History of Crash Gambling: From MoneyPot, BustaBit to NFTs!

Back when Nyan Cat was famous, and nobody believed in Bitcoin to the point where spending 10 Bitcoins for a pizza was fun, something magical happened. Can you guess what?

We wouldn’t be here if it didn’t happen!

Ding, ding, ding! You are correct, crash gambling happened!

We’re here today to tell you how it went down and how it got to the point where we have already reviewed 50+ crash games and over 25 crash casinos.

We’re going to kick things off with the birth of crash gambling, continue by touching upon the era when crash went ballistic and end by discussing what the crash gambling scene is like today.

The Birth of Crash Gambling

Crash gambling roots take us all the way back to July 2014, when Eric Springer, also known as “espringe”, introduced the game on the Bitcointalk forum.

The game was in development for quite some time before that, and before opening the Bitcointalk thread, the concept was already proven to be working, with several hundred BTCs already passing through its interface.

💡 Springer called the game “MoneyPot” and you’d be surprised how similar it was to the crash games of today.

While it is true that it featured a barebone chart line design it still featured solid betting automation features, provable fairness and an incredible 1% house edge! MoneyPot was also called the “social gambling game”.

MoneyPot truly was Springer’s brainchild, and he even mentioned on several occasions how he keeps the game going with his personal savings. The quote below is him talking about how the 1 BTC max. bet at the time did pose a significant risk to the bankroll he was personally funding.

My total savings is about ~77 BTC, give or take a little — so risking just 1% of that isn’t really an appealing max-win at this stage. To be honest, I’m pretty ok with losing up to 10% in a single game — I just hope that it’s because my site has continued to grow in popularity — I’ll eventually recuperate my loses. But if not, I’ll survive — life is cheap here (Guadalajara) and I also work a part time job.

To make sure everyone could play and that the game grew in popularity, Springer kept working on the game by listening to his loyal players and even sending some “bits” to get them to start playing.

By September 2014, the game was reaching incredible milestones, and Springer could not hide his excitement.

Wow, pretty incredible! We’ve just reach 250,000 plays of the game — which resulted in over 180 BTC been wagered by 1750 users. Can’t tell you all how excited I am, and working my hardest on improving the game. Thanks everyone! Love you guys

To say that it was an instant hit is an understatement. One of the early 2015 priorities was to shift the game onto a completely provable system of game crashes. To do this, MoneyPot implemented a provably fair system based on a seeding event of future BTC blocks.

To ensure that the process was not tampered with, a publicized seeding event took place, where all the details were revealed, and it was proven they cannot control the outcome of the client seed picking.

💡 Modern crash games like Crash by BC Originals still use seeding events as a way to ensure players with complete transparency.

MoneyPot to BustaBit

According to Alex Weldon from Bonus.com, It was during the same year, 2015, that Springer sold his incredible idea, MoneyPot crash game, to another member of Bitcointalk member, Ryan Havar.

Having read the entire Bitcointalk thread, it’s still hard to uncover the reasons behind the sale, but one thing is for sure, keeping a game like this running on his own certainly wasn’t easy for Eric Springer.

After the sale, MoneyPot rebranded to BustaBit and along with it came some new features as well.

New leadership, new features.

The most prominent new feature of BustBit was called the “last-longer bonus”!

As the name suggests, the last-longer bonus was given to the player that lasted in the game the longest! This bonus was funded by taking a 1% cut of every player’s wager and delegating it to the player who was last to cash out.

While this was positively perceived at first, criticism of this move was evident in the Bitcointalk thread since many players perceived this as unnecessary, considering there was already a 1% house edge in place.

During the next few years, BustaBit operated without major disturbances, and the success of this “social gambling game” led to another sale.

This time to Daniel Evans, who runs the BustaBit game to this day. Since the introduction of BustaBit, the player base has only grown bigger and bigger, which placed crash games on the radar of major online casinos and game developers.

The Boom of Crash Gambling

It’s widely accepted that MoneyPot and BustaBit started it all. When we say all, we mean a literal genre of gambling that wasn’t there before.

It grew from a little social gambling game, where for the first time, users online could bet on the same event at once (which made it all the more exciting), to a game that eventually got picked up by some of the world’s largest casinos.

This boom of crash gambling is blurred between the years of 2015 and 2017, but from our personal experience and certain old Google search results, we know that the crash gambling trend really never died off.

We see these two years as an incubation period during which the game spread to numerous websites, including Counter-Strike: GO gambling sites, where players played crashes to win the so-called skins and gear.

There are also several Github repositories from 2016, showing that the game caught the attention of other developers who open-sourced the code for games like Bustabit. Unfortunately, this also led to some shady casinos and unfair crash games.

eSport 🤝 Crash Gambling

Crash Gambling is still very much a part of the Counter-Strike gambling scene today!

It was after 2016 that the term “crash gambling” really stuck. And it’s been with us since then. However, the one thing we left behind was all the shady and unfair crash games.

If there’s a chance to scam somebody on the internet, you better believe there are people who are willing to do it. And the same was true for crash gambling. Even though crash gambling’s roots were based on a provably fair system, not all games that followed were as transparent.

💡 Due to the amount of scams that occurred, players nowadays seek fairness more than ever.

If you want to learn how modern crash games guarantee fairness, check out our article on crash gambling algorithms.

Mass Adoption of Crash Games

It was until 2018 that crash games really went mainstream, and for us, the two biggest indications that crash really made it big was the introduction of both Crash by BC Originals and Chartbet from Stake (Crash by Stake Originals today).

Both of these games had humble beginnings, but both casinos played their cards right by featuring provable fairness and by listening to their players.

With the support of their community, both games grew into the icons of the genre they are today. They achieved this by implementing advanced betting automation features (Crash by BC Originals is famous for its betting scripts) and by keeping the house edge at 1%.

It is our opinion that these two games sparked the mass adoption of crash gambling as we see it today. Crash games were suddenly everywhere, be it crypto or traditional online casinos. They became a casino staple.

In February 2019, the genre was hit with another cult classic, the Aviator crash game by Spribe. This game took the crash gambling concept and enriched it with a clever airplane design and sound effects. Aviator unlocked the doors of possibility when it comes to design. Why would creators limit themselves to just chart lines?

Roobet casino did not fall behind as well. Their Roobet crash game was readily avaliable in 2019 and it’s still popular today!

At this point, all online and crypto casinos were either developing their original crash games or implementing titles from 3rd party developers. The game was on, and it was just getting started!

Crash Gambling Today

To say that crash gambling reached mainstream internet culture is not an exaggeration. From Adin Ross, to Steve Will Do It, and numerous other Twitch streamers and YouTubers turned crash gambling into something even you’re cousin’s heard of or at least seen on some of the social media platforms.

Along with the popularity, the number of crash games grew as well. Casinos like Jackbit now offer over 50 different crash games! And one thing is for sure, you’ll have a hard time finding a crypto casino that doesn’t offer at least one or two crash games.

The creator of the original crash game struggled with funding the gameplay in the original crash game, but that is hardly an issue today.

If you check out our article on the biggest crash wins ever you’ll see that there have been players who walked away from the game with more than $500,000 in their pockets from a single round of crash!

The best thing about all this is that you don’t need to stay at home to participate in the action. Just about any modern crash game we review is fully adapted to mobile devices. And that’s not all, the majority of games nowadays also allow you to automate your gameplay fully.

This led to players developing their own crash gambling strategies, and we’re experts in that field as well. If a crash game doesn’t allow us to automate crash strategies with at least some betting automation controls, we’re not sure we want it at this point.

Without it, we’re not even interested.

Provable fairness and betting automation features must come as standard today!

The last thing we want to touch upon is design. While it is true that we’ve moved on from the classic 2018 chart line design, plenty of games still feature it!

While it does seem a bit dated it’s great when it comes to gaming experience. Even on an older mobile device or a poor internet connection, crash games with lightweight designs provide you with a delay-free gaming experience.

On the other side of the spectrum, we’re happy to see games like Goblin Run by EvoPlay that feature 3D RPG designs with customizable characters or games like Crash by Duelbits, which feature flying memes and juicy rocket explosions.

The Future of Crash Gambling

If we had to place bets on what crash gambling is going to look like in the future we would put our money on two things:

• NFTs
• Metaverse

Yeah, yeah, we know everything is about NFTs and the Metaverse these days, but think about it. We’re already seeing customizable characters in crash games, which could lead to players having the chance to create their unique characters and make playable NFTs out of them.

The future is here!

💡 Aviatrix crash game is the first to introduce in-game NFTs!

Just like NFTs, we can easily see this game genre making its way to the Metaverse. Imagine putting on your VR goggles, taking a seat on a rocket and launching off into space. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Now imagine jumping off before the rocket crashes and taking in that sweet, sweet profit.

Crash gambling is literally made for the Metaverse, we can’t wait to see some developers tap into that gold-mine!

Another thing we definitely still see as relevant when it comes to crash gambling in the future is also responsible gambling. As these games become more and more intriguing, it’s important to remember that gambling is just fun, and it should stay fun forever.

So, remember to gamble responsibly at all times! We hope you liked this history lesson, and we can’t wait to update this article in about 5 years with everything that happened in the meantime.