 33 years old now.


So no, don't say that it's easy. No industry is easy on a larger scale. I'm sure Theymos himself has his share of issues with a forum, let alone someone with several sites.