Peer-to-peer sports betting inside the Bitcoin blockchain

Re:Peer-to-peer sports betting inside the Bitcoin blockchain by bainsfather on Tuesday June 24, 2014 @03:51AM (#7936609)

I use the betfair 'betting exchange' API +crude algos to place bets on the final results of soccer leagues. My main risk, I think, is betfair going bust with all my capital locked into season-long bets (I make many small bets on unrelated markets).

They charge 5% commission on net profits for a given event (would be reduced to 3% if I had very large volume). They are floated on the stock market, have a decent market cap and I think my funds are likely safe with them. That 5% is a lot, and really reduces my profit, BUT at least I am fairly sure my capital is safe. (Unlike e.g. intrade [0] who I really wanted to use (big arbs on US presidential election vs betfair) but did not trust (rightly so, as it turned out)).

The other positive thing is the market depth - many punters use betfair. This is self-reinforcing - people don't use eg betdaq because people don't use betdaq, even though their commission is currently 3%.

Another thing: I am happy having my capital tied up in bets because inflation and interest rates are low. That is not true of bitcoin. For bets on a given match, made and settled the same day, this might not be a big issue, but for longer-term bets ...

I'm interested to see how xbet does, good luck to them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrade

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Re:Peer-to-peer sports betting inside the Bitcoin blockchain by hucker on Tuesday June 24, 2014 @07:44AM (#7937155)

Oh, I didn't know betfair had an API, that's interesting. Do you know if there exists an open source implementation for any languages, or do you roll your own?

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Re:Peer-to-peer sports betting inside the Bitcoin blockchain by bainsfather on Tuesday June 24, 2014 @08:06AM (#7937232)

Maybe https://github.com/betfair/API-NG-sample-code is a good place to start?

Also: https://developer.betfair.com/ http://forum.bdp.betfair.com/

I was careful about using someone else's code for handling my money! So I used basic example code that I understood (I no longer remember where I got it, sorry), then extended it.

From various forums etc, there seems to be a big pool of people doing this sort of thing. Also, from the betting market dynamics, you can see there are other algo traders - watching the in-play betting on soccer matches is quite amazing - the bettors work with such small margins and big volumes, 'predicting' the game in real-time. Most impressive.

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Re:Peer-to-peer sports betting inside the Bitcoin blockchain by hucker on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @03:14AM (#7942645)

Thank you very much. This looks like an interesting market to experiment with :)

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Re:Peer-to-peer sports betting inside the Bitcoin blockchain by blazespin on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @10:48AM (#7944230)

Intrade paid everyone back in full.

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