Topic: Bustabit :: Own one of the most popular bitcoin casinos (Read 4184 times)

I don't have any experience with that sort of thing, but I imagine one the biggest difference is their costs are astronomically higher. Everything about running a physical casino seems expensive.


It's really a 1 person job, the most time-consuming part of the whole thing is just stopping the chat degenerating too far, and helping the newbies out. Every 2 to 3 months, there tends to be a sever/datacenter hiccup that needs emergency looking into it. And other than that, there's just some part-time improvements we do.

It's very interesting. Very much out of my league but attractive none the less. I mean, I've heard old school Atlantic City Casino insiders quoted as saying "Casinos are a tough game and it's easy to get killed financially, there's no sure thing, even for the house" but those are criminals basically so they're prolly dealing with a whole other set of logistics.

How many people do you need to run your bustabit show?

I can't buy your casino, I'm only curious, I understand if you don't feel like answering. Good luck anyways

Bustabit is pretty unique in its low margin, but it's a big reason for why it's so popular. A lot of players have commented that at times it can even be hard to lose money. The market leader (PrimeDice) for instance typically does 3 or 4 times our volume, and has an EV about 3 times ours for the same amount of volume. Some of the other big sites use an investor model where investors take much of the risk (and reward) which allows the site to offer large wagers, without any risk to itself. However this generally means you're holding a huge liability (all the other peoples money) and only take a small cut of the profits (typical is 10 to 20%). (I actually implemented this model on my other site, MoneyPot, but have come to think it was a bad idea).



All our figures are totally open (see thebitcoinstrip for instance), but many gambling places don't have such open figures which makes it hard to compare. I do however believe we're probably the second most wagered at bitcoin casino, but a drop in the bucket compared to some of the fiat beasts.



We control our risk by limiting the max amount you can win per game (after which point, you automatically get cashed out and can enter the next round) and maximum bet per game (we only allow 1 BTC/round, to force whales to play where a house edge starts forming).  

Man, I never realized how tight the margin is on these sort of casinos! You'd think they would rack in way more. Is there industry standards to compare? Or do they all obfuscate their numbers?
I believe you're being forthright here with the numbers, op I just have no frame of reference. Does bustabit measure up to other online casinos percentage wise? Btc casinos and fiat both?

Seems like one lucky high roller could sink yr ship. How do you hedge?

Best of luck on the sale of this popular site! Selfishly, we are happy to have you developing full time on MP though and I won't deny it

Good fortune to the buyer, you are getting your money's worth.

-Bjorn

Quick note to bustabit players: Absolutely no ownership changes will happen ever without considerable notice. Bustabit also typically makes the sum of players balances by operating legitimately in a two week period. And by being provably fair any cheating is detectable and would destroy the site; so the chance of someone interested in buying the site to scam is virtually nil.


As many of you know, bustabit is one of the most popular bitcoin casinos. In total we've had over 137k bitcoin wagered, and over the last 3 months an average of 501 btc wager a day, with reasonably significant growth (e.g. the last month had 668 BTC wagered a day).

We're typically one of the top casinos: https://thebitcoinstrip.com/leaderboard.html
and you can see our historical stats: https://thebitcoinstrip.com/bustabit-stats.html
and the latest snapshot: https://www.bustabit.com/stats

Our historical house edge has averaged 0.35% of the amount wagered, so as you can see it's running quite profitably. (I spend around $250/month on hosting, and about 0.5 BTC/month on promotions and giveways).


While I am by no means in a rush to sell, I'd be very open to the opportunity of freeing up some of my time for MoneyPot (my other venture, which has taken priority as of late). And due the non-atomic bet nature of bustabit it is not a good candidate for MoneyPot integration, and has been run 100% independently.


Some things to know:
  * The source code is available (bustabit-*) under the terms of the AGPLv3, which means anyone can make a clone provided they keep all modifications under the same license. However we retain total copyright, which gives us the ability to relicense the code if wanted (just not retroactively for old versions people downloaded under the AGPL)

 * We regularly turn down whales who want to bet more than 1 BTC, so this is a huge opportunity to grow

 * The site itself runs fine a bankroll of ~300 BTC, although that puts it at a >1x kelly risk

 * The site is written completely in node.js and postgres


 I'm looking for something that would be a silky smooth transition, and for that I'd prefer to conclude any business in person with a technical person where I can walk over all aspects of the site and transition everything (e.g. generate a new provably fair chain, that I don't have access to)


< closing due to lack of interest >