Topic: [StrikeSapphire: REP FRIENDLY] Casino operators, let's talk. - page 2. (Read 3989 times)

I think a lot of people are jaded by the three things when it comes to using bitcoin as a deposit withdrawal method:

1) Inconvenience - For years they were able to just pull out a credit card and bet

2) Bitcoin Volatility - To go from $30 back to $1 and stabilize a bit at $3 is an issue

3) Past Virtual Currency Issues - E-Gold and GoldPay  both failed miserably and were used frequently by US players. Also they were tied to dollars and bitcoin isnt.

I have faith , but there are a lot of challenges to overcome

Bill

I think the problem is literally that it's too inconvenient for them. There's no such thing as a typical gambler, but one thing they all want is to play immediately. It's an impulse. So they might come to the site and say, alright, how do I get these Bitcoins to play with? And then they get to the MtGox site and it looks like it was designed in someone's basement, and they're supposed to wire money, download a program, and it turns out to be this complicated tangle of things that takes days; and at the same time they're hearing all this FUD about Bitcoin on the news.

So the idea with Bitcoins for Christmas is, basically, to give people a reason to set up a trading account. Someone they know sent them $50 and all they have to do is follow a few steps to get it. Now they have the client, they have a trading account, and maybe even a few Bitcoins left over; and they know how to fund their account when they want to play, and they see it's not very difficult.

We've toyed with other ideas, like tying bonuses to opening a Tradehill account...but this seems like a better way. We just want to entice regular average Joe gamblers to download a client and set up a trading account. After that, it comes down to the quality of our product, that we hope will keep them coming back.

@ssaCEO

I think you are on the right track trying to to target the people who are currently gambling on other sites rather than just the bitcoin crowd. How is the feedback on the gambling forums, blogs etc? I'm surprised I haven't seem more press hits on how bitcoin and gambling are a perfect fit. There's been so many about Silk Road for example. Is the problem just that it's too inconvenient for the average gambler to buy bitcoins?
The bitcoins for Christmas is a nice idea, but doesn't help someone buy bitcoins. Maybe something like a Strike Sapphire branded Casascius coin that people could buy from with their credit card might persuade some people. Would it be possible to do something like make the bitcoins from the Strike Sapphire-Casascius coin available in their Strike sapphire account immediately upon payment but withdrawals would not be possible until they receive the physical coin - maybe a stupid idea with some flaw I'm not thinking about.

Anyway good luck and keep up the good work.

JRO, you make some very good points. There's undoubtedly a connection with the price of BTC, and undoubtedly the majority of our players have been miners and speculators. Having said that, we've been USD-denominated since day one; players in our system don't hold BTC risk until they withdraw. We're trying to target a non-Bitcoin audience. We have had a few people I know of actually download a Bitcoin client and buy Bitcoin specifically to play our games -- not very many, but some. Mostly the kinds of players who shop from casino to casino looking for high RTP slots. That's really the market we'd like to reach. Ultimately, once a player is up and running with a Bitcoin client and a trading account, it's not harder to use than any other e-wallet. Players get a Moneybookers account and go shopping for casinos that take MB. By comparison, Bitcoin sites can offer better odds, because there's less overhead; that's something players should be aware of. I don't expect savvy gamblers to get into Bitcoin just because it's cool.

Our position in Europe is difficult because it's gotten harder to fund or defund a trading account from the EU, and at the same time there are tons of casinos taking Moneybookers, Paypal, Visa/MC, who are our direct competition. But this should be an easy sell for the US-facing sites, because all payment options besides Western Union and bank wire are off the table in the States and there are millions of hungry poker players and sports bettors there. These players are willing go the extra mile ...people will do anything that gets their money to places like Bodog, BetPhoenix, et al. Billions of dollars a year are wired to banks in the Caymans, or Western Unioned to Costa Rica. The scale of bets wired from the US dwarfs the Bitcoin economy.

We hope we can position Bitcoin as a standard casino deposit method, whatever currency the end accounts are denominated in; and that the conversion of US players will have a knock-on effect to player adoption worldwide.

I have a theory.

I propose that there's a strong correlation between price and the volume of players. As the price declined from July on, Gambling site volume increased.

Imagine that you are a miner or speculator facing increasing losses on sunk costs for your mining rig(s) or investment, and you are desperate to maintain a dollar value, one of the only effective 'strategies' available (other than day trading) is to try your hand at various bitcoin denominated gambling sites.

With price falling back in line with reality (~$2.80 - $3.80), the losses have been realized fully and many of the weak hands have exited both the speculative and mining bubble. Network difficulty has decreased. 30-40% of miners and speculators that entered the market in the past ~6 months have disappeared.

These speculative bitcoin users were your main user base. They were equally as desperate as a welfare mother at the penny slots on the 27th of the month.

Virtually none of your users purchased bitcoin with USD/EUR/GPY for the purpose of gambling.

Now we're seeing consolidation and cold, unfeeling free market forces at work.

Problems with bitcoin denominated gambling sites have little to nothing to do with reputation. The biggest problem is that the snake has eaten its own tail, the users you had have taken their loss and moved on.

Normal people see the price decrease and volatility of bitcoin as a huge problem.

Are there any solutions? I think so.

First off, stop thinking in terms of bitcoin. You're not going to attract people to play bitcoin games just because bitcoin is so cool.

Convert bitcoins to USD in user accounts, and watch your volume increase. Make your sites USD/EUR/GPY/YEN friendly, guys. A user sends their bitcoins, and you sell them at MtGox/TH for the fiat value, less some % for exchange. Alternatively, use Bitcoinica to hedge against loss when giving USD/EUR/GPY/YEN value to users at a locked rate.

99.9% of the world thinks in terms of hard fiat currencies. Find a middle ground, make bitcoin a convenient funding method, and watch your games and services take off. If price stability ever happens, those users will start to treat bitcoin more and more as a convenient digital currency, useful for the purchase of products and services directly.

Bitcoin isn't going to stand on its own until a number of years have passed.

Anyways, good luck to all of you.

-Jonathan

I'm glad to hear the support from other sites. We'll be in touch soon.


I'm glad you like the site. But are you saying Bitcoin's only purpose is breaking US law? Believe me, I realize full well that we're sitting on a killer app, and if we wanted to turn the tap on the US market we'd be converting new users to Bitcoin day and night, and stealing clients from Bodog 24/7. But Silk Road is a bunch of jackasses waiting to get busted. Calvin Ayer lives in a fucking fortress he's not allowed to leave. We're a real business that pays corporate taxes and plays by the rules. We travel in and out of the US. That's not an attitude problem, it's a straight business decision. We sacrifice the American market because it's not worth ending up on the wanted list. I think the US law is a bad law, it's wrong, and I have no beef with people who are finding ways around it. I hope things like Bitcoin help it become so unenforceable that it has to be overturned. I don't live there though, and it ain't my responsibility to save Americans from their screwed up government. The two things I personally care about are building the best site possible, and keeping us independent from the majors. I turned down three attractive buyout offers in the last six months from casinos in CR, IoM and Malta, just to keep us free to do what we're doing, because I think our platform and games will catch on and be worth more than six figures if we play it right. My business partners and our lawyers don't think opening an underground betting shop in America is a worthwhile tradeoff for all that hard work, and I agree with them. Either way, they have the majority vote. Our decision is not to screw with the USDOJ.

So my statement against American law, if I have one, is that I refuse to engage it. My site's based in Costa Rica, I live offshore, and we don't take US players. It's a pretty slow, shitty game experience on an .onion router, and that's not our objective. You don't see us on any hidden wikis. There's no point. We want to run the best gaming site possible, do it legally so we don't have to look over our shoulder, and be better than the majors at what we do, while remaining totally independent. We're trying very hard to walk that line using the tools available. Bitcoin is a great tool for keeping ourselves out of the reach of corporate payment processors. Whether you think we're an asset to the community or not, it's not our mission to help your cause to free America. We're busy enough trying to get people interested in Bitcoin all over the place. Once that works out, you're free to open an .onion casino yourself and ride on the wave of new players.

Sure, they could have onion addresses as a fallback, but the average Joe does not use Tor. You don't need government involvement to earn a reputation for fair gambling. As a user, I think a gaming association would help a LOT. Someone has to tell newbs where is safe... Who better than those with a long-term stake in the industry's reputation?

tl;dr

I like gambling, your website and feeling but not your attitude. You wanna play by the rules and make a business ? i think you should better leave bitcoin alone and keep with the "traditional" payment processors. Want to make a statement against laws approved in detriment of all of us, better get an .onion address and start doing real business on par with silk road. Just my opinion

I absolutely agree.  We all share a common benefit in having casual gamblers or the everyday Joe look into using bitcoins to gamble. 

I think it would be a wise idea to setup a friendly association like you mentioned where we can all chip in on advertising or awareness to the everyday person.  Right now the main and only driver of the value in bitcoin is silk road.  Gambling could be just as big of a driver if not much more.  It would be nice to also get support from the rest of the community on this as well. 

So yes, we would support such an organization financially and would be willing to take a leadership role in its formation if enough of you out there support it.

We've had our busiest week since the SuperBowl (yeah, we've been around that long). Might be recent ads we've put up, but I certainly don't see a slowdown.

I think trust is a major factor - people think all of these sites are scams. Unfortunately that has been the case so they don't want to be burned again. Trust is earned over a long period of time and we're lucky to have a great group of long-time regular players. But I can imagine it is very hard for newer sites to get traction.

I'm open to any ideas as far as gaming association, anything to bring a bit more legitimacy sounds good, feel free to include me.

Look. No one's reading these threads.

On a basic level, we all got into this because in some way, we weren't able to run standard casinos with Visa & Mastercard. We all know what that costs is well outside the reach of a small startup team.

You all know there's been a decline in traffic the last few weeks, that's been accelerating over the past few days. No one's spending Bitcoin. You also know, if you're in this business, that Bitcoin is the only thing making it possible for you to run your business at all. It's literally the only free space left to play in, where no bank or payment processor can tell you what to do; where you don't need to give up equity in your company to bootstrap it; and (for most of you) where you don't have to care what governments pass which laws.

We're with you on two out of those three, and we can see an argument for the last one.

Rather than jumping ship one by one, let's figure out how to turn Bitcoin into a payment standard on par with Paypal or Visa. There's obviously a market -- more in the US, but I think it'll increase everywhere. This is why we launched BitcoinsForChristmas.com. We won't be the only beneficiaries of that site; it's aim is to help get the whole economy pumping again. Look, there are two things going on here:

1) Your regular Bitcoin user isn't a gambler. He likes new stuff. He liked your site when it was new. But poker players and gamblers don't wade through this much garbage to deposit at Bodog, so why bother with us? We need these coins in the hands of average players -- not average Bitcoin users.

2) Bitcoin itself is resting on a knife's edge between a group of believers who understand its potential, and a mass of idiots who follow the last thing TechCrunch wrote. We need to broaden our base, simplify, and start dealing with this like professional gaming outfits rather than rag-tag, fly by night, might shut down tomorrow websites.

Andrew Bitcoiner had brought up the possibility of a Bitcoin gaming association; I'd like to see that become a reality. I also think we need to pull together separately from the rest of the Bitcoin world to say -- look, this is a viable payment method. Use this instead of Paypal and you get more for your money. We don't pay vig to the processors, and we pass that savings on to you. No one who gambles online should be gambling with anything other than Bitcoin.

I've spent enough time hanging out on Seals and BTCOnTilt to know, this is a uniform suffering that's going on right now. We need to pull together before we fall separately. Sapphire can't condone taking US bets, but we can work with you to drive the traffic you want, if you can help us build the currency up as a whole so there are more players for everybody. This is an open call. Work with us; let's just suspend competition for the moment and deal with the common problem.

Anyone who has ideas is welcome to contact me day or night. Here, or through [email protected]. I want to hear what you think.