Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I am wondering if there is a bitcoin payment processor (basically a company like bitpay) that provides services to bitcoin casinos. I've looked at the terms of bitpay, gocoin, and coin.co and they all explicitly prohibit gambling sites from using their service. Does anyone know of a provider that works with bitcoin casinos?

Thanks,
Henry

This is actually a project that we (the people behind moneypot.com) are working on! The code name of the project is "Vault" and development is happening on github (http://"https://github.com/moneypot/vault"). We're about 2-4 weeks away from a product that you will be able to actually test.

For obvious reasons, we're not going to support any of the fiat features that normal payment processors offer, it's pure bitcoins. =)

Hi RHavar,

Vault looks really interesting, will definitely check back to see how it's going. However I'd need a processor that is ready to use right now. Does anyone know a service that is ready to go?

I have seen people complaining about Coinbase shutting down accounts after receiving money from gambling sites.

I was in touch with coinbase and they told me that they would not work with a bitcoin gambling site.

The one service that I found so far that explicitly accepts gambling sites is https://www.bitcoinpaygate.com. However they are quite expensive (for example $9 per month + 2% fees) and I'm not sure they're worth the money.

What are the exact features you need? You might be able to get by using blockchain.info's API

Vault seems interesting.  Any ideas on the fees etc? or is this totally opensourced/free?

@RHavar  what does it mean pure bitcoins? how about some player wants to play and has no bitcoins? will and can Vault handle this ?

All the normal features are going to be completely free.

Vaults business model is based around our "bankroll as a service", which we charge a commission on. We let apps (or casinos) place a bet against our crowd-funded bankroll, and offer a 50-50 profit share with the app on every bet. That is to say, when a player's bet wins, the bankroll investors completely pay for it; and when a player bet loses, the bankroll investors are given a half-kelly worth of money, and the rest is shared 50-50 between the app/casino and vault. On a low edge game (a half-kelly), the profit share for both vault and the app will be 0 (meaning it's effectively a free service), on a high-edge game the application and vault will have something to share.

Of course, that's an optional service and no one has to use it.

The other for-fee service that vault has, is (an optional, non-default) "Cold Addresses", which are deposit address that are not connected to the hot-wallet, but rather deep cold storage. They're designed to be impervious to any blockchain analysis, as the funds just sit in an cold address for as long as possible, and only ever taken out as a very last resort. It's an ideal service for someone who wants to deposit money from somewhere like coinbase that might ban gambling, or otherwise wants financial privacy. For this, we deduct a 1% fee from any amount deposited (this is only to make the service viable, otherwise everyone would use cold addresses and it would become a de-facto hot wallet).


It means vault is purely scoped to dealing purely with bitcoins (e.g. we don't anything to do with fiat, altcoins, precious metals etc.). If someone wants to play, and doesn't have money it will be completely up to the application the uses vault. Perhaps they'll have a trial mode, allow the person to bet with 0, or have a faucet/chat bot.

Yeah, I'm probably going to use the blockchain.info api for now.

I really like your "bankroll as a service" idea. I think that unbundling bitcoin casinos is the way forwards. Right now many operators do everything (game dev, banking, security, marketing) themselves. Would be rad if people would specialize on the components bc that could improve the overall customer experience, and at the same time make it easier to build a bitcoin casino.

Unbundling is definitely one way this industry can evolve.  Imagine if we could pool all the investments together across any of the sites that are willing to partner up..

The only thing with Vault is how do you trust your partner operator to be "provably fair to investors"?

That will be really nice. Looking forward to it. We definitely need something like it.

I think we definitely need something like this. Looking forward to Vault being released.

seems like the Vault repo went to private.  Any updates?