We had to build our own Bitcoin 0.3.22 binary for CentOS 5.5 a few weeks ago, for our casino's entry into the bitcoin market (which is imminent  ). I don't mind sharing it, as I sure as hell wouldn't ever want to do it again. There were some instructions for a makefile floating around the web; they were basically wrong. Anyway, I did get it figured out; I put up a tarball here of just the binary. To use this, basically place it in your web hierarchy (outside the public directory) and run it. It'll create a .bitcoin directory in the root directory of the user that runs it. You'll then need to put a bitcoin.conf file into that before properly using it:

https://strikesapphire.com/bitcoind.0.3.22.bin.tar.gz   -----Small, works wonders, though already slightly outdated  

And now here's a tarball with everything you would need to build it:

https://strikesapphire.com/bitcoin.all.centos55.tar.gz      ----Warning: 165 Mb.

The "everything" file is pretty big. It includes a working bitcoind binary, as well as a proper CentOS makefile under Trunk/ and also builds of BerkeleyDB, boost and openSSL which have to be available if you want to use the makefile to compile a newer version. Should be plug and play to throw a new version at it, but please don't ask me how to do anything with this. It took a whole bunch of hours hacking away at it until it worked, and frankly, I was kind of wasted and don't remember what I did or didn't do. Nor was it fun. I'm hoping the BTC crew will offer a working CentOS distribution for future releases to make life easy on people who just want to use it, not fuxor around with some dude's broken PDF makefile for 6 hours. A lot of people with shopping carts run CentOS-based systems.

Just a warning about 0.3.22 on CentOS: If you run it for two weeks, you'll find it sucking up about 25% of your system memory. Just kill it and restart. There's a leak in there somewhere.

Good to know. So far, we like what we're seeing from TH. As a startup, we're also all 27-31, and dealing with everything ourselves. So I can appreciate the ethos.

emailed tradehill last night about whether they're a viable choice for us as a gaming site that (might) start dealing in BTC. Haven't heard back yet  

Thought I'd make this question public, though:

I can't find anywhere on the TH site that discusses maximum withdrawals, either to bitcoin or to USD. Every other site we've looked at seems to put a $1k per day limit on USD withdrawals. Are there any limits in place on TradeHill?

It's a little like watching Generation Y find out that Santa Claus is dead. Having the dubious honor of reading this board for the very first time tonight makes me realize how much they don't teach in school anymore...and how high the hopes were. This is their 1849, 1917, 1969. Down with the man, then the kids lose again. Makes me kind of sad, kind of baffled that nothing ever changes. Just watch; someone will come out of this thing and end up being director of the Fed in 2026, lol.

Good to hear from a player. I'm working on it...........although in all honesty it looks like I picked the worst day possible to try to roll something like this out. I'm now addicted to watching what's going on with this forum and the ticker price and counting exactly how much I would have just lost. Mostly I'm pissed because integrating with Bitcoin was fun and it's the only deposit/withdrawal method that's truly, completely instantaneous. If it were stable; or when it becomes stable, this will make a lot more sense.

Just a note because I think people don't see it from our POV -- as a casino, we would be in the full-time business of buying and storing your Bitcoins. We receive them not in exchange for a good, but in exchange for cash which the player holds forever until they cash out. That puts us very long on whatever currency the player deposited with. Obviously we could offset that if there were a market to hedge against, but it's hard to sell the quantities we're talking about fast enough to make it effective. We could turn around and sell some kind of derivative, but in fact we're not a ponzi scheme and we just make money off a percentage -- not off of speculation. More honest than wall street. On the other hand, a balanced store of value for BTC would be a good thing for the currency right now -- this economy lacks an ecology of long-term investments to dampen the volatility. So maybe we should deal in BTC bonds...I don't know, I guess in a way that's what I'm suggesting.

If we take peoples Bitcoins at the Mt. Gox market rate, and turn it into our own value -- non-currency -- whatever you want to call it, they will then sit down at a poker table with other people who deposited Neteller, Moneybookers, Visa, etc. and play for what everyone at the table assumes to be equal value. At the end of that, if the BTC currency is worth half what the people who deposited with Visa paid, we have to make up the difference.

What you're recommending only makes sense if BTC is the only currency we support. Otherwise, all casinos act as de facto baskets.

Yeah, unfortunately managing currency risk day-to-day is outside the scope of what we're prepared to do at the moment.

re: tehcodez... As far as denominating in a 'unit-less' system, that basically means creating our own currency. That's impossible if we have more than one deposit/withdrawal method. We become a defacto exchange regardless. With EUR USD fluctuations it's not so bad.

re: Serge... I also understand that perspective, and I think a lot of people here would agree and only want to play for BTC at the table. Aside from the floating point issues (our software would have a problem with 0.001/0.002 NL Hold'em), we are still talking about a site with other real currency floating around. We could spin off a BTC-only skin (1000:1) if the market would bear it, but I don't see it happening too soon; for now it would be BTC in, BTC out, USD at the tables. We'd still be the first to do it.

So-
I'm in a position to open my casino to BTC anytime. Problem is, we denominate in USD. If BTC tanks, we go with it.
The only approach I can think of is to peg the player's withdrawal rates to the median rate at which that player deposited. In other words, you put in 1BTC when it's at $20 and 1BTC at $30, for a total of $50 in the system; if you try to withdraw right then, you get 2BTC back. If the BTC tanks to $5, you still have $50 in the system, but you can't extract it for 10BTC. You can only extract it at your median rate, which is $25:1BTC...so all you get back is 2BTC. This would prevent people from using us as a permanent buyer in down cycles, which we obviously don't want.
Maybe it would actually be good for the market in the long run. Cut out the speculation and add a high quality business. Thoughts?