Betting over $200 in 2 seconds: My Crazy Bitcoin Casino Adventure
One click of the mouse.
One roll of the digital dice.
Over $200 bet (technically .05 Bitcoin).
Did I win or lose?!?! Why I was I betting so much in the first place?
First let's back up a step...
I've recently been hearing about how lucrative investing in Bitcoin casinos can be. Several Crypto "experts" on Youtube mentioned casino investing as one of the smartest ways to invest your Bitcoin, and I've read several articles as well. I've had some Bitcoin just sitting there, gathering digital dust in my wallet...and I thought, why not put it to good use?
In case you haven't heard, "investing" in a casino is not the same as gambling. Essentially you are loaning the house your Bitcoin to use as house "float", since they always need to have plenty of extra on hand so players don't have to worry about not being able to "cash out" so to speak. (I realize there's lots of antiquated gambling phrases here that don't completely apply anymore!). In return, the casino gives you a % return proportionally equal to the amount you loan them, or should I say, equal to the % of your investment is of the entire float. Hope that makes sense!
Anyway, the article I've read so far is a 1 year case study of an investment in multiple casinos. The investment gets broken down month by month. It describes how the Bitcoin was invested and each month's return for each respective casino.
Get this - there was only ONE month that produced negative returns, but the catch was that the returns are reported in $ USD... so that month the author STILL made more Bitcoins at the casinos, it was simply the price of Bitcoin overall went down. In other words, every single month for a year was profitable!
After reading that article about 10 times, I was sold. This looks to be a much better investment for my Bitcoin than investing in mining pools like Genesis Mining or even Bitconnect. I know tons of people are hyping Bitconnect, but it seems the payouts are very small unless you have many Bitcoins to invest as capitol, and/or take advantage of their affiliate program - which I wasn't planning on. This could be a whole other article, but let's stay on topic here😅
Not to say there still isn't some risk. Yes, even with the slight house edge, a casino could have a down month. More importantly though, there have been a couple Bitcoin casinos that completely shut down. This hasn't discouraged me though, especially after reading about the returns from that article! This just meant I had to be cautious, and check out the reputation of a site and how long its been around.
Finally, after hours of painstaking research, I decided to invest some of this Bitcoin into 5 different casinos. Certain sites give out slightly higher percentages of payouts to their investors, plus it's smart to diversify your investments anyway.
Now to the story...
I'm not a huge gambler, but every now and then I'll go to the casino with $50 and bet on red or black in Roulette.
My gambling strategy:
I usually do the minimum bet, which is usually $1 or $2. If I win, I place the bet again. If I lose, I double it. So let's say I bet $1, then I lose, then I bet $2, then lose, I'll bet $4, then lose, then $8 and I win...yay! In that case, I still came out ahead (for a whopping $1). The idea is, you can lose 5 or 6 times in a row, and then as long as you win your big bet in the end you'll still be ahead. This allows you to technically lose many more rolls than you win, and still come out ahead. No, you're not going to become mega-rich this way, but it's a consistent way to leave the casino a winner, even if it's just $10 or $20. Small wins add up.
Since I was transferring some Bitcoin into a bunch of casinos anyway, why not play around a little bit before I invest all the money I innocently thought 😁
Many of these casinos feature a dice game, where you can bet whatever amount you'd like.. from fractions of a cent to thousands of dollars.. and essentially have a 50/50 chance at doubling (or losing!) your money. You simply choose if it will be above or below 50 out of 100. (The house edge comes in because it's something like above 50.5 or below 49.5)
Of course, it's not like gambling with USD. Since most of us don't live our lives making daily transactions and every day purchases with Bitcoin (although many experts predict this a few years down the road), we still need to constantly convert BTC into USD or ____ insert your country's currency here.
All it took was for me to accidentally forget to type in one zero, and I rolled the dice on .01 Bitcoin instead of .001. Yes... I know it could've been worse! But still, in 2 seconds I lost close to $50 instead of the roughly $2.50 I intended on betting.
Boom! My ninja roulette training kicked in.
I decided, probably not wisely, to stick to my guns and, little by little (starting with .001), win back what I had lost. I told myself I only needed 10 wins of .001 BTC to get that back. So, using my double or nothing strategy, I started winning... and winning...and winning some more 😎
I got so caught up in the green, that before I knew it, I had regained the original .01 Bitcoin, plus over .02 more. Yep, in a matter of minutes, I was in the green $100.
At this point, the smart thing to do would've been to stop, but of course, I had to push my luck. I told myself, just one more win. Then just one more. Well, you can probably guess what happened next. My luck started to change. I finally hit a cold streak.
I lost .001. Then lost .002. Lost .004. Lost .008. Lost .016... with an incredible run of bad luck, I used my discipline of following the double up rule to be down roughly .05 Bitcoin now, over $200. I knew I only had enough left in this casino account for one more roll... stepped away from the computer, and debated internally whether I should make the roll.
I KNEW I could seriously regret this decision, but I hated walking away knowing I was up so much, and then losing it all and then some. When I go to casinos, I'm very careful to only bring a predetermined amount of cash, and no debit cards, so it's never an issue there. Here, I had LOTS of digital money at my fingertips. The temptation was just too much.
I upped the bet to .05 Bitcoin, and clicked my mouse.... (I know that's not as dramatic as saying "rolled the dice" 😅)... aaaaaand
It was a WIIIIIN!
I literally jumped for joy and screamed!! Then I proceeded to run around my apartment barking like a mad dog for 5 minutes.
Sometimes, the conservative play isn't always the right one. This time, I got very lucky.
Wow man this was a great read. It reminds me of the first time I went to the casino. You just inspired me to blog about that in my next blog. Great post man, I really enjoyed reading it. Im not sure what I would have done if I was in your shoes at the time.
That really means a lot, thanks. Even though I NEVER take it personally when I put in tons of time on a post and few people see it... it still can be disheartening.
Hah yeah after I posted this I realized for some high rollers, $200 on one bet is literally nothing, a drop in the bucket. I was thinking maybe I should've exaggerated and pretended it was $1,000 instead. But then I was like..nahhh.. I'd rather be honest, and for me $200 honestly felt like a HUGE AMOUNT, same as $1,000 would be to others. Especially when I'm used to bringing $50 tops into a casino, and most of my bets are under $10.
Following you now by the way :)
Send them my way... so that they won't gather dust ;)
It should be capital, dude.
Personally, I don't adhere to your loss strategy, as it's too risky for my taste. We do have the same winning one of betting the winnings. What I do is I have a threshold for loss. If I exceed that, then I'm out no questions asked. That way I won't have to be filled with debt. And, it has worked for me so far.
It's a game of chance, so if you have a bad break it's a tough loss. But, I already know how much I stand to lose on a given day. Sure, I'll come back to break even, but at least I could rest easy knowing that I didn't lose beyond what I was willing to. I'm just not a "go big or go home" kind of guy I guess :)
Haha yeah nice catch, capital..duh. Totally knew that. Would you believe I'm a former writing tutor and even was accepted into a Comm. Studies PhD program with a full scholarship?! Ok, I decided not to finish, but still.. :P
Fair enough, my strategy definitely isn't for the faint of heart. And I usually play that way..I have a loss threshold as well (ie, me only bringing a certain amount into a casino - and no debit card haha). I kinda lost track of $ value with all the zeros and ones of Bitcoin and then when I realized how deep I was in, I was just like, ok whatever, let's do this.
By the end, even though it worked for me, I still am not saying I made the "smart" move. I just took a risk and got lucky. Anyway thanks for chiming in! :)
PS Want some dusty Bitcoin? Sure why not, let's have some fun. If you make an account at a casino, I'll throw you 0.00025 Bitcoin, which is worth just over $1 now. Roll the dice and if you win, transfer the original amount back and keep the winnings. If you lose, no worries ;)
Haha yeah, I guess that goes to show that all of us make mistakes. If anything, at least it proves that we're human.
I guess that's an intrinsic gotcha of Bitcoin. With all of the decimals, it's quite hard to manually keep track of gains and losses. Plus, with all of the fluctuation, even if you win quite a few, it might still be a loss in the conversion haha!
Sometimes, winning is all heart and not about being smart. It's a fallacy that no doubt boggles even the greatest minds. Luck is that one variability that science has yet to master.
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@bania thanks man!! much appreciated :-)