Satoshi Dice polluting Bitcoin?

[Ban4na]

Hi.

When Satoshi Dice started in May 2012 the estimated size of the blockchain was ~ 800 MB.
Now only 2 months later its already bigger than 1200 MB.

Thats a real nice hockey-stick like graph: http://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size

Just for comparison here you have the number of transactions per day:
http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

And here the same graph excluding the 100 most popular bitcoin adresses (e.g. 1diceXXXX...):
http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular

And now my big question:

Why do so many people play Satoshi Dice? As always the bank will be winning. Especially bitcoin users (i think BTC useres are fairly intelligent) should know that you will lose money when gambling and/or play Satoshi Dice.

I have seen some Threads about winning Satoshi Dice with the martingale strategy (always double your bid until you win) but everyone that can do some simple elementary school maths will realise that the bank will win!

When playing "lessthan 32768" it even says in the same line that you have an expected return of 98,5%. And even if they would have an expected return of 100% the "Max Bet" would still ruin your strategy.

I would love to see some nice discussion about that because i just don't want to believe that soooo many people really play Satoshi Dice.

~
Ban4na

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[hamdi]

its a good test for the whole system

it quickens development of blockchain compression

we are ~60.000 BTC users and the blockchain is 1 gig after 2 years.

imagine 600.000.000 users using btc in a daily manner....

the blockchain would be like several terabytes every year...

it all just in its infancy

[cst]

It's a service like any other, if people want to use it they have every right to do so. Just accept it and move on. No, I don't use it and I don't care. + what @up said.

[malevolent]

You sure it's the satoshi dice what is causing this? Even if it is, it could be a few individuals automating.

[Bitcoin Oz]

Satoshidice is the best dice

[Killdozer]

Glad to see this, hoping it will speed up the development of a solution for the ever-growing bitcoin chain: the biggest unsolved problem with Bitcoin.

[Bitsky]

we are ~60.000 BTC users and the blockchain is 1 gig after 2 years.

Correction: 2GB right now for me.
In my opinion, the official client needs to deal with this soon. New users will get scared off when they have to wait for days until the initial download is done (yes, the blockchain can be downloaded in hours, but many still use older hardware). It would also leave a bad impression to say "there's the official client, but the other clients are better so use those".

Pruning the blockchain should be on top of the todo list. According to the wiki, a block could be reduced to 80 bytes at best. With currently 183882 blocks, that's a bit over 14MB. Even if we double this to compensate for not-perfect prunings, this blockchain could be kept entirely in memory which would also remove the disk-bottleneck, killing two birds with one stone. Not to mention backups get way faster too.

[Bitcoin Oz]

we are ~60.000 BTC users and the blockchain is 1 gig after 2 years.

Correction: 2GB right now for me.
In my opinion, the official client needs to deal with this soon. New users will get scared off when they have to wait for days until the initial download is done (yes, the blockchain can be downloaded in hours, but many still use older hardware). It would also leave a bad impression to say "there's the official client, but the other clients are better so use those".

Pruning the blockchain should be on top of the todo list. According to the wiki, a block could be reduced to 80 bytes at best. With currently 183882 blocks, that's a bit over 14MB. Even if we double this to compensate for not-perfect prunings, this blockchain could be kept entirely in memory which would also remove the disk-bottleneck, killing two birds with one stone. Not to mention backups get way faster too.

This needs to be done I agree. I get limited downloads each month so this might affect me soonish if I need to download the blockchain for some reason.

[Ban4na]

we are ~60.000 BTC users and the blockchain is 1 gig after 2 years.

Correction: 2GB right now for me.
In my opinion, the official client needs to deal with this soon. New users will get scared off when they have to wait for days until the initial download is done (yes, the blockchain can be downloaded in hours, but many still use older hardware). It would also leave a bad impression to say "there's the official client, but the other clients are better so use those".

Pruning the blockchain should be on top of the todo list. According to the wiki, a block could be reduced to 80 bytes at best. With currently 183882 blocks, that's a bit over 14MB. Even if we double this to compensate for not-perfect prunings, this blockchain could be kept entirely in memory which would also remove the disk-bottleneck, killing two birds with one stone. Not to mention backups get way faster too.

thats exactly my point.

[titeuf_87]

There is a thread that shows some statistics about satoshidice:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80312.0

As for why people play? Simply, because it's fun

It's like everything else gambling: don't bet more than you can afford to lose and you get the thrill of potentially winning (even if you'll just lose it all again afterwards)

[Fuzzy]

Why do so many people play Satoshi Dice? As always the bank will be winning. Especially bitcoin users (i think BTC useres are fairly intelligent) should know that you will lose money when gambling and/or play Satoshi Dice.

Fun, addiction, incompetency, or a combination.

However, you have to appreciate the stress it puts on the network. No better time to sort these things out.

[wachtwoord]

It would also leave a bad impression to say "there's the official client, but the other clients are better so use those".

I disagree. The developers on the Bitcoin team should (in my opinion) focus on protocol related matters and make a reference implementation for others to expand and improve upon. This makes the whole thing far more scalable and will introduce a competition/free market incentive to make the best client. In the end the Bitcoin development team could (and should) be disbanded altogether even.

 A nice example is Bittorent where the official client became obsolete shortly after its conception.  

[nedbert9]

etotheipi, armory dev, and a couple of others have been brainstorming an alt-chain that would serve the purpose of keeping balances.  In theory, this would allow rolling truncation of the chain.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83645.0

[eleuthria]

However, you have to appreciate the stress it puts on the network. No better time to sort these things out.

This sums up my feelings on SD.  I've played around with it quite a bit this last week.  I actually feel a bit guilty, because I contributed heavily to the transactions on the most recent record breaking day.

SD is posing a problem with block chain size, and shows the NEED for development time to be spent on the block chain pruning.  Most of the SD transactions have been spent/merged into new balances, and no longer need to be carried.

[ErebusBat]

Fun, addiction, incompetency, or a combination.

Statements like this bother me.  Why is it someone has to be a incompetent addict to enjoy gambling?

When I go out to a movie I spend a whole hell of a lot more $$$ on the ticket and what not than I do on SatoshiDICE.  And guess what I might actually make something at it, I know I am not getting anything back from the movies.  Sometimes I don't even like the movie and I have no recourse.

Granted there are people who are addicited or believe they will eventually beat the house.  But to say that anyone who gambles is stupid is just iggnorant.

As the rule states: NEVER gamble more than you can afford to lose.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Fun, addiction, incompetency, or a combination.

Statements like this bother me.  Why is it someone has to be a incompetent addict to enjoy gambling?

Please research the definition of "OR".

[Littleshop]

Hi.


And now my big question:

Why do so many people play Satoshi Dice? As always the bank will be winning. Especially bitcoin users (i think BTC useres are fairly intelligent) should know that you will lose money when gambling and/or play Satoshi Dice.

Satoshi Dice offers a combination that as far I as I know has not been done before in the gambling world:

1) You can gamble from almost anywhere
2) The payout ratio is known AND reasonable
3) The payout is nearly instant
4) You can trace all of the payments to and from the game by ALL of the users as the addresses are public and therefore see if the odds stated are true. 

Many gambling sites have offered MOST of these but not all.  In most cases you needed to trust the operator's statement of the odds.  In some other BTC gambling sites where the payout was based on the next block (and therefore verifiable) they had most of these properties but they were not instant.

The downside for the owner..... competition.  This site is making big $.  It can be copied with even lower payout to the house.  I would be surprised if it was not copied within 30 days. 

[justusranvier]

One person's blockchain spam is another person's stress test.

[cypherdoc]

I would be surprised if it was not copied within 30 days. 

and then tx volume will double? 

[IveBeenBit]

And now my big question:

Why do so many people play Satoshi Dice? As always the bank will be winning. Especially bitcoin users (i think BTC useres are fairly intelligent) should know that you will lose money when gambling and/or play Satoshi Dice.

You are repeating a very common gambling fallacy based on primitive understanding of mathematics. The bank will not always be winning. The house is always more likely to win, but it will not always win.

It's quite common for an entire B&M casino to have losing nights when some high rollers come into town and  bet $10,000 per roll at craps or whatever.

At a 98.5% expected return from Satoshi Dice, I expect a 1 BTC bet to cost me 0.015 BTC, which is an insignificant sum to me. And for that "price," many gamblers will find the emotional thrill to be quite worthwhile.

If 0.015 BTC is too rich for your blood, then bet smaller, or don't play.

We play because we enjoy it and we're willing to accept the price in exchange for the enjoyment we get from the game. We don't play because we think we have a long term positive expectation.