An example of a really poorly done phishing site that will steal your password and money bustabit.tk/

(there are some more convincing ones, but I won't link to them)

Just a heads up, there's at least 3 bustabit phishing sites actively being given out to players.  Please be very careful, if it's not https://www.bustabit.com/ do not ever enter your password. Phishing sites will look identical to bustabit, so you need to check the URL. Also don't be tricked by silly claims like it's a secret site that lets you login to the admin panel, or anything like that. All these sites are use purely for stealing your password and then your money.

Also, I almost never send emails (I don't think in BaB history, I've ever sent a single mass email) but if I do it will not contain links. So also be suspicious of any emails you get, they're pretty likely to be fake.

Yeah, I believe they now enforcing the limit so that people didn't unwittingly violate it and have all their money taken (although AFAIK they never returned the money they unfairly took)

While winning a car is definitely cool, I think most people would prefer the money in cash/bitcoin. That way they don't need to de-anonymize themselves, and if they really want a Lexus GX 460 they can buy it with the money.  And not to mention, you might love that car but not everyone is in the same situation. Like personally I have about 0 use for such a vehicle, and no where to keep it. The first thing I'd do if I won it was try sell it.


I've tried running a few giveaways before (for smaller value stuff, like Trezor's) and I'd say 90% of the time people have opted for the cash-equivalent.


That said, there might be some marketing appeal to it if you offer the cash-equivalent. People probably have a stronger emotional reaction to seeing a "Lexus GX 460" compared to 44.6 BTC.  And if you offer the cash-equiv people can just pick that, so you end up with the best of both 

This doesn't seem fair at all.  It's not listed on their ToS, but on a separate page (bonuses terms) and under the (wrong) section called "free spins".

If you accept a bet, you should honor it. I think it is completely and utterly unethical to accept a bet which would result in someone losing all their money for a ToS violation. If you can't write an if statement to enforce your own limits, then frankly you should not be running a casino. Or at the very least, do the fair thing and run a cron job that reverts all bets (wins or loses) that were above the max bet limit (so it doesn't benefit or harm players). Just voiding someone's entire account is totally unreasonable.


Unless mBit Casino disputes these facts, or can explain how having people accidentally violate the ToS so you can take their money isn't insanely predatory, I intend to leave negative trust as I did on bitstarz for the same nonsense.

Yeah, a leaf out of bitstarz book. It's pretty bullshit. It's not listed on their ToS, but on a separate page (bonuses terms) and under  the (wrong) section called "free spins".

If they can't use software to reject the bet (it's literally an if statement..) and they use it to void winnings, it's insanely predatory.

More generally, it's an effective way of stoping high-variance playing styles. Let's say they give you a 1 BTC bonus, they'll typically design the play-through requirement such that you won't be able to withdraw you unless you have expected loss of >1 BTC (often as high as 5 or so). However, because of variance peoples actual loses aren't equal to their expected loss, and it's possibly if they're lucky they'll make a nice profit. That wouldn't be good for the casino, so what to minimize the variance they want to forcing you to play a very large amount of very small bets. This makes it exceedingly rare to make more than your expected loss.


Which is pretty much why I in general advise people to avoid accepting bonuses (and often the sort of places that like to mislead their customers into taking them). Instead of having fun with your money, you're often dragged into effectively turning over fake money until you end up losing it.

Sure, but the problem is they can't be sure that the old owners don't retain a copy (e.g. have the backup seed somewhere etc.) [1]. If something did happen to their cold storage, they'd really have no way of knowing if they got screwed by the old owners (or some malicious software) or something. And like wise, the old owner knows if there's a problem they will always be suspected.

If I was either the seller or the buyer in this situation, I can't imagine ever agreeing to such terms.


[1] It's possible some hardware wallets with software attestation like ledger could provide the ability to check if the private key has ever been exported or not. But that's not really realistic, as I don't believe they have this feature and it's not like satoshidice would've been running a cold wallet without a backup.

If it's software enforced (e.g. you get an error if trying) it's not so bad. What was *a lot* worse was when dodgy sites like bitstarz would review the play history of large winners, and if they violated that rule (even trivially) they would confiscate the entire account balance for "terms of service" violation.

So at least if it's software enforced, you don't run the risk of losing your entire account balance due to a mistake (or not reading the fine print).


That said, I think people should avoid using bonuses in general. In almost all cases they're carefully designed to benefit the casino, while giving the player the impression it's good.

That seems like a worst of all worlds approach. If something happens to the cold storage, it won't be possible to know who was at fault. I can't imagine why either the new or old owners would agree to that.

Ouch. Bad news, I picked paper

Proof:
sha256(paper|234alsdkjfsalty) == 9ed48f503f21c4b9e4b873e39b53ad45d8f397cbff69c97c73f9e25b89e9f64c



Oh well, at least you got 10000 bits which I have credited to your account 

<3 My favorite type of gambler, someone who has fun regardless of the outcome.


So for fun, let's play a game of rock-paper-scissors: If you win, I'll give you 0.2 BTC. If you tie, I'll give you 0.1 BTC, and if you lose you get 0.01 btc.

To prove I can't change my result, here's my sha256 hashed (and salted) pick: 9ed48f503f21c4b9e4b873e39b53ad45d8f397cbff69c97c73f9e25b89e9f64c

So now pick between rock, paper or scissors (and let me know your bustabit account name to credit you). Guess wisely  

There's no need to announce stuff like that, removing access from people who no longer need it is considered a best practice, and has absolutely no adverse affects on anyone. Removing access doesn't imply that they did it because the person did something wrong, or anything like that.


You might want to also just filter out all bets < 100 bits or something, as they'll just add background noise and be annoying and slow to work with


Nor do I, unfortunately. I did find this chart I made from a bit before the sale though: https://i.gyazo.com/041bb7932ebd9bc346ea1c88ddb6a1b9.png

(and there you'll see the strong negative correlation between investor profit and wagered like I was talking about in my previous post)

For anyone interested in this stuff, this is an interesting paper worth checking out: https://lab.getmonero.org/pubs/MRL_Monte_Carlo_Edition.pdf


Although, a far simpler thing I think that would make sense to look at would be the correlation between site profit and volume. It's been my observation that the two are strongly inversely correlated with each other. Generally when people are doing well, they gamble (a lot) more, driving volumes through the roof -- and tend to be happy customers that come back. And likewise when people are doing poorly, they tend to not gamble much.

These type of threads tend to just attract spam, but I'll try avoid that by recommending some other sites I've played at, had good experiences, been able to verify the games (and have no financial motive to promote):

primedice.com (only has dice, but probably the most trusted bitcoin gambling site)
betking.io  (although currently down)
bitdice.me (i think has the biggest limits at the moment, and the ability to invest)
fastbets.io  (not that popular, but looks pretty and I like how they try build new interesting stuff)
nitrogensports.eu  (sports betting, but only used them a couple of times. I'm not much of a sports better)


Disclaimer: I haven't really been lately trying new casinos, so I'm probably missing out a ton of great new casinos

For people interesting in bankroll investing, another thing to look into is margin lending on some of the exchanges. I started about a week ago on bitfinnex and have so far averaged equiv to ~11% p.a.  Not entirely sure this justifies the counter party risk (after all, if they get hacked again you're pretty screwed), but it's a pretty viable thing to look into if you want to increase your diversification  

Another huge bustabit winner:



That's 201 BTC, but most impressively that's a recovery from previously -82 BTC.

Well that's the skill part, knowing to do that. There's a bit of a metagame though, for instance if someone is aiming at 100x, i know their chance of cashing out is only ~1% so I wouldn't try cash out after them, but I'd be better off cashing out early to secure the bonuses in the games they don't cash out.

Also the bonuses are % based, so it's equally fair no matter how big of a better you are -- you don't need to be the highest bettor (although sometimes it can help beef up the bonus pool).

https://www.bustabit.com/calculator

The "1% skill" part comes from ~1% of the game is bonus based. For every 100 BTC that is wagered, on average the site gives out 1% in bonuses. The bonus part is skill based in the sense you can compete with other players for it (see: bustabit.com/faq#fair)


Actually the house edge is quite a bit lower than 1% (see: bustabit.com/faq#odds). The skill based part doesn't really impact the house, as it's actually a purely pvp component (players fight amongst themselves for it)

For what it's worth, bustabit is one of the most transparent gambling businesses out there.  You can see bustabit.com/stats with it presented over time by some sites like thebitcoinstrip.com But unfortunately there's nothing like FDIC-insured bitcoin casino accounts