Game Wagering with Bitcoin and USD | Hacker News Reader

Game Wagering with Bitcoin and USD

koalah.co

42 pointsicanberk35 comments

They want me to sign in with FB or Google, tying my BTC activity with my real identity. This is assuming they actually do support BTC, I couldn't find anything about BTC support on their website.

Further they require a 90 day waiting period, while they verify there was no fraud, before you can receive any money. They expect to garner enough trust to hold your money for 3 months, but they don't even have an 'About Us' or 'Contact Us' page anywhere.

Further the site seems to be generally incomplete, and would make me think it is therefore insecure. Clicking 'Terms and Agreements' in the footer takes you to a page the header of which contains a 'Logout' link, despite not being logged in.

Hey, our intention is not to reveal your BTC activity with your real identiy. The BTC is simply used to deposit and withdraw money as an alternative to the man, aka PayPal. We're huge supporters of BTC and the Ethereum project and tying in BTC was our way of opening it up to a community that does not look fondly upon fiat currency. The 90 day waiting period is only for accounts that are flagged by our security protocol. Rarely will we hold money for the full 90 days. Thank you for sharing this bug with us, we will be working through this and adding in a standard login process in the next two days. If you have any questions, please email me at sagar@koalah.co

Do you guys realize Bitcoin transactions are not reversible? Why not update your "security protocol" and take advantage of this new technology? Btw Ethereum is a scam. Why would you support that instead of say sidechains or Counterparty, and take advantage of the already existing code, infrastructure, adoption, and network effect in general?

Thanks for your concerns. We will actively check out all cryptos! It would be ideal to leverage the technology that has been built through bitcoin and something we will look towards.

Glad to hear that. Some additional info then: Counterparty published an Ethereum version built on top of Counterparty. Ethereum responded by building Counterparty on top of Ethereum. The obvious difference is that Counterparty uses Bitcoin's blockchain and security, while Ethereum has nothing. To makes things worse they use PoS which we know can't be made both secure and decentralized at the same time. That's why all PoS coins are centralized through checkpoints or whack-a-mole style security patching.

Can you clarify what you mean by scam? (note: I did not purchase any ether at the presale, and I do not own any of any cryptocurrency. I have no financial stake in any cryptocurrency succeeding. I am interested by the ideas in Ethereum though.)

Are you saying that it is a scam because you consider anything which has a presale to be a scam? (Or because of part of how the presale was set up, and what guarantees were or were not made at the time? Or because of the magnitude of the presale?) Or do you not believe that they will create what the have stated that they intend to create?(and believe that they have intentionally deceived others in this regard.) Or do you believe that what they create will be insufficiently secure due to network effects, and that that alone makes it a scam?

Or do you mean because of the proof of stake thing, and the nothing at stake problem? (In that case, note that they said that they are starting with proof of work, and I believe they also said that whether they actually do switch to proof of stake depends on what the users decide? I found vitalik's post about "weak subjectivity" to be fairly convincing. There seems to be a good faith belief that it does not contribute significantly to centralization, and as such, even if it is wrong, I don't think I would consider it to be a scam.)

Or some other reason which I have not considered or listed, of course.

Why would they only allow facebook and g+ accounts to sign up? Maybe I am missing a link somewhere that allows normal sign up process...

Personally I very rarely link services. I especially wouldn't feel comfortable linking a gambling service to a social media service.

We have used facebook and g+ accounts to sign up to drive a social gaming environment! I understand your concerns and we will be adding a normal sign up process in these next two days. We are considered games of skill opposed to gambling. Players are wagering on their own skill. To give a comparison: take the NYC Marathon. A runner will pay money to run and if he wins he receives prize money. He is placing a bet on himself.

For folks who don't want to have their identity associated with their gaming, I've created a Game of Thrones inspired bitcoin game:

https://houseofchance.net

The bitcointalk thread is here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=890248.0

Would love to get feedback from the community here, especially those interested in bitcoin or Game of Thrones

*edit: To create an account, you need to provide an email address, but you can make up a fake email address if you don't want to leak your identify.

This is just a satoshi dice clone with a game of thrones theme right? Or am I missing something?

Thanks for the question. Actually it's not a dice game. It's a slot game with a variable house edge that combines both luck and knowledge of Game of Thrones. Satoshi dice has a house edge of 1.9% in favor of the house. House of Chance has a variable house edge of up to 1% in the player's favor depending on how much they know about the books and TV show.

Here's an explanation of how knowledge factors into the odds:

https://houseofchance.net/faq#a4

I say don't give too much thought to people complaining about the non-anonymous login, these are not the users you should be marketing to and they are not the users Bitcoin needs right now. Bitcoin is anonymous/pseudonymous but it doesn't mean every service built on it has to be.

PS: I believe Paypal and Coinbase both forbid gambling websites in their ToS. I suggest you have the code ready to switch to accepting BTC by yourself because you will most likely get your accounts disabled.

I've seen Bitcoin go from its beginnings through the thick and the thin. And they say that when there is blood in the water is when it's the best to get involved if you believe in it! We 100% do. We are operating our platform under skilled gaming which is legal in 37 states and the same protocol that other skilled gaming companies follow. This is allowed by Paypal and Coinbase. If you have any other questions, email me at sagar@koalah.co and thanks for the support!

Curious why you chose this image for your background:

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb3/universomasseffectrol/e...

https://koalah.s3.amazonaws.com/static/img/desktop-landing-b...

Conceptually interesting, but I agree with other commenters that tying a public login to an anonymous currency via an unvetted 3rd party that holds it for 3 months sounds more like a bad joke than any kind of real service.

Huge signup friction, virtually no payoff.

Is this even within paypal's terms? I've seen them swing the hammer for less.

Hey Rick, Thanks for checking us out, and we added in the public login to drive a social gaming environment. We will rarely hold money for as long as three months, it is in case we have an account be of concern based on our security protocol. We will be publishing this security protocol in a white paper as well as adding in standard login. Skilled gaming is also allowed by PayPal and Coinbase, while gambling is not. Feel free to email me at sagar@koalah.co if you have any questions.

This link suggests paypal only allows skill games for approved merchants:

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/helphub/article...

We went through the Paypal Approval process and were approved.

Your UX might need a little work if a user can't figure out how to play freaking snake

That snake game is our own little flare! You can't simply click in the direction but need to use the quadrant system. We will update our instructions to make that clearer.

I found the snake game pretty much unplayable with the mouse/touchpad. I'd strongly recommend adding keyboard support.

Thanks for checking us out. We will be updating our site in near future to include more games including keyboard supported games.

Well I got locked in flappy bird and then I got this message "Your account has been flagged as having experienced a security breach. " I made like +30 points... Please take a look if is all right. Maybe I won too much? (1.8$)

Shoot me an email at ari@koalah.co. I'll check it out

The FAQ tells me to visit the 'games' page to see the list of games. So where is this page? I can't see any links on the site. Have I really got to sign in before I can see anything useful about what is on offer?

We will be adding more games soon. There are only three games currently on the platform: Snake, Asteroids, Flappy Koalah. We required sign-in to encourage a more social experience. We shall be updating soon to allow people to check out the site without signing in.

Dammit, I accidentally flagged this, and then it seemed to drop off the front page.

Is that how this works? It seems to be unflagged now, but still off the front page.

Can you explain how to actually win? I've done more than 40 points in snake an lost. I How much points do I need to win?

You are matched against the next available player. Keep giving it a go. You might need 5 points to win or 100 points. It depends.

That is where the chance comes in! You play the person who plays concurrently before or after. Sometimes it only takes 2 points, sometime it takes 85 points. All depends on the luck of the draw. Good luck playing!

But is saying "waiting" and no money are in. Now I can't play because I have no usable money to play, they are all pending... Also some of "waiting" just disappeared WTF! You should keep all the history to check. I think this happened because you only show the last 5 in history...

Also now is boring... I don't even know if I lost or won..

We are working on getting more players. Sorry about this.

Is this legal?

No. I'm pretty sure that it against the law to accept bets online.

Yes, this is legal. We fall under games of skill opposed to games of chance. More info on why this is legal: blog.koalah.co/post/86647837513/what-is-the-cash-based-skilled-gaming-industry

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