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.