[CLOSED] S.DICE - SatoshiDICE 100% Dividend-Paying Asset on MPEx

[fcmatt]

Many colas exist but there is only one coke

The way I see it,
satoshiDICE is a household name in the bitcoin niche. It would take ad spend beyond belief for an upstart to match them on branding.

What could a competitor even say to get interest? "Hey look at us, we are like satoshiDICE" ... um, ok. So why not just play at SD?

Lower house edge?
Somehow make the website interactive so you can watch your bet do something fun/funny?
Add a new twist to the game where you can somehow make the last bet influence the next?
I dunno. Just day dreaming here.

The internet is fickle tho. Myspace is a good example of a leader blowing it.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Many colas exist but there is only one coke

The way I see it,
satoshiDICE is a household name in the bitcoin niche. It would take ad spend beyond belief for an upstart to match them on branding.

What could a competitor even say to get interest? "Hey look at us, we are like satoshiDICE" ... um, ok. So why not just play at SD?

Lower house edge?
Somehow make the website interactive so you can watch your bet do something fun/funny?
Add a new twist to the game where you can somehow make the last bet influence the next?
I dunno. Just day dreaming here.

The internet is fickle tho. Myspace is a good example of a leader blowing it.

There is always progressive jackpots!

[dooglus]

What could a competitor even say to get interest? "Hey look at us, we are like satoshiDICE" ... um, ok. So why not just play at SD?

"Hey look at us we are just like satoshiDICE but our house edge is half of theirs so on average you can bet twice as much before you lose all your coins!"

[MPOE-PR]

What could a competitor even say to get interest? "Hey look at us, we are like satoshiDICE" ... um, ok. So why not just play at SD?

"Hey look at us we are just like satoshiDICE but our house edge is half of theirs so on average you can bet twice as much before you lose all your coins!"

"Except we're not on MPEx and so we can promise and guarantee that our first 100 BTC loss takes us out of business."

Sounds legit.

[EskimoBob]

Sorry, but I do not see any serious "edge" described here. All I see is self-congratulating fan-boy talk
Lets not forget that S.DICE is operating in heavily regulated industry with out any licence. Comparing this bottom feeders business (gambling) to bottling brown sugar water that makes its drinkers fat and stupid, is a bit silly.
Nothing wrong with fan-boys happily cheering, but we all know how "to big to fail" usually works out

[Bugpowder]

Sorry, but I do not see any serious "edge" described here. All I see is self-congratulating fan-boy talk
Lets not forget that S.DICE is operating in heavily regulated industry with out any licence. Comparing this bottom feeders business (gambling) to bottling brown sugar water that makes its drinkers fat and stupid, is a bit silly.
Nothing wrong with fan-boys happily cheering, but we all know how "to big to fail" usually works out

There is actually quite a bit of regulatory pressure coming down soda producers these days.

Bloomberg et al.

[sunnankar]

Lets not forget that S.DICE is operating in heavily regulated industry with out any licence. Comparing this bottom feeders business (gambling) to bottling brown sugar water that makes its drinkers fat and stupid, is a bit silly.

At the end of the day, a bitcoin of earnings is equal to a bitcoin of earnings. The difference in valuation would be treated by the discounted risks and transparency of the business.

The fact that S.DICE is operating, had $230k of income in BTC for the month of December alone, pays a significant BTC dividend and operates with a censorship-resistant currency adds even more value to the underlying business because it reduces regulatory risk.

In other words, the probability of S.DICE ceasing being a going concern is decreased because it is censorship-resistant. Even if the domain name were to be seized, which is highly unlikely and would take many years of legal process, S.DICE could still operate with the tablet apps.

Meanwhile, the brown sugar water business you are talking about is much more prone to regulatory risk. Plus, it is much easier to freeze, seize and confiscates its assets. The books are much less transparent and at best can really only be audited.

Everything else being equal, those operational advantages should give S.DICE a higher valuation than a brown sugar water business.

[MPOE-PR]

Lets not forget that S.DICE is operating in heavily regulated industry with out any licence. Comparing this bottom feeders business (gambling) to bottling brown sugar water that makes its drinkers fat and stupid, is a bit silly.

At the end of the day, a bitcoin of earnings is equal to a bitcoin of earnings. The difference in valuation would be treated by the discounted risks and transparency of the business.

The fact that S.DICE is operating, had $230k of income in BTC for the month of December alone, pays a significant BTC dividend and operates with a censorship-resistant currency adds even more value to the underlying business because it reduces regulatory risk.

In other words, the probability of S.DICE ceasing being a going concern is decreased because it is censorship-resistant. Even if the domain name were to be seized, which is highly unlikely and would take many years of legal process, S.DICE could still operate with the tablet apps.

Meanwhile, the brown sugar water business you are talking about is much more prone to regulatory risk. Plus, it is much easier to freeze, seize and confiscates its assets. The books are much less transparent and at best can really only be audited.

Everything else being equal, those operational advantages should give S.DICE a higher valuation than a brown sugar water business.

There are of course the sticky issues of a) brown water business has been in business for a century by now; b) BWB has investors like Hathaway holding significant share blocks; c) what did they make last year, a billion moneyz?

[evoorhees]

Explosive growth in SDICE case must mean that even larger number of bitcoin holders lose their mind and start dumping it to SDICE site.
The following is a pure speculation - are SDICE guys actually inflating the "popularity" of this absurdly boring game by pumping coin they got from IPO through SDICE to make it look like a growing business. Hard to prove, really easy to do.

First, the IPO sold some shares and then it slowed down dramatically. No matter how actively mpex merry band of muppets regurgitated their silly sales crap all over the forum, new SDICE shares did not sell. It stopped at bout 6? mill unsold shares for months.    
Suddenly, we see a huge jump in gambling lunacy and guess what - someone swallowed the bait - and those rotting unsold shares started to sell again.  
 This was so big event, that muppet MPOE-PR even gave herself a her narcissistic maser a self made medal of "Distinguished Service Order of Utter Bullshit and Arrogance". This went straight to her bloated head and she demanded "the community" to kiss her ugly and unwashed (LOL @ "This is where "the community" kisses my feet. Again" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=135574.0)
Not sure how this "again" got inserted to this retarded farce. I guess in the land of "Major Puppets Exchange" (mpex), everything is possible.

PS! I am glad (not really) that she did not cut herself or poked here eyes out, while making that cardboard&tinfoil medal of hers.

It is not really that hard to explain. There are a number of factors which all work to increase the price of the S.Dice shares.

1: As time goes on the perceived risk of investing in S.Dice goes down. The longer the track record, the better the reputation of the asset issuers.
2: S.Dice profit has increased. Seeing the increasing profits, people are willing to pay more to get in.
3: After the shares started selling, one of the first months was a bad luck month, so very little profit (I think it was November?) That was a huge damper on share sales. Which explains why it took so long for IPO shares to sell out.
4: Once the original IPO wall was nearly gone, people waiting to get in realized they should buy shares soon since the price was going to jump, and people correctly figured they could make a quick bitcoin by grabbing the shares and listing them higher.
5: There are a number of threads, including this one, spread throughout the forum, which all deiscuss S.Dice and the suddenly increasing price and Wow, I just got rich off S.Dice and such. So more sheep join into the herd of S.Dice owners and the price goes up.
6: People opening accounts at MPEx or places with pass-throughs is cumulative. When S.Dice was first listed on MPEx fewer people had accounts there and there was no pass-throughs. As Pass-throughs get added and as more people sign up at MPEx the number of people able to buy shares goes up, and so demand rises, which causes a rise in price.

And Evoorhees is a longtime bitcoin user, I am sure he did not need the IPO sale to have bitcoins to artificially pump up the usage numbers for Satoshidice. That is crazy conspiracy theory nonsense.

You're missing two of the largest factors for the recent rise in S.Dice.  Pirate and the collapse of GLBSE.

Whilst GLBSE was running there were a lot of 'businesses' promising rates of return far higher than S.Dice could deliver.  Then pirate happened and GLBSE collapsed.  And investors in most of the old GLBSE companies are realising that maybe the returns from S.Dice aren't that bad compared to losing the lot by investing in a business based on lies ("I didn't invest in pirate"), deceit ("These fixed-rate mining bonds are a good investment") and imaginative accounting ("Let's value things based on what we hope they'll be worth at some point in the future").

The promises S.Dice made (and the returns it offered) were far less than many alternative offering gave.  But now people can look back at what was actually delivered  - and I think that may be getting a lot of people to reconsider their valuation of S.Dice.

And, of course,  S.Dice's revenue and profits are denominated purely in BTC - so when BTC rises (as now) the value of their investment remains the same (in BTC) rather than falling as is the case with any mining investment whose funds are stuck valued in fiat whilst waiting for ASICs to show up.

Bottom-line: a fairly small profit that materialises is worth a lot more than a huge profit that is just fantasy.

Wow. Peter Lambert and Deprived... both of your comments were really intelligent. I have a bit more insight as an insider, but not tons more, and I think your analyses are spot on.

Principally:
1) IPO shares didn't sell as fast as I wanted because people were used to "ZOMG 50% returns per week with pirate!"
2) IPO shares finally sold off because a) November and December demonstrated the power of SD to earn real money and B) once a large portion of IPO shares are gone people rush to buy the remaining.

Though Deprived you also said, "Bottom-line: a fairly small profit that materialises is worth a lot more than a huge profit that is just fantasy." And while that sentiment is absolutely true (and an important lesson for all Bitcoiners to remember), SD's earnings have been anything but "fairly small profit."  Dec. earned over 5% purely in dividends for -one- month. That's amazing earnings for any business, and absolutely justified the IPO share price.

[evoorhees]

Many colas exist but there is only one coke

The way I see it,
satoshiDICE is a household name in the bitcoin niche. It would take ad spend beyond belief for an upstart to match them on branding.

What could a competitor even say to get interest? "Hey look at us, we are like satoshiDICE" ... um, ok. So why not just play at SD?

Another very important point regarding competition... the house edge SD uses is not arbitrary. It was arrived at after substantial analysis of volatility of the bets. If a competitor undercuts SD by any significant amount, it risks flat out bankruptcy (though it might not realize this). And if a competitor doesn't undercut SD by a significant amount, why would anyone play there? New startups are a very risky place to send your money, so if SD has a house edge of 1.9% and Competitor #151 has a house edge of 1.9%, the actual odds of losing your money are worse with the Competitor because there is risk in the unknown. This is doubly true in Bitcoinland.

Could someone come along and outcompete SD? Yes, as is true in any free market. But, the costs are very high, and the risks non-negligible. There is also opportunity cost - why try to fight for one gambling niche when a new game could be built and claim its own niche? 

Not to mention... how do you compete with this:  http://blockchain.info/popular-addresses 

[herzmeister]

so any statistics yet how does the rising BTC price affect SD gambling?

how much do people lower the nominal BTC value of their bets? or is it rather that they largely don't care a lot? 

[evoorhees]

SatoshiDice featured in Forbes and Ars Technica today...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/22/bitcoin-casinos-release-2012-earnings/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

[totaleclipseofthebank]

SatoshiDice featured in Forbes and Ars Technica today...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/22/bitcoin-casinos-release-2012-earnings/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

great stuff... this is going to catch a lot of attention! (in a good way)

[dooglus]

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

The caption under the photo of the Casascius physical bitcoins is weird:

"Sadly, you can't spend actual bitcoins like these (non-digital ones) at a digital casino."

Isn't the whole point that those physical coins have private keys printed on them so you can spend them online?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

The caption under the photo of the Casascius physical bitcoins is weird:

"Sadly, you can't spend actual bitcoins like these (non-digital ones) at a digital casino."

Isn't the whole point that those physical coins have private keys printed on them so you can spend them online?

Yes, you can spend them. Whoever wrote the article does not have much of a clue.

[kgo]

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

The caption under the photo of the Casascius physical bitcoins is weird:

"Sadly, you can't spend actual bitcoins like these (non-digital ones) at a digital casino."

Isn't the whole point that those physical coins have private keys printed on them so you can spend them online?

But once you spend them, the physical coin loses all value.  The original motivation was that they could be traded in person without having to have any hardware and without having to go through the waiting-for-confirmation dance.

[BlackLilac Jordan]

SatoshiDice featured in Forbes and Ars Technica today...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/22/bitcoin-casinos-release-2012-earnings/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

Congrats on all the success and publicity. 

I was curious why the stock value skyrocketed yesterday. Dang, here I had been thinking I was a genius for having sold most of my position at around 0.0054.

[BlackLilac Jordan]

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

The caption under the photo of the Casascius physical bitcoins is weird:

"Sadly, you can't spend actual bitcoins like these (non-digital ones) at a digital casino."

Isn't the whole point that those physical coins have private keys printed on them so you can spend them online?

But once you spend them, the physical coin loses all value.  The original motivation was that they could be traded in person without having to have any hardware and without having to go through the waiting-for-confirmation dance.

Right... but you can still spend them online, so the caption is completely inaccurate.

[Bugpowder]

SatoshiDice featured in Forbes and Ars Technica today...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/22/bitcoin-casinos-release-2012-earnings/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

Congrats on all the success and publicity. 

I was curious why the stock value skyrocketed yesterday. Dang, here I had been thinking I was a genius for having sold most of my position at around 0.0054.

Well there was also the 10,000 BTC profit on 125,000 BTC of betting in the last 24 hours...

[BlackLilac Jordan]

SatoshiDice featured in Forbes and Ars Technica today...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/22/bitcoin-casinos-release-2012-earnings/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/

Congrats on all the success and publicity. 

I was curious why the stock value skyrocketed yesterday. Dang, here I had been thinking I was a genius for having sold most of my position at around 0.0054.

Well there was also the 10,000 BTC profit on 125,000 BTC of betting in the last 24 hours...

possibly