Bitcoin Money

New to Bitcoin? Play SatoshiDICE for free!

SatoshiDICE is a blockchain-based online wagering service that has been so popular that it has affected the service levels for other users of the Bitcoin network.  SatoshiDICE now accounts for half or more of all Bitcoin transactions occuring each day.  That’s quite an accomplishment for a service that is just two months old.

This week Blockchain.info introduced a feature in My Wallet (photo above) that allows SatoshiDICE to be played without installing any software.

If you aren’t already holding bitcoins but would like to play then available for free from The Faucet is a sample amount of bitcoins.  The Faucet, operated by Gavin — the lead developer of the Bitcoin.org open source project, is one source for a few pennies worth of bitcoins.

Here are the steps:

1. First, you’ll need a wallet account on Blockchain.info.  If you don’t have one already, create a new wallet.
   
   You’ll need to use a strong password (10 alphanumeric characters or longer).
   
   You don’t need to provide an e-mail address when it asks, but doing so will help make account recovery possible if you were to lose your password in the future.
   
   A nickname is useful so that you won’t need to bookmark the URL for the wallet to access it from another computer or mobile device.
    
2. Before The Faucet can send you some coin, you’ll need a bitcoin address.
   
   Click on the wallet’s Receive Money tab and then click New Address.
   
   Give a label for the new address like “satoshidice”.
   
   Select and copy the address so that you can paste it later.
    
3. Visit The Faucet (you’ll need a Google account, which the site uses to limit the amount of coins it gives out).
   
   For your bitcoin address, paste the address you copied in the previous stop.
    
4. After a short amount of time, your free sample will appear in your wallet (the balance for the Bitcoin address will increase when that happens).
   
   You’ll need to wait until the funds confirm before they can be used for a wager.  For most transactions this will take, on average, ten minutes.  Because the payment from The Faucet is such a trivial amount, it may take longer — perhaps up to an hour for the transaction to get its first confirmation (which means a Bitcoin miner has included it in a block).
   
   Click on the My Transactions tab to see the status of your payment.   When you are allowed to spend it, the status message will change from a red Unconfirmed Transaction warning to a blue status showing the confirmation count.
    
5. From your wallet, you can then place a wager by clicking the Send Money tab.
   
   On the far left under Games will be the link for you to click titled Satoshi Dice.
    
6. Choose a wager (the higher the odds of winning the lower the payout will be).  Enter the amount you wish to wager.  You can enter multiple wagers, up to the amount of funds in your wallet (less the 0.0005 fee that My Wallet assesses to ensure your transaction is processed in a timely manner).
   
   As an example, the 48.8281% bet means that you’ll have nearly a 50% chance of winning.  Your maximum wager would then be 0.0045 (as that will send 0.0045 wager but will allow for the 0.0005 fee, totaling the 0.005 amount you received from the facet).  If you win this bet, the payout will be 0.0085 BTC (that amount too saw a 0.0005 transaction fee imposed by SatoshiDICE).
    
7. Watch the balance in the top-right corner and when your wallet knows about the results of your wager the balance will change.  Even a losing wager will return something (even if it is just one satoshi (0.00000001 BTC).

The faucet only pays out once per person, so this is likely a one shot deal for most people.

If you won and would like to share your great fortune, there many ways to donate your bitcoins.  If you’ld like to send them to a friend, you can use Coinapult to send your bitcoins to any e-mail address or mobile number (via SMS, in the U.S. and Canada).

If you’ld rather save your bitcoins, feel free — there is no expiration for funds in your wallet.

You can even access the wallet with your mobile using the Blockchain for Android or Blockchain for iPhone (Cydia / jailbroken iOS devices only) apps.

If you didn’t give an alias when signing up then don’t forget to bookmark your wallet’s URL (or save a copy of the identifer) so that you can use the wallet from your mobile or from another computer at a future time.

Also, don’t forget your password — Blockchain doesn’t know it so there is no method to recover it in the future (unless you provide your e-mail address in the account details).

Enjoy … and good luck!

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