The digital currency known as Bitcoin has recently found a home in online casinos as a way to circumvent the government’s crackdown on digital gambling. Now, a few of those casinos have released some financial data for 2012 and at least one managed to turn a nice profit over the last year. SatoshiDice, which offers up a game where players choose a number and bet on the chance that a randomly-rolled number is higher than their choice, says that it posted a profit of ฿33,310 — that works out to over $572,400. SatoshiDice also revealed that in its 245 days of operation, players placed some 2.3 million bets totaling ฿1,787,470.43; the company paid out ฿1,752,617.73 plus ฿1,542.85 in fees.
Bitcoin-funded online casino turned a $572,000 profit after six months of operation
BitZino, another online Bitcoin-based casino that offers more traditional games like Blackjack, Roulette, and Craps, didn’t indicate whether or not it turned a profit on its games since launching in June of 2012, but it did say that it paid out a total of ฿28,986 to users — that works out to $498,097. BitZino also said that it only paid ฿0.905 in transaction fees, which works out to a fee percentage of only 0.0031 percent. While there’s no question that these numbers don’t come close to the business a standard casino might do, it seems that Bitcoin has at least provided a way for online gamblers to get back into the game. Whether this strategy will clash with Bitcoin’s attempts to go mainstream remains to be seen.
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