Magicdice is Gone
And the final trick up their filthy sleeves was the classic disappearing act.
Rational people expect to lose their money when gambling but not like how Magicdice took it. They operated a Steem based gambling game and pulled an exit scam yesterday. Many people including myself played there and had tokens. We expected these tokens to pay dividends far into the future and liked the fact that the game and the site worked flawlessly. Luckily for me, I was up a few hundred Steem but had invested time and effort into collecting tokens; the tokens are all gone and so is a little of my dignity. At least I stopped playing as often and warned everyone they sucked weeks ago!
No one likes getting ripped off. I thought Magicdice was enormously profitable and it was one of the best sites out there except for the low payout. Most days upwards and over 100k Steem was gambled, Magic kept 60% of the 2% house edge and distributed the rest to token holders. Even on a bad day, Magicdice likely profited hundreds of Steem-all with minimal effort and customer service. Pretty sweet if you ask me, so why did they shut down their website, transfer everything to Binance and close their Discord?
It's all so strange. On their Discord a week or so ago, they stopped by to mention work on new games. They had paid hundreds of thousands of Steem in dividends and were very profitable. There are rumours that they paid accounts to fake volume and there were many bots active mining all day long who were owned by real people here. We can only speculate about the motive behind this, was it the developer's intention all along? If I controlled the site and wanted to scam everyone I would have waited much longer. It doesn't make sense.
Did Someone Rip Them Off?
I don't think this is the case. Why would a thief delete a discord channel and shut down the website? Why wouldn't someone come forward and apologize? Time will tell but I doubt we are getting an apology or a refund.
Did They Get Shut Down?
A more likely scenario is that the owner had to make a quick getaway and couldn't wait any longer to rip us off. Maybe the taxman was onto them, maybe the law, or maybe they owed money to someone and had to quickly pay up. I maintain my opinion that these gaming sites are for the most part illegal as none of them makes any effort whatsoever to determine if their clientele can legally gamble. They operate beyond borders and it is definitely illegal to access their site in some countries, these 'gaming sites' ignore this fact.
Beware
It's not the first time an exit scam has been pulled and it certainly isn't the last. Gaming tokens are not an investment. They are not worth even a 10th of their expected cost to acquire through mining. Magicdice has proven a well-known fact, that you can lose 100% of your 'investment.'
I'm Over It
Four weeks ago I said I was over Magicdice https://steemit.com/game/@crypticat/magicdice-i-m-over-it for anyone who read my blog and stopped playing at that point you're welcome! I accept tips in both Steem, SBD and/or in the form of an upvote. If you are looking for new gaming sites, check out this post for an Expected Return and Payout from Gambling with Steem
Thank You For Reading!
This is so sad. I was in the midst of playing dice when I heard the bad news. I really want to roll with them again. If zombee is watching, please come back so we can enjoy more great dice. Also honor your tokens, etc.
I'll invite you to our new fair betting discord. You'll hear more about it soon 😁
Posted using Partiko Android
We got to be very careful when trusting strangers on the internet. Luckily with delegations you can just remove them. I hope you didn't invest your lifesavings into magicdice.
Lol, made me laugh but I shouldn't. I know some people lost big-time. Investing more than 10% of networth into cryptos is a bold move for one's asset allocation, let alone magic dice.
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If some of the rumours are true, they were probably not that profitable to begin with. The volume and the dividends they paid out was due to them paying a handful of people money outside of STEEM to lose STEEM on MD. - It still looks like they ran away with 500K+ STEEM though, so who knows.
Also, I don't know the entire story about Dmania, but I know that @zombee was the man behind that too, and they pulled off some shady stuff. They upvoted their own content and things like that, meanwhile they had a hefty delegation for free. - Once a thief, always a thief.
What bothers me the most is the fact that some, very powerful users, both witnesses and other users used the site to such an extent that it looked real, legit and trustworthy from an outsider's perspective.
We all know that the powerful people on STEEM has the most influence, the biggest chance to earn and things like that, so I just wish that they would've put an end to things when they realized it was zombee behind the scenes.
As they continued to gamble and earn, the newcomers and other "lesser accounts", lost and most of them have probably not been able to turn a profit from the daily dividends as of yet. Truth is, that it would probably have taken most of them a very long time before that day would come... And MagicDice ran away with the future chance of profits.
The real losers here, are the lesser accounts, just like always... And it obviously doesn't look good outside of STEEM to see stuff like this happen.
I think people were onto the account and that's why the exit was pulled when it happened. I hope @binance or @binanceexchange would look into the transfer made to @deepcrypto8 with memo 102223188 they could be aiding and abiding a crime which is frowned upon for a company operating in the EU.
As far as I know they didn't actually issue the tokens so those are gone.
I was always surprised at all the high end supports a random online casino owned by shadowy figures was getting from the community. Obviously, they aren't involved but it shows the desparate state of this blockchain when we welcome such people with wide open arms.
The discussion these days is focused on self voting, delegating and using bid bots. Meanwhile casinos are making a killing and we have no clue who is operating most of them.
Posted using Partiko Android
I would guess some of them are being operated by the same people sort of who were ripping people off in ICO and phishing scams a year ago. Others are being operated by people who think they are above the law or ignorant of the law. I hope some of them are operated transparent people with good intentions. These tokens are not an investment; consider this financial advice.
I guess the only silver lining at least we had it for this long and at least it was contract based so we can all get our delegations back.
That's one great thing about Steem. Delegating is underrated. Banks will hate it one day.
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Yup I was Tricked lol
You weren't tricked you were robbed. There's a difference here. The person/people behind magicdice belong behind bars.
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I never played Magic Dice and I'm glad I didn't. Thanks for warning of us this scam. Sucks you got ripped off a little @crypticat.
That's the way she goes Hippie. Sometimes she goes sometimes she doesn't go. Such is gambling.
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Actually it is still hard for me to believe that game is a scam. Disspointed in them
My mother used to say I'm not angry with you, just disappointed. It was worse.
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They have made the community to lode the trust in gambling site
This is why you need smart contracts, look up makerdao as an example. I warned people for weeks in their discord
The tokens were never really worth much anyways. You needed over a million to make even 1 Steem a day, which means you had to lose hundreds or thousands of Steem on average for the privilege. I'm not sure how smart contracts would have saved anything here. They didn't really steal much money, they just stopped operating and took away their bankroll.
Posted using Partiko Android
"I'm not sure how smart contracts would have saved anything here."
As I said, perhaps you should look into makerdao and how it operates.
But to get you started on your journey; Smart contracts are programs operating on immutable blockchains... So yes, when properly coded, exit scam like this couldn't happen. Oh, since we're talking of gambling, check Augur as well.
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Never touched it, as it always seemed a little dodgy, so gland I didn't and that your loses were not too big @crypticat.