Topic: Multi-accounts, the industry-standard and KYC. - page 3. (Read 667 times)

Nice post and interesting topic

I have done countless KYC with FIAT bookies and of course never had any problems with being accused of multi-accounting (I was harassed with other issues, but that is not the topic here). So indeed the industry standard does work and even protects yourself against the bookmaker - but both only to a certain extent.

Looking from a (FIAT) bookmakers perspective, KYC isn't the holy grail though. The reason to do multi-accounting is mostly for new customers bonuses or some other kind of free money. And because there is quite a lot of free money to get, and people would do a lot to get this money, even bookmakers with strict KYC have to take additional steps to keep multi-accounting at bay.
If you take a look at the T&C`s for some first deposit bonus, you will see a lot of restrictions. Certain countries with a history of multi-accounting are excluded, deposits with Skrill/Neteller are excluded, the rollover requirements have been upped. Bookmakers had to put these additional conditions in place, because even with KYC, some users used very sophisticated methods to still register multiple accounts and cost them a lot of money. And even with all this, there is still abuse happening.

Now for crypto bookies, I am not sure, if this would work for them. Technically it would work of course, but economically I am not sure. As you mentioned it's their USP and you would have to figure out, why people are playing at crypto books/casinos in first place. Privacy reasons ? The odds ? Not being able to use FIAT to deposit/withdraw ?
By adopting KYC, they would probably lose a lot, if not all, of customers that value the privacy aspect of things. You might also lose a good amount of people that can't use FIAT - playing at crypto books/casinos without KYC is really easy and convenient. Registering takes a minute, depositing is easy and fast, withdrawals are fast-ish. By implementing KYC, you are building a hurdle, that a lot of these people might not be willing to jump over. Recreational players just want to gamble a bit, without too much paperwork and hassle.

For me personally, I am fine with doing KYC at more or less all FIAT bookies, but very hesitant to do with crypto bookies. Crypto bookies always have some shadiness surrounding them imo. You never know who are the people behind it, they have some weird licenses (if any) and are more likely to vanish on a daily basis or scam you. I just don't trust them that much like I do with FIAT bookies, especially with the well established ones. When I speak of trust, I am referring to A) my money being safe and B) them not selling my data.

So in the end, I think the crypto bookmakers just have to live with multi-accounting and we as betting/gambling people have to be cautious playing there, since you are always in danger of being accused of multi-accounting for the reasons you mentioned. The gambling community just has no lobby and we are always sitting at the short-end of things. Just adapt.

Prelude:
So a few days ago, user @amelik2 created an accusation thread against FJ (Fortune Jack). Claiming that FJ had basically scammed out around 5 BTC from him with a fake case of multi-accounting. Due to some gap in communications, a potential case was being developed. Basically all FJ initially did was replied with a Screenshot of their TOS and bunch of IP addresses which was pretty vague on how they detected multi-accounts.



The initial impression I got by reading their thread was that only IP logs were being used to establish the case for multi-accounting. If you have the slightest bit of knowledge regarding networking or how ISPs work in general you will know that there are a very limited number of IPs out there. Basically we can't have a unique IP address for each and every one of us... Most of the time an IP address is being shared among thousands if not tens of thousands of users and it isn't an optimal way to establish that people are multi-accounting. You can read more about the subject here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion

What I initially thought was that this could be exploited by any casino which has similar TOS, Imagine this. You are the casino, you establish a case for multi-accounts by merely using IP logs, according to your TOS. Let's say you are running low on the bankroll and some user X wins a large sum of Bitcoins and you can't pay that user out. What you can potentially do is bail yourself out by making a fake case against user X by merely showing countless other accounts which have been made by the same IP address, you could even make fake entries in your database to make an even stronger case for yourself. if you had been running for a few years you won't even have to worry about your reputation as one-off cases usually are dismissed by the community. Looks like a lucrative business doesn't it? You keep making money with the house edge and if someone hits a homerun your TOS has got you covered...

However, this wasn't the case with FJ. User @amelik2 was originally betting from his alt account @PatDugan. He got banned on his @PatDugan account, ^{( you can read about why in the original FJ thread )}. He then proceeded to revive his inactive account, which had been inactive for 8 months the same day he got banned and was matched with the same IP address and same betting behaviour. He went on to win around 5 BTC but was then later denied the payout as the evidence was pretty compelling. Something which I agree with but this thread isn't about the @amelik2's case or FJ but rather the industry standard of how cases for multi-accounting are made and how you are already gambling your money away before you even place a bet on some random Crypto casino online.

Multi-accounts and the industry-standard:
Most online casinos dealing with FIAT require you to perform a KYC before you can deposit or place a bet on their platform. This process should weed out potential cases of fraud later down the line. It is industry standard for a reason because it works. The question is should Crypto Casinos/Bookmakers adopt the same standards for detecting multi-accounts and preventing fraud? TBH I'm not entirely sure. The very purpose of these casinos/bookmakers is to facilitate the crypto community. If they are going to implement a KYC before deposit then there isn't a unique selling point for them. Having said that there is no way to prevent abusers from abusing their promos if they don't use something like KYC... The UIDs ^{( they are like IMEIs but for PCs )} can be manipulated ^{( something I suggested in the FJ thread but requires some knowledge to do it )}, IPs, as discussed above, aren't the best way to link multiple accounts. KYC does seem to do the trick for both the user and the service provider as it kinda ensures nobody is getting screwed end of the day.

I'm interested in hearing the opinion of you guys. Should these casinos adopt a KYC first policy, the industry-standard? If not then there is nothing stopping them to screw users over and vice versa. Without KYC both are parties are at risk of getting screwed over by each other. The users could find ways to create multiple accounts and casinos can bail themselves out by creating fake cases. So having a KYC first policy does seem to work.