I agree - this was what got me originally thinking about just running a second bitcoind for the purpose of importing the private keys. We could just throw away the wallet from the 2nd bitcoind periodically, or immediately after the funds are sent to the primary bitcoind wallet.


The problem is that with the standard bitcoind, it seems that you can't even figure out the balance of a private key without either importing it first, or importing the blockchain into a separate external data structure. So, since you don't know the balance, you can't really create a valid transaction


Thanks for the link! That does seem like a cool set of tools. However, the requirement to import the entire blockchain into a separate database is starting to border on overkill.

To be honest, none of these solutions is ideal. They all pose very real costs: both in terms of server resources and engineering effort. They also pose a potential security risk: I'd much rather be relying solely on bitcoind, since it is simply the most well-tested client out there.

I really do want to support importing private keys - I think the ability to for people to use bitcoins in a similar way to how they currently use paper cash is a worthy goal that will certainly help bitcoin's adoption. Ideally, I'd like there to be a sendprivatekey API call in bitcoind, which would really trivialize the whole operation.

I haven't given up hope though! I'll keep exploring all the potential options.

Thanks for keeping us on track We haven't forgotten about it, we just ran into some technical problems, which have slowed us down.

I thought this would be simple to implement by using the importprivkey API call, but it turns out that method is really slow to run, and basically locks up bitcoind during the time that it's running. It seems like the only solution may be to run multiple copies of bitcoind, or use some sort of modified client - both of which don't seem ideal. Do you have any technical advice on a good way to implement this? It seems like a lot of other services do this, so there must be a good way!

Thanks you guys, I'm glad you're enjoying it!

We'll be launching roulette at the beginning of next week, which I'm really excited about! We're also getting close to launching craps.

Also, we've made some substantial changes on the backend which significantly improve our system's reliability and loss-prevention. All of our data is backed-up in realtime and stored in geographically diverse locations. So now, even if our primary data center completely falls off the map, we'll be able to failover with no data loss and minimal downtime.

Thanks Kaji!

Stay on the lookout for Roulette and Craps - those will likely be the next 2 games we launch.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

We are in active development, and constantly working to make the site better. If you have any feedback for us, let me know!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I think we're going to continue to strike a middle ground here: some people like certain things to be left unsaid, so we are going to avoid automatically summing up your deposits and withdrawals. However,  we will always provide you with full access to your withdrawal and deposit history, so importing this data into a spreadsheet should be a fairly simple operation.

Over the weekend, we hit another milestone hand at bitZino! Since launching we've seen over 250,000 hands played for real bitcoins.

The majority of our players tend to play Blackjack, but there is a small dedicated group of players that is really enjoying our Video Poker game, which is really helping to drive up the hands played count.

As we did with our 50k milestone, we are giving away bitcoins to celebrate! The lucky player that played hand number 250k was awarded 2.5 BTC. All the players that were close to playing the milestone hand were awarded 0.25 BTC.

We're incredibly excited about the success we've seen so far with bitZino. We truly believe that gambling with bitcoins is the way of the future, and we're excited to make bitZino be a part of that future!

As always, I'm here and open to any feedback or questions you have!

I agree about the fact that an independent program is far more convincing than anything we provide on our site. That's why I'm so excited you implemented one!

You make a good point about actually showing the final deck too. Maybe we'll add that to our javascript verifier...


I hope you had fun with it!

I'm personally really against messing with the default selection logic of text boxes. It's always unexpected for the user, because there's no way to visually indicate that this text box is different. So, I think it ultimately ends up with more user confusion and frustration. So, I don't think we'll be implementing this :/

What about just doing "CTRL+A" + "CTRL+C", as a quick consistent way to always copy everything?

I do wish there was a way to securely modify the clipboard with javascript. I really like github's "copy to clipboard" buttons - it's just a shame they require flash.


This is AWESOME! Very clean code. And I love that you output the actual cards in the deck!

We've been considering adding a satoshi base unit, but, as you mention, it gets complicated since blackjacks are supposed to pay 3 to 2. I don't really like the idea of only paying 1:1 because that make the game significantly worse for the player. We may allow users to have half-satoshi's while they're on the table, and only round them down when they leave the table.

In the meantime though, you should definitely be able to withdraw your 62 satoshi's. Just issue a withdrawal request for the appropriate amount, and we'll send it to you.


Ah, good catch. Good thing you have slow internet so you can test these cases We'll add a disable-with message to the button (so it says "Buying in..." after you click it, same as the other buttons on our site).

Thanks for the bug report! Even though it's rare, it is definitely something that warrants fixing. Fortunately, the fix was easy, so we already pushed it out. It was certainly a strange corner case - it had to do with the order in which cookies are set in javascript, so it's something we'll be on the lookout for in the future.

We're very grateful for all the feedback and bug reports you've sent us Dooglus. We added an extra BTC to your account as a way to say thanks for all the help you've given us.


You can indeed add extra balance to the table at any time, even mid-hand. If you click on your balance (right above the "Split" button), you'll see a popup which allows you to add balance.

I wonder if there's a good way to make it more obvious that that is a click-able element. I was thinking of just adding a help bubble when the table is first created that informs the user that you can click there to add balance at any point...

Hahaha

This is why we say "If you're superstitious, this is a great place to put something lucky, because whatever you put here has a direct impact on the final shuffle of the deck." I do think that it's a cool aspect of the provably fair system - you can control your own destiny.


We promise to always process withdrawals within 24 hours, but we usually process them much faster: usually within an hour or so of your request. We used to require 6 confirmations on your deposits before processing your withdrawal, which can sometimes take much longer than an hour. So we have just lowered that requirement down to 2 confirmations for most circumstances. So, it should now be a much more pleasant experience if you want to deposit a few coins, play a few hands, and then withdraw immediately afterward.


Also, update on the blackjack animations: We've made several subtle updates as per the suggestions in this thread. Thanks for all the feedback, and keep it coming!

Ah yeah, we're aware of that as well - it's definitely not the correct behavior. We're working on fixing the animations right now!

Sorry for the bad luck We're definitely not cheating though, in fact it would be computationally impossible for us to cheat! You can read about the details of how we make our system provably fair at https://bitzino.com/about/fair


We have a basic explanation, as well as a javascript hand verifier posted at https://bitzino.com/about/fair. We also have an in-depth technical explanation on our tech blog at https://techblog.bitzino.com/2012-06-30-provably-fair-shuffling-through-cryptography.html

The very high-level explanation is that we reshuffle the cards before every hand using a seed you provide us. This reshuffling makes it impossible for us to predetermine the order of the cards, and therefore guarantees you a fair game every time.

I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have about it!

Good suggestion! We'll have to change how we do our dealing logic somewhat - the difficulty is that the javascript in the browser doesn't really have any knowledge of the blackjack game itself, all the game logic is on the server, the javascript is dumb and just handles dealing the cards.

We'll figure out a way to do this though, cause, I agree, it will be much better.


Good idea!


Hmm, I thought we accounted for this edge case correctly, but it looks like things may have degraded. We'll fix this, and also make sure to include this in our automated tests going forward.

Thanks, as always, for the tips Dooglus! Look for these changes to be rolling out in the next few days.

One day, for sure We are focusing on single-player games for the short term, but multi-player games are definitely in the roadmap.

We haven't considered switching to a non-.com domain yet, but you do bring up a good point. It would probably behoove us to do this sooner rather than later. We are planning on getting a .bit domain up and running pretty soon though.

Regarding other general security: We take this very seriously. We store the majority of our funds in an offline cold storage wallet. We use bcrypt hashing for all of our password storage. We also do regular penetration testing on our own systems. We are aware that we have the potential to become a target, and therefore we need to take security seriously from day 1.

Great point! We've made this change.

We have just launched Video Poker!





Check it out, and let me know what you think of it!

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I'm glad you're all a fan of what we're doing at bitZino

Before we start marketing too aggressively, we'd like to make make bitZino a more full-featured casino - primarily through adding a larger variety of games. To that end, stay on the lookout for Video Poker, which is launching within the next 24 hours! We will be aggressively rolling out additional games in the near future as well.

We also definitely see the value of the international market. Since bitcoin is an international currency, there is no reason to restrict ourselves so English speakers. However, we feel we need to translate our interface before we start promoting anything to non-english speakers. We will likely be localizing our product toward the end of this year, and then following up with international marketing efforts.

In the meantime, feel free to tell all your friends about us!