I think your maths is slightly off  (should be 0.505^N  not 0.5^N), but retrospective probabilities like that aren't super useful.  i.e. I just  won, lost, lost, won, won, lost, lost, won, won, won, lost -- which is pretty normal -- but if you look at the probability of that specific sequence happening it might be a 1 in a million. But really, you're never going to be able to tell the difference between being unlucky and being cheated by outcomes alone. I highly, highly recommend you invest the time in learning how to verify your games. It's a bit annoying and a bit confusing -- but once you can, you'll find it liberating to know without a shred of doubt you lost (or won) legitimately.

Yeah, I'm the guy who bought bustabit in the early days. Back then it was called "MoneyPot". After adding provably fair, it really started to take off and at the same time I was building a new gambling product (bankroll-as-a-service) called "vault". Since I couldn't come up with a good domain for "vault", I rebranded  "moneypot" as "bustabit"  and then I launched "vault" as moneypot.

Then I found myself a bit burnt out with too much work, and sold moneypot.com  and then once I more or less finished the "bustabit v2" rewrite, I sold the entire project to Daniel (devans) who was the one who launched bustabit v2 (at the start of this year) and has been doing a great job running it ever since.

And now find myself having gone from way over worked, to way underworked.  

It's based on an old version of bustabit v1, but it's just some random person who made his code opensource to comply with the AGPLv3. The version by kungfuant is also not "official" but it's a pretty close to the last public fork of bustabit v1. kungfuant is the guy who originally made shiba, so he's pretty trustworthy.


Originally there was an official open source bustabit (v1), but I was the one who stopped publishing publicly. At the time the site was getting spammed / DDoSd pretty heavily (funnily enough by some scam site on bitcointalk I called out, and they wanted retribution) and I was putting in lots of little-hacks to prevent the abuse (e.g. specific to the attacks they were doing). However because the repository was fully open, they were actually seeing my mitigations in real-time and working around them.  I had planned on re-opening the repository once I converted the hacks into reliable code -- but I never did so.

The reason bustabit was allowed to go "closed source" but no one else is, is because bustabit fully owns all copyright to the source and just published a AGPv3 version. All contributions that bustabit integrated were required to assign copyright to bustabit. (This is known as "dual licensing"). And it's the same reason that bustabit is allowed to sell people non-AGPLv3   encumbered versions of the code.


Also FWIW, the current version of bustabit (v2) is actually a ground-up rewrite that has zero shared history (it's not even written in the same language). It was a kind of a "let's take all the lessons learnt from running a successful casino and build a kick ass product with that in mind" with huge emphasis on things like security while bustabit v1 was very much hacked-together with the primary goal of getting to market and seeing how people like it. For reference, I think bustabit v1 took ~3 months from idea phase till it was hitting production. While I think bustabit v2 took >1.5 years from the first line of code until it was ready.   But Daniel is now the exclusive owner of all that stuff, so only he can decide if he wants to release it / license it or what not.

Seems kind of retarded to me. You want your money back because ... you broke their ToS? (which explicitly state you shouldn't play if you're a resident of the UK).

If they tried to seize your winnings just because you were in a not-allowed jurisdiction, I'd consider that extremely scammy. So I'm not one for double-standards =)

But fortunately for you, the law isn't always just. So if you do want to pursue a case, you'll need to find an actual lawyer in curaçao (where they are registered, and have a gaming license). Also you really need an actual lawyer. Anything you find on these forums has a 50% chance of being wrong and a 50% chance of being a scam...

This is absolutely ridiculous of you to drag me into this.  I neither said nor implied any such thing. I would normally be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest maybe you misunderstood me, but we only spoke about it after you launched with pirated software.

But I do encourage you to share anything I said that might have given you a different impression. Just make sure you include enough context, like how you first started off with "we didn't just copy it but used reference" before then later admitting you were using a minified verbatim copy of bustabit (even including some pointless bustabit debug lines) both on the client and server, and asked about known problems or exploits in the specific version you're running. So there goes the "accidental infringement" defence. Ooops.

But reviewing our conversation, my advice was to follow the terms of the AGPLv3 version (releasing modified source code) and save you paying the small licensing fee. So please don't act like you were led astray (and not to mention: I'm not a lawyer or have any rights to the source code you're using) so my opinion is rather irrelevant anyway.


That's obviously nonsense. Let's not pretend you reimplemented the entire thing in a couple days. It's exactly the same and has literally exactly the same rendering quirks and bugs that it did before. I can see you made a few obvious changes (stripped the debug lines, changed <canvas> to <svg> changed the fonts, stripped the noise function, renamed "GAME_TICK" to "CRASH_GAME_TICK" but as the original author to most of the code you're running, it's rather obvious you just spent a couple days obfuscating your previous blatant copyright infringement.

It's like you got a copy of a Harry Potter book, and find-and-replaced most of the characters and places names. Pretending it's your work is insulting.

And I'm going to be honest, I personally don't really care about copyright infringement (I pretty much pirate every movie I watch), but I do very much value honesty -- and find this whole situation extremely concerning.

And on that note, I'm not sure what's a bigger red-flag: That you raised millions of dollars with an ICO to supposedly help pay development, and then would rip Dan off for a rather insignificant once-off 2 bitcoin licensing fee. Or that you'd rather tarnish your brand and reputation over said fee.

I know Daniel said he's too busy to care, but I don't think what you're doing is fair. I intend on leaving negative trust, and petitioning the Crypto Gambling Foundation to revoke your membership, unless you can do the right thing and pay what is owed (and ideally provide a proof-of-solvency to show you are in the position to complete the terms of the buy-back program that your ICO tokens require).

Maybe I have comprehension issues, but rule 14.4 reads:
"""
14.4. Getting an edge against the casino without any risks is FORBIDDEN. (e.g playing with faucet, winning from faucet then depositing to withdraw all the balance etc.)
"""

but it really sounds like any use of the faucet could be considered forbidden? That ambiguity is precisely what I am complaining about.

I think a saner/fairer/clearer rule would be along the lines: "As long as you do not use bots or multiple accounts to claim the faucet more than the site would otherwise allow you, then what you do is totally fine"  and if you are unhappy with how they use the faucet, then just disable (or nerf) it for that user.

 


I know, I wasn't trying to imply it was. In fact, I'm sure the only reason bitsler attracts the magnitude of abuse it does, is because how generous it is. I just think there's some room for improvement to clarify exactly what constitutes abuse, and clarify that someone who doesn't use bots or multi-faucet-claiming-accounts never has to worry.    

The reason I used quotes is because "abuse" can be pretty subjective. I'm not exactly familiar with bitsler's internal policy, but quite a few sites consider a single-person on a single-account repeatedly trying to get a withdraw-able amount of money "abuse". While I'd say that's how I'd expect a lot of people to behave if you give them free money.

Other sites consider it abuse and will seize any funds if the player has multiple accounts (even when it wasn't done to give the person any advantage, for faucet or bonuses).

Some other sites (although no longer, after I made a big deal of it...) had bet limits hidden in their FAQ, and considered it abuse to exceed that and took their money. (Even though their UI would happily accept the bets).

And then on the other end of the spectrum you have people with sophisticated bots/vpns setups and stuff, which are obviously trying to circumvent restrictions and unambiguously abuse.


I would have less problem with the rules if they were a) unambiguous  and b) reasonable and c) not overly punitive.



Laugh, but I speak from experience. When I owned bustabit I did not a single time unilaterally took money out of someone's account, or otherwise prevent anyone from withdrawing. And in my time, I dealt with a huge amount of abuse (including faucet). I even had people give me death threats, or try extort the site with considerable balance on the site that I never touched. Hell, I once even accidentally sent someone an extra 40 BTC (ugggh, manually withdraw! I'm not the brightest) and the furtherest I went is tell them if they didn't voluntarily return it, I wouldn't let them keep playing.

Now you can laugh, and think I'm naive -- but I'll point out I was doing way more volume than any other bitcoin site. And I think a huge reason is because people realized that I treated their account balances as sacred and never fucked with it, and trusted I wouldn't come up with arbitrary bullshit to take their money. And I think bitcoin gambling in general would be a lot more popular if similar code of ethics were applied.
 


Disabling (or nerfing) someone's faucet in this case (or any really) is totally reasonable, and what pretty much what anyone should do. I would only think it's unfair if they were retroactively deemed "faucet abuse" and then their withdrawals not honored.



To be honest, I think very highly of bitsler and in fact most of the sites that are here on bitcointalk (even when I have my disagreements). I actually believe all the main sites at the moment do have players interests at heart and are trying to offer a good experience instead of just milk them. The site I've seen with the most ridiculous policies (and justification for it) would be bitstarz which I would consider a veiled scam (even though they've improved their practices, it's obviously run by a sociopath with no regard for his customers or fairness)

I agree with adaseb. I find the practice of disallowing withdrawals for "faucet abuse" to extremely distasteful and bordering on unethical. Of course the site has no obligation to give a user free money, and disabling new faucet claims should clearly be done for "abusers" -- but once the site has given them money, it should be the users.

I realize that not all cases are clear-cut, like if someone egregious abuses the site (e.g. lots of ips/accounts/bots) then it seems reason to take back the money (although personally when I ran a site, I would not have done that). But there's obviously a lot of cases of people getting caught in the crossfire who are just people who spend a lot of time with the faucet. The responsible and ethical thing for a casino to would be identify these people and disable future faucet claims. Instead of hoping they turn into paying customers, and if they don't just not let them withdraw.

Same shit about thing like site that's that don't allow you to bet at 9900x with faucet funds. If that isn't allowed, then the site shouldn't allow you to do it. Or disable your faucet if you do. It seems unfair to wait until someone's withdrawing to find a reason to not honor it.


(To be clear, I don't mean to single out bitsler here -- they're definitely not one of the worst -- but if casino operators want to build trust, these sort of practices need to stop)

Honestly it's good you feel bad. It'd be scarier to have lost so much and not feel bad.  Remember the feeling before you consider gambling again.


And you're objectively in an extremely good financial position. There's not much you can do with $1.5M that you can't do with $1.15M

Sure, lots of people have a bigger net-worth than you but you're doing way better than the vast majority. And worst case if you need a break from it all, take a year off in somewhere exotic with a cheap cost of living. Maybe like Thailand? For 25k you could have a pretty great year, and make a lot of memories that will last your life.

It's hard to see the situation clearly when you're in the inside, but honestly yours is fine 

P.S. You just wrote that you still have a lot of money. Expect people to try scam you for it 

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how casinos work:


Casinos do *not* rely on greed, they rely on maths. With a 1% house edge, for every 100 BTC wagered on the site -- the site has an expected 1 BTC of profit. It makes absolutely no difference if people are being greedy or cautious or are bill gates, the expected value is identical.

It is simply mathematically impossible for a casino to have any expected profit *regardless* how people bet if it has a house edge of less than or equal to 0.

---

By the way, it's extremely easy to simulate being a -1% house edge casino. Just deposit your money on a dice site with a 1% edge  (e.g. primedice, bustadice, etc.)  and then treat your "balance" as your "bankroll" and simulate how your players would bet against you by placing a bet. It's exactly the same odds as running a -1% house edge casino, and will lead to the same outcome.  

The most important thing to do right now is not do anything stupid (i.e. suicide or loss chasing).  If you don't feel like you can't control yourself, I'm happy to help you timelock your money for the next year to prevent anything stupid.

In 10 years it'll seem like a distant "i really fucked up then" memory, so in the mean time focus on more important things in life. The truth is you just had those bitcoin sitting doing nothing anyway.

But being frank, you obviously have some latent self control issues. You really shouldn't gamble again, or if you do have extremely strict limits you establish for yourself that are not based on loss-chasing. I would strongly advise you don't gamble until you can forget about this loss and consider chasing it.

But seriously, look at al the positive things you got going for you. Your remaining savings are more than 99.9% of the world. Learn from your mistake, forgive yourself and most importantly don't do anything stupid.

--

P.S. I'd also recommend against casino investing. It's too easy to gamble from there, and it's best to distance yourself from casinos in general when you have a problem.

It's not really, it's just differently risked. It's important to note that you can't *purely* offsite invest (otherwise if someone won money, you'd technically have a debt to the site which they know they probably would never be able to collect) so your onsite investment kind of acts like collateral.

So when ever you use offsite, you're always over-exposing your onsite investment and need to keep an eye on it. Honestly I recommend extreme caution with offsite, because it can easily blow up in your face. While with onsite, you can safely just set it and forget it and come back in months.  

Last time there was a big whale on bustabit, after he won a couple hundred bitcoin -- some investors heavily increased their offsite (hoping to profit a lot if the whale busted). The whale kept winning for a while, which ended up margin closing some of the investors position, and then soon after the whale busted all his profits. Based on my rough calculations (looking at my stake vs site profit), in total investors didn't really make any money -- but there was a wealth-transfer of ~200 BTC from heavily offsited investors to investors who didn't get margin called.

So that's a risk you face when you use offsite, that you don't have when you invest "normally". (Although to be fair, if the whale never busted before investors reinstated their position that margin-call would've helped..)


tldr;  offsite exposes you to more risks against casino variance, while onsite exposes you to more risk vs exit-scams and such

Hm, not quite. The onsite is constantly changing, because it represents how much money is "physically" in the casino bankroll. So if someone loses 100 satoshis gambling, it'll go up by 99.75 satoshis (the difference between the two is commissions which goes direct into Dans pocket). So it is guaranteed to be constantly fluctuating, as people are literally gambling against it.

The offsite however will only[1] change when investors explicitly request that it is it changed on their behalf. This probably doesn't happen much as bustadice discourages changing your exposure by charging a dilution fee (I think it's 1 or 2% now) by what ever amount you increase it.

Now 1 BTC in offsite and 1 BTC in onsite investment will have the exact same return. The difference is 1 bitcoin in onsite represents what you have physically deposited on site, and the 1 bitcoin in offsite represents what you're risking but haven't deposited.  The big advantage of using onsite is that you never need to worry about your position being margin-called (you already have all your money there) and can completely passively invest. The big advantage of offsite is that you're keeping your money in your own wallet, so if there was a hypothetical exit-scam you wouldn't lose it.

It's quite an elegant system, but honestly a bit too complex I think. For 99% of people, I think they'd be better off sticking purely to onsite.

You should check out the excellent resource by DarkStar_: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5040737.0

You might want to want to automate that. I heard checking an addresses sha256 checksum by hand is a real bitch 

Definitely not. The cold-storage is over-funded (funded at >100% it's obligations), hasn't moved and requires 2-of-3 sig to move (of which Daniel only has 1).

If Daniel wanted to do an exit-scam, he'd do it on bustabit not bustadice (since bustabit doesn't have an investor protection system like bustadice), but bustabit is up and running like normal. So pretty much guaranteed nothing to worry about.

Bustadice actually similarly went down for a few minutes a day ago or something (except he was online to deal with it). At the time he said he thought it was due to some incorrect error handling he found. My guess is that the bug is still there

Yeah, down for me too. And Dan just signed off, so it's probably going to be a few hours til he's back to fix it  

I assume that's sarcasm?  On-chain gambling has got to be the worst experience you can possibly have. Let's take the one from your signature:

a) Each bet has a high transaction fee cost  (to send, receive, consolidate)

b) It has like a 30% house edge. wtf?!

c) You have to wait an average of 10 minutes to know if you win/lose each bet

d) There's no nice betting UI, and you're constrained what type of bet you can make (only 10x with 1/16 chance of winning)

e) There's no way the site can support high-limit bets, as the entire scheme is vulnerable to block withholding attacks.


The only time I'd consider going anywhere near on-chain betting is if it was trustless (i.e. some of the ethereum designs) and I was betting an absolutely huge amount to justify the shitty UX.

---

To answer the OP, the best sites are one you can can trust. Avoid some of the new flyby night operations, no matter what they promise it's just not worth it. Personally I wouldn't bother on any dicesite other than primedice.com or bustadice.com. Both are popular, (verifiably) honestly run, have good support, and a decent house edge (1%), and most importantly you know even if you win 100+ btc you're going to get paid without any bullshit. Other than that, it's really just a question of which site you think is prettier or something.

I think bustabit/bustadice are the two sites with the most advanced and secure scripting support. They actually execute arbitrary javascript in a (browser-enforced) sandbox, to ensure the script can't do anything other than bet.

If you're writing your own scripts, it probably doesn't matter. But it's a pretty killer feature if you want to use 3rd party scripts.