Are bitcoins casinos really pointless?

[Staring Owl]

I started the thread more in the angle, if there is any significant profit for the gambling site owners at this stage if bitcoin economy. Or it's mostly for fun.
In the spirit of transparency and honesty some of them want to set, i'm sure a lot of people will appreciate if they share their profits or at least give us idea about them.
Drugs are the biggest market driver so far, it's logical to expect gambling will be next. But I don't think that's the case here.
(If you could order hookers with bitcoins that would be second)

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[coolidgecoin]

I started the thread more in the angle, if there is any significant profit for the gambling site owners at this stage if bitcoin economy. Or it's mostly for fun.
In the spirit of transparency and honesty some of them want to set, i'm sure a lot of people will appreciate if they share their profits or at least give us idea about them.
Drugs are the biggest market driver so far, it's logical to expect gambling will be next. But I don't think that's the case here.
(If you could order hookers with bitcoins that would be second)

Hi, Staring Owl-- Obviously, I speak only for myself, but my reason for launching Kingcoin was to learn about Bitcoin, "get my feet wet" with programming Bitcoin, and introduce myself to the Bitcoin community. My profits so far are negligible. Of course, I absolutely want to create a terrific and fun experience for my users, but I see myself eventually doing something more impactful with Bitcoin.

Sanjay

[MPOE-PR]

I started the thread more in the angle, if there is any significant profit for the gambling site owners at this stage if bitcoin economy. Or it's mostly for fun.
In the spirit of transparency and honesty some of them want to set, i'm sure a lot of people will appreciate if they share their profits or at least give us idea about them.
Drugs are the biggest market driver so far, it's logical to expect gambling will be next. But I don't think that's the case here.
(If you could order hookers with bitcoins that would be second)

Your problem seems to be more laziness than anything. Dooglus for instance has done a pretty good job of following the take of the biggest bitcoin gambling site, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 15k BTC ahead at the moment. You can actually share in those profits too, by buying its shares.

More generally, every time some BTC game advertises as "provably fair" what it means is that you can just traverse the chain and establish for yourself, with 8 digit precision, how much it made.

In any case drugs aren't the biggest market driver. Repeating that nonsense is quickly becoming the Bitcoin equivalent of "God created the world": something stupid people say because they've heard other stupid people say it.

[Micon]

Not that this is anywhere on topic, but MPOE-PR & Staring Owl seem to disagree on this:

What is the biggest driving force behind the daily volume of transactions on the major exchanges?

I would bet 1.5 yrs ago it was drugs, very specifically Silk Road drugs.  Today I think gambling makes up a non-negligible part of that economy, but so do many other things now 1.5 yrs later from the drug-dominated BTC economy, and I believe the drug impact has shrunk on a %-of-btc-economy basis but likely grown by all other metrics, such as users and total USD transacted. 

So what do you guys think, if you had to assign %'s to it, makes up the btc economy?  Mt. Gox recently has ~25k btc traded per 24 hrs and about $12/btc so each 24 hours $300,000 USD worth of BTC are traded.  What are they used for?  Isn't there a Silk Road study every other week?  I think I  remember ~$20-$25M in sales each year, which would be about ~2M in trades per month, which would be about 22% of the BTC economy.

IMO Drugs / Silk Road (is there any other place to buy drugs?) make up about 22% of the btc economy ATM.

And when beginning to speculate upon the other 78%, I would say gambling is around 3-8%, and while someone may link me to the SatoshiDice block-chain exploder graph, let me state that they have made 15,000 btc since they have been operating.  While this may generate a lot of blockchain transactions, there is only 15,000 btc worth of total loss that if you assume would be re-purchased for fresh fiat only adds 15,000 btc total worth of trades.  No where near impacting daily volumes, i.e. there aren't many people winning huge and cashing out on Gox, or losing huge and always needing to buy more from Gox.  (although there are a few outliers, and those outliers are hard core degenerates

[MPOE-PR]

Not that this is anywhere on topic, but MPOE-PR & Staring Owl seem to disagree on this:

What is the biggest driving force behind the daily volume of transactions on the major exchanges?

I would bet 1.5 yrs ago it was drugs, very specifically Silk Road drugs.  Today I think gambling makes up a non-negligible part of that economy, but so do many other things now 1.5 yrs later from the drug-dominated BTC economy, and I believe the drug impact has shrunk on a %-of-btc-economy basis but likely grown by all other metrics, such as users and total USD transacted. 

So what do you guys think, if you had to assign %'s to it, makes up the btc economy?  Mt. Gox recently has ~25k btc traded per 24 hrs and about $12/btc so each 24 hours $300,000 USD worth of BTC are traded.  What are they used for?  Isn't there a Silk Road study every other week?  I think I  remember ~$20-$25M in sales each year, which would be about ~2M in trades per month, which would be about 22% of the BTC economy.

IMO Drugs / Silk Road (is there any other place to buy drugs?) make up about 22% of the btc economy ATM.

And when beginning to speculate upon the other 78%, I would say gambling is around 3-8%, and while someone may link me to the SatoshiDice block-chain exploder graph, let me state that they have made 15,000 btc since they have been operating.  While this may generate a lot of blockchain transactions, there is only 15,000 btc worth of total loss that if you assume would be re-purchased for fresh fiat only adds 15,000 btc total worth of trades.  No where near impacting daily volumes, i.e. there aren't many people winning huge and cashing out on Gox, or losing huge and always needing to buy more from Gox.  (although there are a few outliers, and those outliers are hard core degenerates

What are the Bitcoin market drivers? Jus' for you.

[dooglus]

More generally, every time some BTC game advertises as "provably fair" what it means is that you can just traverse the chain and establish for yourself, with 8 digit precision, how much it made.

That's not really true.

bitZino.com is probably fair, but not via the blockchain.  The site shows its hashes only to the player, not to the world, so I've no idea how popular or profitable bitZino is.

[molecular]

It depends.  If Bitcoin never gets any bigger essentially no bitcoin buisiness is worth it.   None.  Not even MtGox.  However nobody putting money and labor into a bitcoin enterprise is doing it for the small sums they will net today.  They are doing it because what "if" bitcoin is bigger.  Not a little bigger but much much much bigger.  What if someday there are tens of millions of Bitcoin users.  Then being an established and trusted [casino|exchange|retailer|auction house|marketplace|etc] is suddenly very much worth it.

IMHO Bitcoin will either be much bigger or a footnote in history in 3-5 years.  It won't remain the status quo.

I agree (who here wouldn't).

Sidenote: we're still at No. 1 of Falkvinges 4 drivers: http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/16/bitcoins-four-drivers-part-one-unlawful-trade/

[molecular]

What it offers is immediacy.

That's a very good point that I had overlooked (as I'm generally not an online gambling player, ... primarily for the reason you cited ... I try to avoid negative EV   ).

This was illustrated in another thread where bitcoin gaming is sometimes used as a way to get a "bridge loan".  The example given was where someone wants to make a purchase but is just a little short of funds.  It will take a few days either to get more funds or for an existing funds transfer to complete in order to buy more coins.  So using one of the bitcoin gaming services a person can make a wager (or two) and likely win the amount that was needed.

In the worst case scenario the person loses and has to wait a few days for a funds transfer to complete, just like they would have been had they not placed the bets.

Of course for a person in financial distress, this can accelerate a downward spiral but for those simply wanting a few more coins quickly, the immediate access to winnings is something Bitcoin gaming offers that is not found anywhere else online.

I hadn't taken this view before: so bitcoin gambling fulfills the same function as traditional loaning business?

X wants to buy big TV. has 90%, will gamble what he has on a SatoshiDice with 10% winning -> if lucky, can buy TV, if not: all funds lost

vs.

X wants to buy big TV, has 90%, will take long of 10% -> can buy TV for sure, if unlucky: loss of decent life.

One could argue gambling has higher moral grounds than the traditional loaning business.

[MPOE-PR]

That's not really true.

bitZino.com is probably fair, but not via the blockchain.  The site shows its hashes only to the player, not to the world, so I've no idea how popular or profitable bitZino is.

Ah ok, didn't know that.

[SRoulette]

I don't think our disagreement is one of terminology.  Even after you rephrased it, I still think you're wrong.

om nom nom, yummy humble pie.
Dooglus thanks for persisting I now appreciate the value of running 10 trillion simulations vs 1 million
Codemonkey also had several attempts explaining it to me but I didnt appreciate until I saw some raw stats.

What casinos should be careful of is that a large bet range coupled with a low house edge can increase amounts of rounds (and bank) required before the houses average earn smooths out. 
Some gambling systems we are simulating require more than 1 trillion rounds for the casino to get its average earn matching the house edge within 10% each round.
I fired off a big simulation last night running all gambling systems but unfortunately it crashed out, 8 cpu cores at 100% and a hot room is not good
I will fire off another simulation tonight and share our results.

CodeMonkey says he may be up for releasing his simulator to the public once he has finished cleaning up the code.

[Staring Owl]

I started the thread more in the angle, if there is any significant profit for the gambling site owners at this stage if bitcoin economy. Or it's mostly for fun.
In the spirit of transparency and honesty some of them want to set, i'm sure a lot of people will appreciate if they share their profits or at least give us idea about them.
Drugs are the biggest market driver so far, it's logical to expect gambling will be next. But I don't think that's the case here.
(If you could order hookers with bitcoins that would be second)

Your problem seems to be more laziness than anything. Dooglus for instance has done a pretty good job of following the take of the biggest bitcoin gambling site, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 15k BTC ahead at the moment. You can actually share in those profits too, by buying its shares.

More generally, every time some BTC game advertises as "provably fair" what it means is that you can just traverse the chain and establish for yourself, with 8 digit precision, how much it made.

In any case drugs aren't the biggest market driver. Repeating that nonsense is quickly becoming the Bitcoin equivalent of "God created the world": something stupid people say because they've heard other stupid people say it.

Listen dum dum, I'm aware of the earning of satoshi dice. You don't need Dooglus for that, since they've made their earnings spreadsheet public since they want to sell shares.
But 1 site, especially the most successful one is not enough to get the full picture of the market, right?

About the drugs, i'm not saying that because i've heard it, there are stats actually (if i remember correctly the guys from bitcoin magazine did quite the research) showing the money flow in each of the major sectors. Drugs transactions were beating all the rest by factor of 10 or so.


About the blockchain, good luck following and calculating transactions when most of them generate unique address for each new user and unlike satoshidice they are not market with dice in them....

next time think before accusing someone in lazyness and talking nonsense....

[Staring Owl]

Why let such nice thread die?

[SAFEVoucher]

I think this is just a matter of time, before Bitcoin becomes popular for casinos.

Anyway you can spend your bitcoins and get ukash, which is used in most online casinos these days.

[OneVillain]

And that comes from the site of the owner of Bodog, so he should know a thing or two?

You don't think maybe he should be a little biased?? hehe