My experience with Bitcoin gambling.

It all started the day before my college midterm week. I had a friend show me a site he was on called "Bustabit" where you could gamble an amount of bits (Unit of Bitcoin) in hopes to pull out at a random multiplier that was based off a random number generator. Being a student of STEM, I realized there were no such things as random numbers to a computer, and I thought I make a profit with my knowledge of probability and statistics. When I first saw the website, the screen displayed something close to what it was when I took this screenshot, and I thought "so if I had $100 in right now and pulled out I would have over $4000", yep.

I was amazed and immediately started playing, hoping to make my fortune. At the time BTC was about $1000, so 1000 bits was about a dollar. My first few games I went small, 10-50 bits pulling out at a small multiplier <2, making very little profit. After about ten games I thought I understood how the game worked. So I bet about half of what I had in my account (10,000 bits)... It crashed at 1.1 and I was already in deep in the red. The next 20-50 games I spent slowly gaining back what I had lost and finally made it to net positive. As soon as I became net positive, I got courageous again and decided to do some big bets (5000 bits and more). Within ten games I was completely out of money and then started studying for my midterm that I had the next day, which I should have been doing instead. The next day after my midterm I decided I would try the game again, and threw in another $20 trying to win my money back. I followed the same method I had the previous day and ended up with the same results, losing it all. I then stopped playing and started studying again for a different midterm I had the following day. This procedure repeated for the next few days, with a net loss of about $80 and 90% of my studying time spent playing bustabit and 10% actually studying. After midterm week was finished I then had a week for spring break, which I vowed to get my money back, implementing a strategic approach to the game, rather than the in-the-moment unpredictable bets I had been placing. I spent a few days developing a method to gain very little profit at a very low risk. The method implemented the lowest possible bet for a certain multiplier that would result in a net positive profit once the multiplier would hit. This made it possible to go for very long streaks of this multiplier not hitting, while still being profitable (or breaking even). I entered values in an excel spreadsheet which I would then enter into bustabit, chasing the specified multiplier.

After I developed the method I chose to chase the x10 multiplier, which had a longest streak of not hitting this multiplier being 125 games, which happened 2 years ago. The method I created could go to 115 games while remaining under 1 BTC spent. I would start betting 10-20 games after the last x10 multiplier was hit, so it was within this 125 game streak. I put in $50 and started the betting with 1 bit, to see if the method was profitable, and on average when the x10 multiplier would hit.

My profit graph started to look like this, where my overall profit started to become positive. After a few hundred games of very, very small profit, I started to use this method with a higher base bet (10 bits, 100 bits, ...) in an attempt to make profit quicker. At times I would use a similar method to this for x5 multiplier, x20, x100, or x1000 based on how long it had been since they previously hit, because statistically they were due to hit. Within the first day of implementing this method, I had won back what I had lost, plus about $50. The next day returned to this method, with a little variation such as chasing x2's (Which I do not recommend to do) and gained another $200 by the end of the day. The next two days I followed the similar procedure but became more risky in chasing quick profit multipliers (1.1, 1.33, 2) and ended up the week about $800 net positive. At this point I stopped playing for a while because it became stressful making these high risk high reward bets. I've lost about $150 since then, but only from chasing these quick profit multipliers with large bets. I don't plan to return to the game because it became stressful. It is possible to be profitable for a long time using the method I developed, but these are very low profits which I simply no longer have the time to chase. All together I ended up with an extra ~$650 in a week or so's time, spending about 8 hours a day on the game. I ended up putting this into ETH at around $42, so I'm pretty happy with my current result of how things are playing out. I don't plan to play on bustabit anymore, but if you are ever thinking about getting into it, I suggest you have a method prior to getting involved. If you're interested in my method, try it out. My advice though, stick to it. Try not to go for high risk, high reward bets. Have faith in statistics, it will hit, eventually. You just have to stay strong and use an approach that is based on the fundamentals of probability and statistics. You may lose everything though, you never know, because when it comes down to it, it is still gambling. There is a probability of everything, use that knowledge with caution. I wish you all the best of luck on your future endeavors and hope you make your fortune.