bustabit – The original crash game

[Timetwister]

Even if you did the more extreme version ( stop all new investments) the bankroll would continue to increase by the investor profit (minus divestments). Investor profit over the last 90 days has been 533.50 BTC, which is an insane amount. That's literally like $100k/day average. I assume Daniel is in the position where the bankroll has become so big, that the only thing that happens by it increasing is increasing his liability.


But if you think of it though, it's actually a pretty clever idea. I think it'll become the standard way of doing bankroll commissions in the future. Basically Daniel is running a sort of auction, where investors are basically bidding against each other to provide the bankroll bustabit needs. (Although for the record, I don't think a linear relationship is the most optimal way to model it, and I would've pegged it against USD or something a bit more elegant than a fixed number like the largest bet in the last 3 months)

It's evident the bankroll would increase much more slowly if people were no longer allowed to increase their investment, or if there was a higher dilution fee for joining (which, as I said, I would be fine with going partially or even fully to Daniel).

People don't just let their investment accumulate, they withdraw part of their winnings to spend or invest in other places.

Removing the offsite balance is just a way to decrease expected returns for current investors while increasing it for new ones, as they end up with a higher percentage of the bankroll by investing the same amount. It doesn't even fix the supposed problem of the bankroll being too big, as the casino doesn't really have those offsite Bitcoins anyway. The casino doesn't have to worry about the offsite bankroll being stolen or whatever...

This change only makes sense to me if Daniel wants to increase his own investment in the platform, but even if that was the case this doesn't seem like the optimal way to do it.

I think the fairest and most coherent way to limit further investments is increasing the dilution fee, which is something that hasn't been tried as it's been stuck at the same percentage for a long time.

Talking about the last 90 days profits is unfair, you know that particular time frame was especially favourable to investors. Long-term expected returns are lower than that.

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[RHavar]

Talking about the last 90 days profits is unfair, you know that particular time frame was especially favourable to investors. Long-term expected returns are lower than that.

Hm, I didn't try to be unfair. I just picked a reasonable sounding timeframe. I just tried a few others:

30d investor profit = 393.06 BTC = 13.10 BTC/day
90d investor profit = 533.50 BTC =  5.93 BTC/day
180d investor profit = 770.41 BTC = 4.28 BTC/day
365d investor profit = 1,992.74 BTC = 5.46 BTC/day


Even just round down to 4 BTC/day. It really doesn't change my point at all.

[Jungian]

First, offsite investing will be retired completely. This will immediately reduce the size of the bankrolls by more than 4,000 BTC and is also in the interest of fairness towards the majority of investors who did not have the opportunity to invest offsite. All remaining offsite investments will be eliminated and affected investors will receive an equivalent amount of dilution fee credits.

Second, bustabit and bustadice will both move to a dynamic commission model where the commission changes in real-time based on the size of the bankroll:

commission rate = bankroll / 10,000 BTC

On bustabit this means that the commission rate will be roughly the same as now or slightly lower. On bustadice these changes slash the commission by more than half, down to ~20%.

So it will incentive us to increase your on site liability on both sites for now. Don't you think that works against what you try to accomplish a bit?

[Mydi]

So, if bankroll is over 10.000 BTC, we have no commission at all ? That feels bad.

Also, does it applies to money loss as well or will we actually lose money with low/no opportunity to win it at all (if commission rises)

[Timetwister]

So, if bankroll is over 10.000 BTC, we have no commission at all ? That feels bad.

Also, does it applies to money loss as well or will we actually lose money with low/no opportunity to win it at all (if commission rises)

Over 10 000 BTC in theory we would be paying over 100%... At least there should be some cap on the fee, at 50% for example, that's already a very nice profit for the casino (on top of whatever they make as investors themselves)...

[RokokGudangGaram]

I was wondering what could be the average game per day on Bustabit, I will just use the information to do some computation with my bet, I was planning to run an overnight bet and see what could be the outcome of it.

About ~3600-4000 games per day give or take. You can get to the number by communicating with Shiba using "!bust" or "!streak" commands as it will tell you how many days and games ago have passed since the most recent bust or streak that you chose to query.

Long term, of course, the outcome is that you'll lose money if the site doesn't go offline.

There are more interesting information to be found here if you choose to invest instead of gambling: https://dicesites.com/bustabit

This was helpful, thank you. I guess investment is better since i'm aiming for a long term profit.

[chazley]

Can someone explain the bankroll investment changes in layman's terms? I'm confused. Preferably comparing how it works now to how it now will work.

[sceptic4u]

Good morning everyone

Long time lurker first time poster here.  Work in IT and very familiar with IGaming, Cryptos and the whole scene.  I hope you don't mind a few hard questions (I am, after all, a Sceptic4u )

I have been following this thread and also the BaB site for some time and have played and invested on the site in the past.  The site seems very successful. I'd like to invest more and take a significantly larger position but a few difficult questions come to mind:

* I notice very lax KYC and also very very lax geo ip blockage of restricted regions (for example logging in from a USA IP gets a mild warning and no geo blockage)
* Only accepting BTC deposits (which are fully traceable by Elliptic unlike XMR for example)
* Zero due diligence on new accounts with seemingly unlimited deposit limits
* Reporting insane volumes from some players who seem to cycle through massive volumes of BTC and result in little or no profit, often breaking even.  Junya5805 for example.
* Loose licensure, Curacao gaming license which is virtually meaningless (right up there with Kahnawake), no apparent attempt to get a real license from a legitimate jurisdiction
* Seemingly no concern about accepting and distributing enormous volumes of BTC that may have previously been used for illegal transactions
* Volumes much larger than similar sites (who actually enforce geo ip blocks from restricted countries, like RocketPot.io for example)

This all screams "honeypot" to me.  I hope I'm wrong but I believe this is a legitimate concern and I want to ensure my investment is legal, safe and legitimate at all times.

Any thoughts?

Thank you

Sceptic4u

[RHavar]

So, if bankroll is over 10.000 BTC, we have no commission at all ? That feels bad.

It is literally the opposite. The higher the bankroll, the higher the commission. To the point 10k BTC bankroll would mean 100% commission. So basically the size of the bankroll is capped.

This all screams "honeypot" to me.

Hm? On the one hand you're supposedly concerned about users' privacy ("honeypot", no Monero or whatever) but at the same time also criticizing that bustabit doesn't collect enough personal information. Most of your questions kind of have pretty common-sense answers though:

* Geoblocks are extremely ineffective, the average crypto user has a VPN and can switch countries in 30 seconds. It makes more sense to simply ask the person, as if a user wants to get around your restriction they will do it anyway. And the US is pretty much the most common VPN endpoint due to no-mandatory-logging laws and proximity to most online services.

* You say deposits are fully traceable and  zero due diligence is done, which either makes no sense or you know something we don't

* Of course many players break even. Many lose money too. Many make money. That's kinda how a casino works. Your example is of someone of someone breaking even is someone who made 104  BTC. 

* Obviously bustabit has way more volume than sites like rocketpot.io. I can think of several factors that virtually guarantee it. bustabit is the original, they're a clone. The tripled bustabit's house edge, so that by itself would lead the average gambler to run out of money 3x as fast (and thus wager less, and  have as much fun and less likely to come back). And the entire site makes a bunch of nonsense claims like their clone (literally using the same code) is an "exclusive game" and bullshit like "and the house gains confidence that all wins are legitimate"  which I believe is just plagiarized from bustadice's multi-party system and has absolutely zero applicability to them. So no surprise they do shit volume

Can someone explain the bankroll investment changes in layman's terms? I'm confused. Preferably comparing how it works now to how it now will work.

Currently there's a grandfathered in offsite system, it's been deprecated for a long time (still exists, but no new users can use it. Old investors can only decrease their offsite). That is fully going away, which will create a more level playing ground for all investors. Currently bustabit charges 50% commissions on profit, but Daniel is changing it to "bankroll/10000btc". So on day 1 it will be marginally less commission, but as the bankroll grows the commissions will keep going up and up and up, and virtually guarantees that bankroll will never go above 10k btc. As the bankroll goes up, returns for investors will go down, which will cause investors (at least like me) to divest. So it'll reach some equilibrium somewhere between 5k and 10k btc I imagine. (i.e. commissions between 50% and 100%). As an investor, I think of it as bad news. But I can also see why Daniel doesn't want to pay investors more than he needs to do.

[Timetwister]

Personally removing the offsite part is not that bad for me as my offsite/onsite ratio is not that much higher than the average one. Assuming that removing it would probably discourage current "leveraged" investors to stay, it's probably neutral, so OK.

However, there must be a cap on the fee, which I think should be 50%, that's already a crazy profit for the casino, especially combined with their own investment in the bankroll. To keep things easier I'd just leave the fee at 50% instead of using that new formula which would require investors to keep looking at how big the bankroll is. Also if the fee was dynamic, the max profit should be dynamic too in relation to the fee. Otherwise, imagine the extreme scenario in which the bankroll got to 9,000. Then the kelly would be very high unless the max bet is adjusted to the much lower expected value per bet for investors. The maximum profit should be 2*bankroll*(0.01*(1-fee)) so that expected bankroll growth is at least 0.

If 10,000 is the number that Devans doesn't want to reach, what I'd do in his situation is becoming more aggressive with the dilution fee, starting with 5%.

[Mydi]

So basically when we reach 10.000 btc, it's 100% loss for investors and 0% gain ?

If we get to that point :
- owner will get all the profit
- bankroll will fluctuate a bit between 10.000 btc and a bit lower when there is a swing downward and will recover to 10.000 slowly (due to a 99% commission on win). - reaching a 10k equilibrium

This also means new investors are screwing old one even more since in addition to dilution, they also increase the overall commission rate.

[wiss19]

There are always users who are trying to ruin or demolish reputations. I should not pay to much attention into these users.
If you keep feeding them, they will have the reasons to reply.

After looking through his negative feedback and following up what transpired back then. I stopped believing the crap he's posting. If he's trying to create a smear campaign against Bustabit, then he's totally wasting his time.

Yeah, obviously people who do not know how bustabit works and how provably fair system works will always try to find a way to blame the casino when they lose, they can't accept the fact that they are a gambler that ended up losing something mathematically destined to make them lose in the end. Do not try to find a way or a system that helps the casinos "cheat you out of your money" because there is none that is hidden, it is right out in the front page and you end up having that as your reason to lose, it is called house edge and that is it.

Back on wang tang, do you guys think he will continue to gamble thousands of bitcoins again and try to recoup what he has lost? Or will he be smarter about his money this time around and not make the same mistakes he did last time?

[bessenconfituur]

I had hoped to reduce the size of the bankroll and therefore the total amount of investors' money bustabit and bustadice are responsible for.

If decreasing liability for the investors money really is the main incentive here, why not discourage onsite investing and encourage offsite investing again?

Just a question, I don't know what would be the downside of making offsite investing possible again...

[devans]

Personally removing the offsite part is not that bad for me as my offsite/onsite ratio is not that much higher than the average one. Assuming that removing it would probably discourage current "leveraged" investors to stay, it's probably neutral, so OK.

However, there must be a cap on the fee, which I think should be 50%, that's already a crazy profit for the casino, especially combined with their own investment in the bankroll. To keep things easier I'd just leave the fee at 50% instead of using that new formula which would require investors to keep looking at how big the bankroll is. Also if the fee was dynamic, the max profit should be dynamic too in relation to the fee. Otherwise, imagine the extreme scenario in which the bankroll got to 9,000. Then the kelly would be very high unless the max bet is adjusted to the much lower expected value per bet for investors. The maximum profit should be 2*bankroll*(0.01*(1-fee)) so that expected bankroll growth is at least 0.

If 10,000 is the number that Devans doesn't want to reach, what I'd do in his situation is becoming more aggressive with the dilution fee, starting with 5%.

Capping the fee would defeat the purpose as it would no longer provide a disincentive to invest once the bankroll reaches 5,000 BTC.

As the commission is only charged on net profits, it doesn't affect the Kelly criterion. The optimal risk for the bankroll according to the Kelly criterion is 1% (the house edge) regardless of the commission rate.

Unfortunately the dilution fee on its own is not effective in capping the bankroll size. Since the beginning of this year, there has been a net divestment of ~750 BTC, i.e. overall investors divested 700 BTC more than they invested. Despite that, the bankroll has grown nearly 900 BTC since then.

So basically when we reach 10.000 btc, it's 100% loss for investors and 0% gain ?

If we get to that point :
- owner will get all the profit
- bankroll will fluctuate a bit between 10.000 btc and a bit lower when there is a swing downward and will recover to 10.000 slowly (due to a 99% commission on win). - reaching a 10k equilibrium

This also means new investors are screwing old one even more since in addition to dilution, they also increase the overall commission rate.

Nobody would invest money in something if they didn't stand to earn a profit, which is why the bankroll will never reach 10,000 BTC. In practice the bankroll will find an equilibrium at a much lower size where investors are content with the rate of return. For what it's worth this is already the case. All the dynamic commission does is nudge that point of equilibrium towards a smaller bankroll.

If decreasing liability for the investors money really is the main incentive here, why not discourage onsite investing and encourage offsite investing again?

Just a question, I don't know what would be the downside of making offsite investing possible again...

Having a large offsite bankroll can make the bankroll volatile. When an investor's onsite investment becomes too small to support their offsite investment they are margin-called, causing their offsite investment to be set to zero. As a result a lucky high roller might see the maximum profit collapse at the worst possible time, after they've just won a large amount.

[pungopete468]

Is there something like a competition on bustabit? I was wondering if you are planning to add some competitions maybe? But I was thinking this is only for promotions and you might not needed that anymore.

[ronaldo40]

Is there something like a competition on bustabit? I was wondering if you are planning to add some competitions maybe? But I was thinking this is only for promotions and you might not needed that anymore.

i don't think he will add something like that the bustabit is already good enough and have already enough players i don't think any promotions will be needed anymore.

[Timetwister]

Capping the fee would defeat the purpose as it would no longer provide a disincentive to invest once the bankroll reaches 5,000 BTC.

As the commission is only charged on net profits, it doesn't affect the Kelly criterion. The optimal risk for the bankroll according to the Kelly criterion is 1% (the house edge) regardless of the commission rate.

Unfortunately the dilution fee on its own is not effective in capping the bankroll size. Since the beginning of this year, there has been a net divestment of ~750 BTC, i.e. overall investors divested 700 BTC more than they invested. Despite that, the bankroll has grown nearly 900 BTC since then.

There has to be a cap. Otherwise, if it gets over 100% it would be profitable for you to play against the casino.

In practice, considering wagered per day doesn't change, I'd estimate people to divest massively from around 7,000, as both wagered/bankroll would be lower and profits would decrease by 7/5 (assuming an initial bankroll of 5,000).

I thought you were charging a fixed percentage of how much players are wagering. I can't find the explanation in the "help" section.

How much has been invested in that time period? By increasing the dilution fee you should be able to discourage that, I'd keep increasing it gradually.

Other than discouraging new investments by increasing the dilution fee, something you could do is that when the bankroll gets to 10,000, people are forced to divest proportionally to end up with a total bankroll of 10,000.  This may also be positive for the casino as it may encourage some of those "investors" to gamble part or the totality of those bits that are no longer invested. What do you think about that?

[DarkStar_]

Capping the fee would defeat the purpose as it would no longer provide a disincentive to invest once the bankroll reaches 5,000 BTC.

As the commission is only charged on net profits, it doesn't affect the Kelly criterion. The optimal risk for the bankroll according to the Kelly criterion is 1% (the house edge) regardless of the commission rate.

Unfortunately the dilution fee on its own is not effective in capping the bankroll size. Since the beginning of this year, there has been a net divestment of ~750 BTC, i.e. overall investors divested 700 BTC more than they invested. Despite that, the bankroll has grown nearly 900 BTC since then.

There has to be a cap. Otherwise, if it gets over 100% it would be profitable for you to play against the casino.

I don't think it ever reaching over 100% is a reasonable expectation, and if it ever did, I think all investors would have massive upside anyway. There's pretty much one practical way of hit ever hitting 10k BTC, which is a huge whale losing thousands of BTC bringing the bankroll to 10k. If we assume equilibrium was at 7k BTC (my guess is that it'll actually be much lower), and we assume that Daniel plays against the casino to drain the bankroll to exactly 10k, that's still 42% profit.

Investors know about the scaling dilution fee, so no one is going to invest 3k BTC when the bankroll was at 7k BTC knowing that would raise the commission to 100%.

I think a cap at 100% would make sense, *just in case*. I highly doubt the bankroll would ever get anywhere near that though.

[Timetwister]

Capping the fee would defeat the purpose as it would no longer provide a disincentive to invest once the bankroll reaches 5,000 BTC.

As the commission is only charged on net profits, it doesn't affect the Kelly criterion. The optimal risk for the bankroll according to the Kelly criterion is 1% (the house edge) regardless of the commission rate.

Unfortunately the dilution fee on its own is not effective in capping the bankroll size. Since the beginning of this year, there has been a net divestment of ~750 BTC, i.e. overall investors divested 700 BTC more than they invested. Despite that, the bankroll has grown nearly 900 BTC since then.

There has to be a cap. Otherwise, if it gets over 100% it would be profitable for you to play against the casino.

I don't think it ever reaching over 100% is a reasonable expectation, and if it ever did, I think all investors would have massive upside anyway. There's pretty much one practical way of hit ever hitting 10k BTC, which is a huge whale losing thousands of BTC bringing the bankroll to 10k. If we assume equilibrium was at 7k BTC (my guess is that it'll actually be much lower), and we assume that Daniel plays against the casino to drain the bankroll to exactly 10k, that's still 42% profit.

Investors know about the scaling dilution fee, so no one is going to invest 3k BTC when the bankroll was at 7k BTC knowing that would raise the commission to 100%.

I think a cap at 100% would make sense, *just in case*. I highly doubt the bankroll would ever get anywhere near that though.

Investors shouldn't have to worry about that situation, I think it's evident that a cap on the fee is needed, and it's very reasonable that it's less than 100%. A variable fee is already confusing enough.

[devans]

The commission is only taken from net profits, so in that sense it's capped at 100%. However I agree with DarkStar_: Outside a black swan event of a high roller losing thousands of Bitcoin at once, economics dictate that the bankroll will never reach 10,000 BTC as investing (or staying invested) in a risky asset that offers no return isn't rational. By the way: Investors already need to trust me not to play against the casino.

I don't consider "bankroll/10,000 BTC" to be confusing at all, but even if we assume that it is, adding more complexity like an arbitrary cap on top of that wouldn't make it less confusing. In any case, asking for a cap on the commission rate is missing the point of the dynamic commission rate. The purpose is to make being invested in the bankroll less attractive the larger the bankroll grows. Capping the commission rate is counterproductive as it eliminates the disincentive in case the cap is hit.