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.
Avoiding 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.
Regarding 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.”
