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even knowing about these things in advance, the risk that the site loses your funds is so great that it's not very attractive to bet on these things.

The site publishes the bitcoin txids + addresses so it is trivial to verify whether they are paying out the winnings.

I think the issue is that like any other outfit that holds bitcoin they may just "lose" them and vanish.

Until they don't. Other betting sites have 'lost' everyone's coins.