Would you use a Non-Custodial BTC sportsbook?

[ClimbSomeRocks]

One of my biggest annoyances with sportsbooks is the uncertainty of if I will get to withdraw my money in a reasonable amount of time.

If this problem was solved with a non-custodial book, that worked similar to shapeshift.io, would you use it?

What I envision is that you place a wager with BTC and submit your wallet's receiving address. If you win, the sportsbook immediately sends a transaction for your initial wager + your winnings. You effectively would get an on demand sportsbook that would settle immediately with no custodial risk of loss of funds.

How would BTC fee's affect your decision? Would you be willing to pay the transaction fee for both placing the wager and receiving the wager? I think I would, just out of convenience.

[DroopyDog]

That already existed it was called directbet and it was glorious, They closed, with no real explanation why, rumors are that they made so much money with the BTC price rise, they had other passions and decided to get out, this is all hearsay tho

No one has taken up their model since, that I have seen

[littlekona]

That already existed it was called directbet and it was glorious, They closed, with no real explanation why, rumors are that they made so much money with the BTC price rise, they had other passions and decided to get out, this is all hearsay tho

No one has taken up their model since, that I have seen

The odds at direct bet where below par BUT I do miss them. They had every market possible even let you parlay horses WPS. Miners fee's though made there model unsustainable esp when congestion occurs

[lotuspod]

The odds at direct bet where below par BUT I do miss them. They had every market possible even let you parlay horses WPS. Miners fee's though made there model unsustainable esp when congestion occurs

This. It's just not practical to do it on the base btc chain. It pretty much requires its own dedicated chain or else you're at the mercy of whatever base layer chain you go with, and their broad development goals rarely line up with what would work best for betting specifically.

[chilidog]

How will you handle risk management with such a book? You would go broke.

[Optional]

How will you handle risk management with such a book? You would go broke.

Peer to Peer take the betting risks direct. Site would live off fees.

[ClimbSomeRocks]

How will you handle risk management with such a book? You would go broke.

Why do you say that? With 10% juice, house has an EV of 5% assuming accurate lines. If the action was balanced, you'd be set.

[raiders72001]

DirectBet used "back" odds from Betfair taking out a lot more. If the bets being made were substantial, they could easily eat the miner's fee to have a reasonable payout time. A problem occurs with small bets. No way to make that up with tiny bets.

[lotuspod]

In your opinions, what would be an acceptable fee for direct p2p exchange?

[raiders72001]

In your opinions, what would be an acceptable fee for direct p2p exchange?

I think it would be best to go by percentages for the fee although I'm going to use American lines in this example since so many books here use American lines.

If you take a look at the theoretical hold using American odds of -110/-110, the hold is 4.55%. If the lines are -105/-105, then it's 2.38%. 2% or less would be great for a no fee p2p exchange.

[raiders72001]

One problem that you run in to when a book isn't holding a balance is the possibility of a double spend. Books normally want one confirmation before betting. If a bet is made on an exchange, where bets are accepted with 0 confirmations, double spends become a nightmare.

This is easy to do on short term bets such as live betting.

[Optional]

In your opinions, what would be an acceptable fee for direct p2p exchange?

3% max with 2% achievable for regular players and 1% for high turnover accounts.

[chilidog]

Peer to Peer take the betting risks direct. Site would live off fees.

You won't be able to get enough volume to go P2P

[chilidog]

Why do you say that? With 10% juice, house has an EV of 5% assuming accurate lines. If the action was balanced, you'd be set.

Because since it's non-custodial, you can't assess your players. You have to be able to handle risk management. You must be able to rank your players. If you can't, you will go broke.

[lotuspod]

You won't be able to get enough volume to go P2P

That's a really good point, but if it is on its own dedicated network then there are various ways that base liquidity can be made available.

[TwitchySeal]

One problem that you run in to when a book isn't holding a balance is the possibility of a double spend. Books normally want one confirmation before betting. If a bet is made on an exchange, where bets are accepted with 0 confirmations, double spends become a nightmare.

This is easy to do on short term bets such as live betting.

This was a big problem for DirectBet shortly before they closed. Someone figured out a pretty reliable way to get action using a transaction that would take several hours to confirm. If the bet lost they would double spend the funds with a high fee to another address.

Instead of DirectBet just requiring one confirmation (like I told them to do probably 50 times), they just started not paying out the winning bets that they suspected were being sent from the same person that was double spending the losers. The problem is, when your players are anonymous, you can't just not pay one anon because you are almost positive they are also another anon person that scammed you. You have to make it so you can't get scammed. The whole thing reminds me a lot of the current Fairlay situation (I actually thought Degen1 might be the same guy that robbed DirectBet at first) : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1481406.0

[lotuspod]

Sure with ~10 minute blocks and PoW, this is one of the reasons why I'm saying a dedicated network is the way to go. You're not at the mercy of other things, everything is optimized for betting specifically.

[raiders72001]

There still has to be human involvement to grade the bets.

[thespeculator]

directbet was amazing. They had all of betfairs in play markets . My biggest payout from them was about 1500 canadian . Soon as Betfair graded funds were on the way. This was when bitcoin was 300-400.

[Optional]

There still has to be human involvement to grade the bets.

Grading by user consensus?

[littlekona]

If new one came and used BCH instead of BTC it would be feasible with bitcoin cash fees and speed of trans confirmation so much better.....Directbet was cool they would let you parlay anything horses too and offered crazy markets like over .5 goals in soccer and live lines on tons of markets but odds where horrible on everything...Very interesting postings on the double spend scammer...I always wondered why they did not sell the site just posted message we will be closing and wonder still if they have ties to Fairlay as Direct bet ended right about when Fairlay got going

[raiders72001]

Grading by user consensus?

Interesting concept although still vulnerable to the 51% attack and makes grading slower. I think we are a decade away from taking almost all of human element away from exchanges.

[Optional]

Interesting concept although still vulnerable to the 51% attack and makes grading slower. I think we are a decade away from taking almost all of human element away from exchanges.

A management by users system does not have to be a simplistic 50% rules thing.

Have you ever heard Elon Musk talk about his idea for kind of a blockchain style system for making govt decisions, by the people, on Mars?

Grading games via a foolfproof user vote system would be one of the easier things to implement I think.

[raiders72001]

A management by users system does not have to be a simplistic 50% rules thing.

Have you ever heard Elon Musk talk about his idea for kind of a blockchain style system for making govt decisions, by the people, on Mars?

Grading games via a foolfproof user vote system would be one of the easier things to implement I think.

I do like Elon Musk. He says cryptos will replace paper money.

[Optional]

I do like Elon Musk. He says cryptos will replace paper money.

I can't see how this wont happen at some point.

Too attractive to govts being able to trace cash to not get there I think. Apart from the rest of the obvious benefits.

[TennisAceE]

Its Bitcoin only for me, what's the point of converting when there are BTC --> BTC books?

[lotuspod]

Its Bitcoin only for me, what's the point of converting when there are BTC --> BTC books?

For much the same reason BTC itself is looking at off-chain scaling like Lightning. You can't, and shouldn't, try to do everything on the base layer of btc. It can hardly keep up with just a relatively small amount of transactions as it is.

Regarding grading, it would be extremely hard (and just plain shooting yourself in the foot if it did happen) to even attempt a 51% attack if those same nodes have a lot of collateral tied up...far more than any single event - a sizable % of the entire supply. Another reason to go with PoS or really anything besides PoW.

[TwitchySeal]

If new one came and used BCH instead of BTC it would be feasible with bitcoin cash fees and speed of trans confirmation so much better

I agree. BTH or ETH are both way better option than BTC. I try to deal with BTC as little as possible these days because of fees and transaction times. It just doesn't make sense to use BTC unless it's the only option or you are not planning on making any transactions for a while.

wonder still if they have ties to Fairlay as Direct bet ended right about when Fairlay got going

This has crossed my mind several times.

[lotuspod]

I agree. BTH or ETH are both way better option than BTC. I try to deal with BTC as little as possible these days because of fees and transaction times. It just doesn't make sense to use BTC unless it's the only option or you are not planning on making any transactions for a while.

This has crossed my mind several times.

I can see how someone would think so at first, hell there's been around 200 ICO's totaling close to a billion in total investment, but it still has a whole host of other issues. Those networks have to be designed in a way that's as open as possible, to best enable a wide range of applications to run on them. But this exposes a much wider attack surface, especially for such high-value uses as gambling. The sheer size of the online gambling industry more than warrants its own dedicated networks IMO.

Here's one of the most recent examples from a gambling project trying to leverage the low fees of EOS - https://cryptoslate.com/eosio-exploi...00-eos-freeze/

There are plenty more of good examples, some even better, this is just one from this weekend.

And lastly, a dedicated network would have minimal fees by default. Most likely only a fraction of a cent.

[TwitchySeal]

I can see how someone would think so at first, hell there's been around 200 ICO's totaling close to a billion in total investment, but it still has a whole host of other issues. Those networks have to be designed in a way that's as open as possible, to best enable a wide range of applications to run on them. But this exposes a much wider attack surface, especially for such high-value uses as gambling. The sheer size of the online gambling industry more than warrants its own dedicated networks IMO.

Here's one of the most recent examples from a gambling project trying to leverage the low fees of EOS - https://cryptoslate.com/eosio-exploi...00-eos-freeze/

There are plenty more of good examples, some even better, this is just one from this weekend.

And lastly, a dedicated network would have minimal fees by default. Most likely only a fraction of a cent.

That is not an example of any fault in the EOS network. Whoever developed that smart contract is entirely to blame for deciding to use on-chain hashes (only 1 block away) as their sole source of entropy. The same thing could theoretically happen on any block chain, including bitcoin.

I wasn't suggesting an ICO though. Just another version of Direct Bet that accepted ETH and BCH (which wasn't actually non-custodial - they just sent a transaction as soon as the bet was settled). And that if you ever have an option to use either instead of BTC, you should. (BCH for cheap, ETH for fast)

[lotuspod]

That is not an example of any fault in the EOS network. Whoever developed that smart contract is entirely to blame for deciding to use on-chain hashes (only 1 block away) as their sole source of entropy. The same thing could theoretically happen on any block chain, including bitcoin.

I wasn't suggesting an ICO though. Just another version of Direct Bet that accepted ETH and BCH (which wasn't actually non-custodial - they just sent a transaction as soon as the bet was settled). And that if you ever have an option to use either instead of BTC, you should. (BCH for cheap, ETH for fast)

You're right it wasn't any direct fault of EOS, though I said it wasn't the best example...just the most recent major one. And you're also right that it could have happened on any base layer, which highlights another potential downside of trying to do it that way.

But it still doesn't answer the core issue of a base layer placing artificial constraints, (much) wider attack surfaces, and potential future problems that would simply be out of the hands of the betting network...leaving it helpless and voiceless. ETH congestion causing havoc with on-chain bets and all kinds of other things back in late 2017 was probably a better example.

Probably most importantly though, it's extremely difficult to get enough initial liquidity to get an exchange off of the ground...especially this early for crypto in general. Even more so when you're trying to use another coin as a base layer, since there's the vast majority of the coins that will never touch a network like this. While with a dedicated network there are ways you can efficiently ensure adequate and sustainable liquidity right from day 1 and onwards, at direct benefit to the network as a whole even. It's a true win/win in those regards.