bustabit – The original crash game

[arwin100]

Hi guys, I'm new to this thread. Maybe my question has already be answered, but I've got some questions about legitimacy of bustabit.

Why, no matter at what time I log in, there are always ~800 players online and ~150 players betting. Never seen like 10k players online, or less than 8000. Has never been reported the use of fake-users by bustabit? Is the website totally fair? Never a case of the site doing something that could affect my trust to them?

I know bustabit is online since many years, but that's not a justification to not be suspicious. Hope you guys have answers to these questions.

Wish you a nice day.

Will ask you to about their current state right now do you think bustabit could able to survive for long time if they are faking their player stats? For sure they are using the real one since it can be shown on how success they are in this business. I understand your doubts but it's good to ask about how the site runs but since this is old and reputable site then you can give a shot to try this up. But don't put all your money still have a doubt and play only what you can afford to lose.

You were saying bustabit is trusted site but you also said don't put all his money if he is still doubt about bustabit, so in other words, you doubted about bustabit too, right?
Bustabit has running since long time, although the site has changed hand from Rhavar to Daniel, it's still trustworthy until now

I wonder where in my words state that I'm doubting? I just suggested that if he's doubting he shouldn't put all his money since how could he play at cool phase when his doubting right? He should comeback when he tested it so that he can tell for his self that playing on trusted site like this is good rather than playing on other site which gives us questionable experience.

[1714935461]

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[1714935461]

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[ironhak]

Hi. Thank's everybody for your reply. I were playing on bustabit like 3 years ago... just wanted to come back and have some fun but at the same time I wanted to assure myself the site is still ok. I've got my answers.

Thank's all.

[RHavar]

Hi guys, I'm new to this thread. Maybe my question has already be answered, but I've got some questions about legitimacy of bustabit.

Why, no matter at what time I log in, there are always ~800 players online and ~150 players betting. Never seen like 10k players online, or less than 8000. Has never been reported the use of fake-users by bustabit? Is the website totally fair? Never a case of the site doing something that could affect my trust to them?

I know bustabit is online since many years, but that's not a justification to not be suspicious. Hope you guys have answers to these questions.

Wish you a nice day.

I'm a bit late to the question, but as other people have pointed out the stats are public (https://www.bustabit.com/statistics) which gets archived (and graphed) by sites like dicesites.com

I have seen bustabit clones for sale that come with builtin stat/player faking as a selling point. And there's even established casinos (e.g. roobet) that have notable players playing with effectively fake money.

So I think it's a pretty reasonable question. But I think bustabit is one of the most transparent sites out there, and would be substantially more difficult to fake stats -- because bustabit with a public bankroll it actually needs to pay investors. Like personally I've take out a lot more than I've put into the bankroll -- and right now bustabit has given a significantly higher return than would be expected -- which is the opposite of what you'd expect to see if volume was being faked.

That said, there's no way to ever know 100% sure the other players are real or not or shills -- so you should probably always just assume you're the only one playing and not let other peoples bets influence yours

[peter0425]

Hi. Thank's everybody for your reply. I were playing on bustabit like 3 years ago... just wanted to come back and have some fun but at the same time I wanted to assure myself the site is still ok. I've got my answers.

Thank's all.

I'm Not really a Fan of Crash Games btu since you mentioned of Playing for Long in this such Games and site , Is it really reliable ? i mean the probability really matters here and legit ? or another Pure Luck base game that we must admit that even before we start to play our Feet is already in the Grave like other gamblings like Slot , Roulette and Dice ?

because those 3 mentioned is what i am really familiar and i accept all facts in regards to those.

[Lakai01]

Oh wow I didn't know about this website, it s really awesome. I have seen btcgosu but I didn't know dicesites were giving out information like this. I don't know if it is true, has devans ever talked about it, do we know that these stats are 100% correct? After all how could they really know without devans giving them what they need, but if it is really true that is really huge, that is really showing how big casinos are, not just for here but for many many places as well.

Only Daniel can tell you whether the data displayed there is 100% correct, but I assume it is. You can invest directly in the bank roll at Bustabit and also at Bustadice, so the data on how many BTC have been turned over must be known to the investors (or made known), I assume.

I think dicesites.com pulls the data directly from here and simply extrapolates it daily. But this is just an assumption.

[acroman08]

Hey, just want to update you guys that a phishing site with your gambling site name(bustabit.cam) is still active and is visible above your original website when searching bustabit or bustabit.com through google. it might help remove the phishing site that has your name if you reported it for trademark infringement to google or the domain provider so the website could be taken down.

[jostorres]

I'm a bit late to the question, but as other people have pointed out the stats are public (https://www.bustabit.com/statistics) which gets archived (and graphed) by sites like dicesites.com

I have seen bustabit clones for sale that come with builtin stat/player faking as a selling point. And there's even established casinos (e.g. roobet) that have notable players playing with effectively fake money.

So I think it's a pretty reasonable question. But I think bustabit is one of the most transparent sites out there, and would be substantially more difficult to fake stats -- because bustabit with a public bankroll it actually needs to pay investors. Like personally I've take out a lot more than I've put into the bankroll -- and right now bustabit has given a significantly higher return than would be expected -- which is the opposite of what you'd expect to see if volume was being faked.

That said, there's no way to ever know 100% sure the other players are real or not or shills -- so you should probably always just assume you're the only one playing and not let other peoples bets influence yours

I would assume that checking the games would mean something? I do not know if that could be faked neither, maybe that could be faked? But seriously there is chat there as well, which means we could literally go to chat, talk with people and see how many there are in the chat. Obviously that is not going to be 800+ or something, but that still is something, when you chat with 100+ people and you go to other places that say they have 100-200 players and chat with 10-20 people you realize that about 10% of the gamblers chat, and that is the situation here as well, about 10-20% of the people chat and that is how I would realize how many people are really real.

I have no other option honestly, for someone from the outside, but I have been here for years and I can say that it is legit, we as investors do end up seeing how much gambled and lost as well so I can say quite a lot of people do gamble from what I gather from the movements of the investment.

[Lakai01]

Hey, just want to update you guys that a phishing site with your gambling site name(bustabit.cam) is still active and is visible above your original website when searching bustabit or bustabit.com through google. it might help remove the phishing site that has your name if you reported it for trademark infringement to google or the domain provider so the website could be taken down.

The page unfortunately exists for a long time, was also discussed here in the thread, but certainly does not hurt to recall the topic again

The simplest remedy here are adblockers. If I search for Bustabit in the Brave browser, the scam page is not displayed at all, because they usually buy advertising slots and are therefore ranked at the top:



 Unfortunately, many ad blockers still show the Google Ads by default, so you have to adjust the settings a bit (e.g. deactivate the "Acceptable Ads" in AdBlock).

[justdimin]

My suggestion for these kinds of things is to put the bustabit on our bookmarked websites. I have a folder in the bookmark line of opera, and in that folder I just have casinos and sportsbooks that I gamble on, bustabit is great and all and it is very unique but there are other places I gamble as well, after all it is just one type of game and when I want to gamble on sportsbook or poker or any other casino game I have to go there. Which means I can't just google their names each time I want to go there, bookmarking is really the best thing for this.

In fact I have built my bookmarked websites to be so so much (thanks to putting them under folders) right now I can spend a whole day without googling anything unless something unexpected happens. All my work, all my fun and entertainment, everything is there and that is why I suggest the same for others as well.

[devans]

TL;DR: The way the bankroll commission rate is calculated is changing. This only affects bankroll investors, so players can skip to the next post.


The intention behind the dynamic commission rate introduced just a few months ago was to reduce the size of the bankroll to a more reasonable one and to find an appropriate commission rate. Today, however, the bankroll is larger than ever. The change clearly isn't fulfilling its purpose, so I am adjusting the formula. At the bankroll's current size of nearly $150m this represents a significant increase in the commission rate, which I hope will move investors to realize some of their profits and divest from the bankroll.

Starting on March 2 the commission rate will be calculated like this:

Code:

bankroll * (360-day moving average of BTCXDR) / 55,000,000 XDR

Please see https://www.bustabit.com/help/investing for details on when and how the exchange rates are updated and how the commission rate is calculated.

Even though bustabit exclusively uses Bitcoin, the wager volume it sees is stabler in terms of purchasing power. Special drawing rights (XDR) are a currency basket defined by the IMF that consists of USD, EUR, CNY, JPY and GBP. Pegging the commission rate to special drawing rights encourages a reasonable bankroll size regardless of Bitcoin's price without being reliant on any single country's currency.

Despite the huge bets bustabit sometimes sees, more than 99% of its wager volume (!) could be served with a bankroll of "only" $40m. For bustadice, where unlike on bustabit the result of players' bets are not correlated, the number is smaller still. To give a concrete number, I would be happy to see the bankroll decrease by two thirds to about $50m in value. This is what the factor of 55,000,000 XDR targets.

Finally, using the moving average of the exchange rate compensates for the short-term volatility of Bitcoin's price and makes commission rates more predictable.

I owe an apology to bankroll investors for adjusting the formula again so soon. Several people including Ryan suggested incorporating the price of Bitcoin in the calculation back in November, but I wanted to keep things simple and decided on a Bitcoin target instead. Unfortunately the price of Bitcoin had more than doubled less than a month later. With the commission rate now accounting for Bitcoin's price further changes should at most be necessary every few years.

[devans]

The other significant update I want to announce today affects players as well.

Effective immediately, all users must provide and verify an email address before being able to deposit. The first time a user signs in to an account from a new browser, an authorization link will be sent via email. TOTP-based two-factor authentication will continue to be available as an option for added security.

I realize that this is not only an inconvenience for users but also affects their privacy to a certain degree, so I was hesitant to make this change. However, over the past few weeks phishing attacks on bustabit users have become a much larger problem than they used to be (just read the last few pages of this thread). Apart from costing the players that fall victim to these scams a lot of money, phishing threatens to damage bustabit's reputation as many victims end up falsely concluding that bustabit was hacked or even that bustabit itself stole their money.

While I report all phishing domains and apps to their domain registrars, hosting providers and Google as I discover them, it's a losing battle. These companies usually take days or weeks to act and when they finally do the damage is already done. At the same time it takes the scammers only a few hours to upload a new website or app. For this reason I'm afraid requiring email addresses is necessary to protect those users that would otherwise fall victim to these scams.

Side note: Players often ask me what has changed in an update. Starting today you can find patch notes at https://www.bustabit.com/changelog.

[GamblingSiteFinder]

Wow, Devans dropping back-to-back BOMBS!

Effective immediately, all users must provide and verify an email address before being able to deposit. The first time a user signs in to an account from a new browser, an authorization link will be sent via email. TOTP-based two-factor authentication will continue to be available as an option for added security.

Requiring a verified email address is going to get some backlash from the whales who create/delete accounts every session, but on the whole, this is a much needed safety measure to protect players from phishing attacks. I'd suggest Bustabit also put greater emphasis on encouraging everyone with an account to also enable 2FA.

The intention behind the dynamic commission rate introduced just a few months ago was to reduce the size of the bankroll to a more reasonable one and to find an appropriate commission rate. Today, however, the bankroll is larger than ever. The change clearly isn't fulfilling its purpose, so I am adjusting the formula. At the bankroll's current size of nearly $150m this represents a significant increase in the commission rate, which I hope will move investors to realize some of their profits and divest from the bankroll.

Starting on March 2 the commission rate will be calculated like this:

Code:

bankroll * (360-day moving average of BTCXDR) / 55,000,000 XDR

I could be wrong, but this comes across as a big blow to bankroll investors on the surface. Hopefully someone with a better understanding of Bustabit's bankroll calculations than myself can chime in with their predictions for the bankroll's future expected returns.

[devans]

Requiring a verified email address is going to get some backlash from the whales who create/delete accounts every session, but on the whole, this is a much needed safety measure to protect players from phishing attacks. I'd suggest Bustabit also put greater emphasis on encouraging everyone with an account to also enable 2FA.

You can still use the same email address with multiple accounts, so while this does add an extra step to registering an account it doesn't prevent someone from using throwaway accounts.

A reworked sign-up flow that encourages 2FA more aggressively has actually been in our issue tracker for a while. Unfortunately it wouldn't have protected most people that fell victim to phishing, however. People that are security-conscious enough to enable 2FA usually don't fall for phishing scams in the first place.

I could be wrong, but this comes across as a big blow to bankroll investors on the surface. Hopefully someone with a better understanding of Bustabit's bankroll calculations than myself can chime in with their predictions for the bankroll's future expected returns.

Absolutely. The idea is that investors start taking their profits, after all. Assuming bankroll investors still demand the same rate of return from bustabit's bankroll, the rate of return should end up being the same as before, just with a significantly smaller bankroll.

[sunsilk]

Hey, just want to update you guys that a phishing site with your gambling site name(bustabit.cam) is still active and is visible above your original website when searching bustabit or bustabit.com through google. it might help remove the phishing site that has your name if you reported it for trademark infringement to google or the domain provider so the website could be taken down.

It is still existing. I hope that google will take them down as soon as they receive a report from an authorized bustabit representative.

The simplest remedy here are adblockers. If I search for Bustabit in the Brave browser, the scam page is not displayed at all, because they usually buy advertising slots and are therefore ranked at the top:

I've done it on Brave and you're right, it's not appearing. But for the other browsers, it shows.

[RHavar]

Several people including Ryan suggested incorporating the price of Bitcoin in the calculation back in November, but I wanted to keep things simple and decided on a Bitcoin target instead. Unfortunately the price of Bitcoin had more than doubled less than a month later. With the commission rate now accounting for Bitcoin's price further changes should at most be necessary every few years.

One issue I have with the complexity, is that it's pretty annoying to do the calculations. Like I'm not sure exactly where to even get XDR information (admittedly, I've only heard of it just now). I see on XE: https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=XDR&To=XBT

1XDR = 0.0000402910 bitcoin


Which means you're effectively targeting a cap of ~2216 BTC (at current value) bankroll, which effectively gets phased in over a year.  I don't really know how to see what the "360-day moving average of BTCXDR" is, so it's hard to see what the commission will start off as.


I think it's important to make that information easily available via:
bustabit.com/investing-stats.txt

Which updates every day with something like:


date | current_commission_% | bankroll_in_btc | bankroll_profit_in_btc | BTCXDR |  BTCXDR_MOVING_AVERAGE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Otherwise, honestly it's a real PITA to figure out what's going on.


---

Regarding mandatory email (2fa). It's a shame you had to do that, but with all the bustabit phishing sites I guess there was no real alternative. I kind of wonder if it's be possible when registering to opt-out by signing some sort of disclaimer about the risks of phishing [etc]. Or since you already support totp 2fa, you can bypass mandatory email if you enable totp 2fa. While totp doesn't protect against phishing really, no one is going to both trying to phish the 1% of users who use totp 2fa -- and it'd allow the people who don't want to link their email to gambling account a nice solution

[chazley]

Pretty disappointing to see the investing rules change so drastically after they were just altered a couple months ago. If it's too complicated for RHavar to wrap his head around, I'm not even going to try. I have no clue what the new rules are, other than it's now tied to fiat value and commission rates will go down significantly, which to me seems pretty silly. The fact is, the bankroll size has been decreasing steadily since devans changed the bankroll rules a couple months ago, from ~4900 bitcoin to ~4200 now, so if the goal is to reduce the bankroll size the previous rules seemed to be working just fine. The only way it's "increased" is in fiat size, which I don't understand why it would even be relevant. It seems to only come into play when the price is *increasing*, and we don't hear a word about it when it's staying even or decreasing.

The facts are, # of bets daily is down drastically past few months and because the bankroll has been steadily going down, devans commission % has dropped to around 42% of a much smaller pie. He has every right to squeeze investors, but I wish we could just be more upfront about what's actually going on here. The past bankroll rules changes negatively impacted devans' bottom line and this is being done to recoup lost money. I wish we could just have a set % taken as commission without making this as complicated as humanly possible. Change it monthly if you'd like.

devans has every right to change the bankroll/investor rules however he likes, as frequently as he likes. Just giving my 2 cents.

[RHavar]

The fact is, the bankroll size has been decreasing steadily since devans changed the bankroll rules a couple months ago, from ~4900 bitcoin to ~4200 now, so if the goal is to reduce the bankroll size the previous rules seemed to be working just fine.

I suspect the reason the bankroll has been decreasing is just related to the value of bitcoin has been going up. Daniels last rule change has (accidentally?) strictly benefited investors, so I doubt there's been much divestment because of it

The only way it's "increased" is in fiat size, which I don't understand why it would even be relevant.

Well the bread-and-butter of the casino are people who put a chunk of their paycheck into the casino each month. So if you plot "amount wagered" in BTC and USD, you'll find it's far stabler in USD. So from that point of view, it makes much more sense targeting a fiat amount.

I think the (strong?) counter-argument to that would be that the (large) bankroll isn't needed to service the typical customer -- it's there to service whales. I strongly suspect the average bustabit whale *isn't* buying BTC to gamble, but already has acquired the bitcoin (probably a long time ago). So from that sense, it makes sense to target a BTC amount? (Or at least a moving average with an extremely long tail)

I wish we could just have a set % taken as commission without making this as complicated as humanly possible. Change it monthly if you'd like.

Yeah, I hope before the change happens we have much clearer information and examples. Also a page that just clearly says what the current commission is, and what it has been every day of the past.

Just-Dice has a pretty nice thing:
https://just-dice.com/misc/wagered.txt

It would be good to have something like that, extended with all the commission information

[Timetwister]

The intention behind the dynamic commission rate introduced just a few months ago was to reduce the size of the bankroll to a more reasonable one and to find an appropriate commission rate. Today, however, the bankroll is larger than ever. The change clearly isn't fulfilling its purpose, so I am adjusting the formula. At the bankroll's current size of nearly $150m this represents a significant increase in the commission rate, which I hope will move investors to realize some of their profits and divest from the bankroll.

Starting on March 2 the commission rate will be calculated like this:

Code:

bankroll * (360-day moving average of BTCXDR) / 55,000,000 XDR

Please see https://www.bustabit.com/help/investing for details on when and how the exchange rates are updated and how the commission rate is calculated.

Even though bustabit exclusively uses Bitcoin, the wager volume it sees is stabler in terms of purchasing power. Special drawing rights (XDR) are a currency basket defined by the IMF that consists of USD, EUR, CNY, JPY and GBP. Pegging the commission rate to special drawing rights encourages a reasonable bankroll size regardless of Bitcoin's price without being reliant on any single country's currency.

Despite the huge bets bustabit sometimes sees, more than 99% of its wager volume (!) could be served with a bankroll of "only" $40m. For bustadice, where unlike on bustabit the result of players' bets are not correlated, the number is smaller still. To give a concrete number, I would be happy to see the bankroll decrease by two thirds to about $50m in value. This is what the factor of 55,000,000 XDR targets.

Finally, using the moving average of the exchange rate compensates for the short-term volatility of Bitcoin's price and makes commission rates more predictable.

I owe an apology to bankroll investors for adjusting the formula again so soon. Several people including Ryan suggested incorporating the price of Bitcoin in the calculation back in November, but I wanted to keep things simple and decided on a Bitcoin target instead. Unfortunately the price of Bitcoin had more than doubled less than a month later. With the commission rate now accounting for Bitcoin's price further changes should at most be necessary every few years.

And what is the current "360-day moving average of BTCXDR"? You should post that somewhere on the Bustabit website so we can at least estimate what's the fee, I have no idea of what that value is (I didn't even hear about XDR before, at least you could have pegged it to USD, it's not like USD itself is super volatile that you need to use a strange formula with percentages of different fiat currencies).

From what I see, 55 000 000 XDR is just 2160 BTC now. So is the fee going to be 100% at 2160 BTC bankroll (assuming the 360 days average gets there)? This is crazy, from 10 000 to 2160 (and it would keep dropping if BTC rises, which is expected).

This is very disappointing. It isn't just clearly much worse but it's much harder to calculate what's the expected return.

[RHavar]

And what is the current "360-day moving average of BTCXDR"?

I think around 9381  ? (I tried to guess the 360 day moving average of BTCUSD and divided by 1.4 which i got by ballparking ). I might be wrong

So if the commission started today, it should be about: 4252.4 * 9381 / 55,000,000  = 0.725%  ... which is quite the leap.  If my calculation is correct, I don't see how I could not be divesting most (?) of my investment. But I guess that's the goal of the change to push some investors out.  I think the formula could be tweaked a little so that we don't see such an abrupt change on day 1 though?  Like using a longer moving average, or higher cap ?

[Timetwister]

And what is the current "360-day moving average of BTCXDR"?

I think around 9381  ? (I tried to guess the 360 day moving average of BTCUSD and divided by 1.4 which i got by ballparking ). I might be wrong

So if the commission started today, it should be about: 4252.4 * 9381 / 55,000,000  = 0.725%  ... which is quite the leap.  If my calculation is correct, I don't see how I could not be divesting most (?) of my investment. But I guess that's the goal of the change to push some investors out.  I think the formula could be tweaked a little so that we don't see such an abrupt change on day 1 though?  Like using a longer moving average, or higher cap ?

We would need that 360 days average somewhere in the website.

Yes, basically this is forcing the bankroll to go back to something like 1000 BTC... I bet lots of investors won't even notice these changes and just leave their investment there, even if they may be paying a 100% fee. I wonder what percentage of the bankroll is composed of that kind of investors.

Even if gamblers are rarely targetting the max profit, seeing a much smaller one may make people less willing to gamble, as the max profit may be a factor in their strategies.

I would propose Devans to:

1. Use a formula just based on USD. If wagered is really stable in USD terms, this seems reasonable. And USD is stable enough that there shouldn't be any need to use that strange basket. The website should still show that 360 days average somewhere and explain which exchange is it taking into account for the calculations.

2. Don't drop the "target maximum bankroll" so much at once. Try dropping it gradually and see how players react. If wagered/day stays stable, you could consider lowering that target bankroll size. Dropping it by so much may have unwanted consequences for players and is very confusing and negative for current investors and makes them have less confidence in the project, as you may choose to do some other drastic and negative changes in the future. This is even more relevant when divesting and investing has a cost (dilution fee).