Skip to main content

Bitcoin casino on track to earn nearly one million per year

Bitcoin

Covered by Arstechnica this week, bitcoin-accepting casino SatochiDice appears to be pulling in significant profits from a popular online betting game that utilizes random number generation. Specifically, SatochiDice posted a profit of 33,310 bitcoins between May 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012. At the current value of $18.20 per bitcoin, that’s a total profit of approximately $600,000. Over the next twelve months, the SatochiDice analysis estimates that the total profit over the next twelve months will total 50,596 bitcoins. Assuming bitcoin value stays the same, that’s approximately $920,000 in profit. However, the dollar exchange value of a bitcoin is completely dependent on the market and can shift significantly over time.

bitcoin currencyAvoiding the United States entirely, the SatochiDice servers are setup within Ireland. By design, the game is basically a random number generator and players are betting on the likelihood that a generated number is greater than the number that was previously selected.

The house has a 1.9 percent advantage, but winnings on the leaderboard get up as high as 1333 bitcoins on a single bet. That’s approximately $25,000 at the current exchange rate. However, the average bitcoin bet comes to approximately 0.76 bitcoins or about $14. On a daily basis, the house takes in a profit of approximately $2,500 off all bets. 

Another bitcoin-accepting casino that launched last year is called bitZino. The online casino offers traditional betting games such as blackjack, roulette, craps and video poker. While bitZino didn’t release an earnings report due a lack of profit during 2012, the bitcoin casino did release a summary of user interactions during 2012. Since the June 2012 launch date, users have cashed out 28,986 bitcoins that have a value of roughly half a million dollars. More than 50 percent of all withdrawals were processed in less than one minute, but the average time was about nine minutes. However, that’s vastly superior to traditional online casinos.

bitzinoRegarding user behavior, players typically don’t leave their earnings on the site. The majority of users withdraw all bitcoins from the site after playing.

When asked about this behavior, bitZino owner Larry Taad told Arstechnica “Users don’t have to trust us with their funds any longer than necessary. If you compare this to traditional online casinos, which can take weeks to send you your winnings, the benefit is obvious. And of course, it goes both ways: it is also extremely easy and quick for users to add funds back to our site.”

Users places approximately 3.2 billion wagers through bitZino during 2012 and representatives expect that number could climb by a factor of five over the next twelve months. bitZino claims to have an advantage over other online gambling sites due to the low cost of payment processing. Specifically, the bitcoin casino can offer better odds of winning due to the cost savings. In addition, site representatives boast that all games are “provably fair” from the player perspective. In a recent interview with Forbes, Taad stated “One of the largest hurdles to creating a good provably fair system is explaining to users exactly what it is. When developing our provably fair system at bitZino, we put a lot of effort into making sure we were able to accurately portray to our users how it all works.”

Editors' Recommendations

Mike Flacy
By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…
Bitcoin’s blockchain contains links to child pornography, possible illegal image
tech predictions for 2016 the blockchain

Researchers at RWTH Aachen University in Germany recently downloaded the entire Bitcoin blockchain and discovered it contains links to child pornography websites and a possible image of a "mildly nude" minor. They were investigating the blockchain's non-financial data to uncover "objectionable" content but stumbled across the appalling surprise. The researchers provided their findings in a new paper during the Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2018 conference in late February.

At the time of the download, Bitcoin's blockchain weighed at a hefty 122GB in size. The researchers concluded that only 1.4 percent of all blockchain transactions contain non-financial data, which consumes a mere 118.5MB of the entire blockchain volume. Even more, the transactions with data they could actually read weighed a mere 22.6MB. This is where they stumbled across the child pornography.

Read more
Supposed Bitcoin co-inventor sued for more than $10 billion in cryptocurrency

A recent lawsuit filed in a Florida court seeks more than $10 billion worth of Bitcoins from an individual who claims to be one of three Bitcoin inventors. The lawsuit doesn't go into Scooby-Doo mode to unravel the mysteries of Bitcoin's origin, but instead roots out what could be a scheme to hoard Bitcoins for personal gain. To understand what is going on, you need to break down the lawsuit's timeline. 
The lawsuit centers around three individuals: Paralyzed coder Dave Kleinman who died in 2013 due to complications stemming from an illness, wealthy Australian Craig Wright, and Ira Kleinman, Dave's brother and executor of his estate. Ira Kleinman is suing Craig Wright on behalf of his brother regarding Bitcoins generated between 2011 and up to Dave Kleinman's passing in 2013. 
According to the lawsuit, Dave Kleinman and Craig Wright were in communication in March 2008, just seven months before the Bitcoin whitepaper published in October 2008. By January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto -- the pseudonym used by Bitcoin's creator -- created the very first block of Bitcoin transaction data. Nine days later, Kleinman, Wright, and "two others" successfully conducted a Bitcoin transaction. Eventually, Kleinman tells his brother Ira that he's creating digital currency with "a wealthy foreign man."
In 2011, Kleinman and Wright launched a new Florida-based business called W&K Info Defense Research LLC targeting the development of Bitcoin-based technologies. According to the lawsuit, Kleinman was the "sole member" while Wright served as his "business partner." From the point they launched the business until Kleinman's death in 2013, the coder retained ownership of all Bitcoins mined under the company's banner. 
But shortly after Kleinman's death, Wright told Kleinman's father that both men were two of three individuals responsible for Bitcoin's creation. Wright then delivered documents to the Kleinman family showing that Dave Kleinman transferred ownership of the business to Wright in the case of possible death. Brother Ira Kleinman called foul play, accusing Wright of fraud by backdating documents and forging the deceased's signature using a computer font. 
To keep the accusations from going public, Wright promised Ira Kleinman that his brother's estate would be paid what Dave owned during those two years under the W&K Info Defense Research LLC banner. That never happened, forcing Ira Kleinman to file a lawsuit against Wright this month. According to the lawsuit, the Bitcoin amount will be determined by the court. 
Based on evidence provided in the lawsuit, there is a clear difference between Kleinman's signature and the ones seen on the alleged forged documents. According to one of two lawyers responsible for the lawsuit, "the proverbial ball is in Craig’s court at this point." 
"It doesn’t matter whether either of them were involved in the Satoshi team or are Satoshi themselves,” the lawyer added. “All that matters is what is clear from Craig’s admissions and evidence and emails: That they were involved in Bitcoin mining from the inception of Bitcoin or very shortly thereafter." 
The lawsuit is in the Florida court given it's the home state of W&K Info Defense Research LLC. 

Read more
50 Cent made thousands, not millions, from Bitcoin — and doesn’t have any of it
50 cent bitcoin millionaire 50centinstagram01

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson has made it clear to courts, and now the world, that counter to previous stories suggesting that he had been a bitcoin millionaire for quite some time and just didn't know it, that wasn't exactly true. Instead of sitting on 700 Bitcoins, he in fact has none. He did have some once, but it wasn't much, and even then he was paid by an intermediary firm which conducted the original transactions for Bitcoin during the sale of his 2014 album, Animal Ambition.

Citing at the time that he wanted to "stay with the times," according to IBTimes, when 50 Cent released said album four years ago he allowed fans to pay for it with the flagship cryptocurrency. At the time Bitcoin was worth around $660 each. While it was thought that Bitcoin represented a reasonable portion of the rapper's earnings from the album (around half a million dollars), we now know that that wasn't the case.

Read more