Chancecoin: a decentralized casino built on top of Bitcoin

http://chancecoin.com

by capricoin • 12 years ago

82 45 12 years ago

chancecoin.com

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

Isn't holding bitcoin already gambling?

nkuttler• 12 years ago

Speculating is more accurate.

jonnybgood• 12 years ago

The government can't shut it down. It's owned by the people.

So noble. A societal ill that's owned by people.

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

You're right. All casinos should be shut down. All games of chance should be illegal. Carrying dice should be punishable with 5 years in jail. A pack of cards is instant life sentence. Betting money on anything for any reason is a death sentence. Betting for fun is a gateway drug, and will be treated as if money were bet.

That is the only way to rid society of the ill of gambling.

adventured• 12 years ago

This has been tried in various ways at various times. It has never worked, will never work, can never work. All that has ever happened is black markets get created, and local cops and politicians get bribed to look the other way, and crime skyrockets.

reitzensteinm• 12 years ago

There's no question that gambling addictions are very destructive.

But that applies also to: alcohol, smoking, drug use, eating, sex, extreme sports, working out, investing in the stock market, climbing mountains, entrepreneurship, there are probably even a few people so addicted to HN it's ruining their lives.

If you seek to eliminate sources of destructive behavior, you're also going to eliminate a ton of genuine life experiences for those who are capable of moderation, maybe even until there's nothing left. Lives are ruined when people die climbing Everest after all.

I'm not interested at all in gambling, but I'm very concerned with where the slippery slope is headed.

MarkMc• 12 years ago

It's not just that gambling is very destructive to some people, it is that the costs are deemed to far outweigh the benefits. This is the approach society takes to banning any activity.

And a ban is only the most extreme form of regulation. For example I would like to see a trial where gamblers must register and would be blocked from betting after losing more than 50% of their salary. Perhaps such a system would best weigh the pleasure of responsible gamblers against the pain of compulsive gamblers?

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

Technically speaking, which is the best kind, all societal ills are owned by the people.

While the government can't shut it down, it can make it onerous for people to get involved in it, which is generally the best way.

baddox• 12 years ago

Gambling is not a societal ill.

ygmelnikova• 12 years ago

"Studies show that though many people participate in gambling as a form of recreation or even as a means to gain an income, gambling, like any behavior which involves variation in brain chemistry, can become a psychologically addictive and harmful behavior in some people" Wikipedia

What next? Giving the homeless bitcoins for their iphones?

arfliw• 12 years ago

Do it for online poker and take over the (poker) world.

downandout• 12 years ago

Not so. I tried something similar to this with poker and it flopped. 4 months of coding down the drain. Turns out, gamblers are generally addicted to action, not profit. They don't really care about whether or not they have an opportunity to run a table and profit.

izx• 12 years ago

poker is more difficult, because everyone has to trust that the game isn't rigged. Until someone figures out a way to do a decentralized poker game, it will be difficult to get people to play your cryptocoin poker game. Even if it is run fairly, how can you tell a fair game from an unfair one? I think it flopped because it seems like a scam and you can't provide assurances otherwise.. with the simple random dice games happening on the blockchain, at least everyone can see the game is fair.. (which is why people play it)

jds375• 12 years ago

It actually looks pretty interesting and potentially fun. Only criticism would be to improve the site design and functionality. It could use a cleaner look and a more fun atmosphere.

sejje• 12 years ago

And the ability to minimize the awful chat in the bottom right that's blocking most of the interesting statistics I'd like to see.

freerobby• 12 years ago

Pretty generous house to provide even wagers:

0.01 CHA 1% 99X -0.01 CHA

jabagawee• 12 years ago

A 1% chance to get a 99x payout still has a negative expected value, no? 99 x 0.01 x original bet = 0.99 x original bet

tromp• 12 years ago

Except that 99X means that if you win, you get a 0.99CHA payout, for a gain of only 0.98CHA, making it worse than even.

throwaway_yy2Di• 12 years ago

These aren't games, they're just random number generators. Things that hold peoples attention give the illusion of more depth than P(payoff).

The Bitcoin protocol already has a blockchain-validated (non-Turing) scripting language. You could probably write genuinely interesting games in it, that are financially self-enforcing, without any new protocol needed.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script

(Digression: are there any technically-interesting protocols built on top of BTC script validation?)

wfn3• 12 years ago

This is BIP-level stuff only, but fwiw BIP 0011 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0011.mediawi...) is kind of interesting.

It would thence (uh, can i use that word this way?) be possible to e.g. implement three-party escrow using 2-of-3 signatures (second bullet point under Motivation, etc.) Two signatures would be enough to conduct a fund transfer from buyer to seller. If either buyer or seller defects (or there's some kind of a problem), there'll be <=1 signature present. The third mediating/escrow party would then choose whether to place their own signature or not (thereby validating or nullifying the transaction, accordingly.)

iirc there's also some BIP-level stuff (or an idea to implement it using bitcoin Script, anyway) to have things like NashX[1] work within bitcoin. Basically a Nash equilibrium based transaction scheme with no human 'escrow' party required - everything is formalized. If either the buyer or the seller fails (i.e.: if any of the two report 'failure'), all funds are burnt (e.g. sent to some provably bogus bitcoin address, whatnot.) Both parties have to chime in so that the risk is distributed accordingly/appropriately. There are nuances and gotchas here to be had, of course.

[1] http://nashx.com/HowItWorks

TaulantRamabaja4• 12 years ago

Our for-contract bitcoin dev team already uses 2 of 3 multisig escrow for all bitcoin payments.

Its better than anything else I've ever used cross border. The weekly price volatility is currently lower than the cut any good professional escrow service would take. Furthermore the transaction goes through in an instant.

Once crypto assets which track USD, Euro, Yen, RMB pop up with turing complete scripting build in... man that's going to be a different world.

djyaz12002• 12 years ago

All crypto currencies area form of gambling. This just allows people to gamble while they gamble.

djyaz12002• 12 years ago

Very clever though.

omilu• 12 years ago

meta-gambling

wwdz99• 12 years ago

The first decentralized casino crypto coin,no cheat,control by yourself,great Innovation.

MatthewWilkes• 12 years ago

Such gamble. Wow.

Atroxide• 12 years ago

I would be very careful about hosting that website as the website itself is illegal. Sure it isn't a gambling website, but in the eye of the law, a website used to download a gambling application would be just as illegal as a gambling website. I hope you took the precautions necessary to ensure that you won't have legal issues incase of Chancecoin becoming popular.

bhaumik• 12 years ago

Blackjack, Roulette, Video Poker, Hi-LO & Sports betting:

http://casinobitco.in/index.php

EGreg2• 12 years ago

Is it legal for US residents to play at sites like http://www.betcoinpoker.com ?

I think the laws that banned online poker were mainly against Casinos, and now that they can be funded in btcoin, what prevents US residents from playing?

TylerE• 12 years ago

No. The laws actually target intermediaries processing the financial deposits.

EGreg2• 12 years ago

So it's completely legal for us to play bitcoin poker?

chuckup• 12 years ago

This is just another scam coin. Not decentralized at all: "Chancecoin uses New York Lottery Quick Draw numbers to resolve bets."

There's no reason you couldn't get randomness from the blockchain itself - the act of finding blocks is itself a random number generator. Using an external source is incredibly centralized, and advertising this as decentralized is scammy.

All the alt-coins - even the most legit sounding ones - have this incredibly scammy side to them. Dishonest claims, premines, etc. Yet people pump their money into them anyway. Apparently this coin raised $265,000. All you need to do to get rich in alt-coin land, is come up with a half baked, poorly implemented idea, and ... duck! because people are going to THROW money at you.

edit: their homepage states "There is no central point of failure." -- Uhm, how about violating the NY Lotto's terms of service? The client is just getting a http (not https) feed from nylottery.ny.gov, I wonder how long until they add a captcha? What happens to the value of your chancecoins then? :)

Chancecoin: a decentralized casino built on top of Bitcoin

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