BustABit: How to Profit Consistently with Martingale

Recently, I took a personality assessment that suggested I had a relatively high risk-seeking personality profile. That’s probably why outside of blogging, I take an interest in investing and to a lesser degree in the occasional entertainment of gambling. One of the newest trends in online gambling is a multiplayer gambling game called “BustABit” – though there are a variety of similar sites popping up such as CrashBTC (which provides 3 bits to user each hour free) or Bit.Rocket (which includes a free Bitcoin faucet to seed to your account with a very tiny amount of bits).

Disclaimer: Gambling involves risk and may not be legal in some jurisdictions or for some individuals. Please refer to your appropriate laws for legality of using online gambling services like bustabit. Additionally, the strategies to be discussed in this article involve risk, including the risk of complete loss of funds. Individuals should never risk more money than they are prepared to lose and should familiarize themselves with the rules of the game. No one can be held responsible for any loss of funds as no strategy in gambling is fool proof.

What are BustABit and other Bitcoin Crash games?

First, if you’re not familiar with bustabit, let me give you a quick introduction. The objective of the game is very simple. Players make a bet using Bitcoin and then must press a stop button on an ever-increasing multiplier counter. The counter starts at 1 and goes up to 1000x+. If players press the stop button in time, they win whatever their bet is multiplied by the counter; however, if they don’t press stop in time, they lose their entire bet. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a gambling game without a catch. In bustabit, the higher the number, the lower the odds of it reaching it.

For instance, the odds of hitting 2x on the counter is 49.5%, 3x is 33% and so on and so forth up and beyond 1000x where the chance of reaching that count is 0.099%. Players that choose to be more conservative can elect to press stop with lower multipliers, like 1.25x where the chance of hitting is 79.2%, but a bustabit player only earns 25% of their bet as profit each time they’re right and lose 100% when they’re wrong. A string of bad luck could destroy a player’s bankroll quite quickly.

What’s a bankroll? The term bankroll refers to the balance you have available in your account.

Because the counter starts at 1 and progressively counts exponentially higher, there’s a certain allure at the prospect of fast profits. Many players will go all-in hoping to double their money; however, the house has an edge because the likelihood of hitting 2x is less than 50%. Hitting 3x is even less likely, but watching the counter climb and effectively watching your money double and triple is exciting. This is why a strict strategy is so important as it ignores emotions and works strictly on statistics. Thankfully, BustABit includes a built-in system to automate different strategies.

The objective of this guide is to explain one of my favorite strategies and how I use it to profit in the game with relative consistency. Before, we get into the details of the strategy though, let’s go ahead and walk through getting started.

Creating BustABit Accounts.

In order to play BustABit and other similar Bitcoin crash games, you’ll need an account. Note, online gambling is illegal in some jurisdictions and you may see a warning letting you know. Please refer to your local laws regarding gambling before you continue further. After heading over to bustabit.com, click the register button and set up your account. I recommend taking some time to familiarize yourself with the interface and watch a few games to get a feel for how it’s played. All of the sites mentioned in this guide are very similar in their look and feel.

In order to play, you’ll of course need some money to bet. You’ll need to use Bitcoin in order to play as bustabit does not use any other currencies or allows deposits or withdraws using any other payment processing options. BustABit displays your deposited Bitcoins as an account balance in a denomination called ‘bits’. If you don’t already have Bitcoins, you can head on over to Coinbase and setup an account there in order to buy Bitcoin using a bank account, but keep in mind that because online gambling is illegal, Coinbase may freeze accounts and cease funds attributed to Bitcoin wallets owned by gambling sites, including BustABit.

Important! Always transfer to and from BustABit or other Bitcoin gambling games using a privately owned Bitcoin wallet, such as an electrum wallet so that Coinbase does not associate a transaction directly with BustABit or other casino-type sites. Coinbase keeps many known addresses on record associated with Bitcoin casinos. Transferring to or from those addresses will get you flagged. Once you’ve purchased Bitcoin on Coinbase, simply send it over to your privately owned wallet and then transfer it over to BustABit. To withdraw, to the reverse of that. This will avoid Coinbase from directly tieing a deposit or withdraw to a BustABit Bitcoin address.

In order for the strategy I’ll be explaining later to work, you’ll need to fund your account with as much bankroll as you can reasonably afford. You can check out another blog post I put together that has some great ways to generate some absolutely risk-free cash. Note that there are some fees involved every time you make a transfer, so you should minimize your deposits into as few as possible and be sure to note what the fees are so that you can plan your deposits accordingly to the amount of bankroll you want to end up with.

Additionally, once you have transferred your Bitcoin over to bustabit, you will no longer control that balance. Part of risk mitigation with any Bitcoin related activity is to never leave more Bitcoin on an exchange or private website for extended periods of time.

Winning At BustABit Using Martingale & Bankroll Management

There’s another page out there that explains a strategy for bustabit using a flat bet method. It goes into detail about playing conservatively and shooting to stop the payout multiplier at 1.1x because it has a very high likelihood of hitting. In fact, 1.10x has a 90% chance each and every time of being correct; however, I’m opposed to that method for a couple of reasons.

First of all, an 10% return is measly compared to more traditional investments. Sure you have a 90% chance of being correct, but you’re placing 100% of the bet at risk to make 10%. That doesn’t sound very appetizing when the stock market offers similar returns with far less risk. Frankly the second problem is that the returns don’t justify the drawdowns. When you are correct, you’re only getting 10% profit margin, so you have to be right at least 10 times for every single time you’re wrong. Now, that doesn’t seem like it’d be too challenging when you have a 90% chance of being correct, except because you lose 100% of your bet each time you’re wrong, that really eats into your bankroll. For the system to work, you have to bet a ridiculous amount of times and with a small enough portion of your bankroll to ensure you can whether long periods of losing.

Instead of using a flat bet method, I strictly use the martingale strategy with a slight adjustment to it to account for the increased risk of each subsequent bet after being incorrect. If you’re not familiar with the martingale strategy, it essentially relies on the idea that a certain outcome can be expected statistically in any given series of events.

Martingale is Doubling Down

The strategy is fairly popular in roulette, but can be applied to a variety of games the rely on guessing an outcome. Consider you have a 10 sided dice. On any given throw, each of the sides has a 1/10 chance of landing up, which means that if you guess the same number 10 times in a row, statistically you will be correct once every 10 tosses. Unfortunately, statistics are not perfect, so even though the number 5 has the chance as any other number of popping up at least once out of every ten throws, you could throw the dice 100 times and it may never pop up. Of course, statistically speaking that’d be pretty rate for something with a 10% chance of happening to not occur after 100 instances.

At the core, this is all the martingale strategy relies on. The idea is that you progressively increase your bet under the expectation that a certain outcome is going to occur if given enough opportunities to occur. Each time you are wrong, you double your bet to make up for your prior loss plus a small profit.

If you remember correctly, the 2x multiplier in bustabit has a 49.5% chance of occurring. Those are really pretty good odds, but you do see the house has a slight edge. With the martingale strategy, if you bet 5 and were wrong, your next bet would be 10 to make up for the loss and also lock in a profit. If you were wrong again, your next bet would be 20 with the same idea in mind. And if you were wrong again, your next one would be 40. Based upon the idea you have almost a 50% chance of being correct, over a series of 10 bets you really have very high odds of winning. The problem is, the bet gets exponentially larger. So while rare, it is entirely possible you could go as many as 40 or more bets and not hit a 2x multiplier despite it’s 49.5% chance of occurring. This is why an incredibly large bankroll is so important. It’s also why I make a slight adjustment to the martingale strategy.

My Personal BustABit Martingale Strategy

I begin by depositing as much money as I feel comfortable putting in a bankroll that I feel comfortable losing but that I also feel confident will give me as many bets as possible using a very low initial bet. For me, I tend to do 100,000 bits and make my initial bet 2 bits. It doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up pretty quickly based upon the speed of the game and a string of multipliers under my multiplier stopping point can quickly result in an initial bet of 2 bits compounding up to a bet of 32,768 bits. That would be 17 incorrect guesses in a row.

Important! Rumor has it, one time the game hit under 2x 32 times in a row. Now, the odds of that happening were unlikely – very unlikely – but obviously not impossible. Prepare yourself for that. This isn’t a fool proof method – nothing in gambling or investing is.

My main problem with the martingale system is that just doubling down doesn’t really account for the increased risk. I don’t like the idea of putting an ever-increasing amount of money on the line only to win the same small amount of money. Betting 2 bits with a 49.5% chance of hitting correctly isn’t such a big deal, but because each and every game has the same 49.5% chance of rolling a 2x, you could quickly find yourself betting 8000 some bits just to win back a prior loss and a pitiful 2 bit win after a series of losses.

What I like to do is set my payout ratio at the 2.25 multiplier. In this way, every time I win, I’m not only doubling my money but also getting a 25% profit above and beyond that. While the 2.25x multiplier has a lower likelihood of hitting at 44%, that additional 25% is adjusting my returns to account for the increased risk. So now I’m not only doubling my bet, but I’m also increasing my expectation of what I’ll receive when I am correct to account for the fact I’m putting more and more money on the line.

The other thing I like to do is not only double my bet, but actually take my prior bet times 2.1x. I do this for a couple of reasons. Again, I’m marginally offsetting above and beyond my prior bet as a sort of insurance that builds up over time. More importantly, I add this as an adjustment to account for the counter hitting the very rare .99x multiplier which would deduct from my balance.

Lastly, I tend to make my initial bet very small to maximize the number of subsequent bets I can make. If I start with a base bet of 10 bits that could very quickly eat into my account balance and drain my account depending upon my bankroll. I like to personally ensure I can get a good 15 consecutive bets in with my bankroll if I were to be wrong 15 times in a row. And, I realize I may very well be, but I’ve found this system to be profitable for me in a way that offsets the losses I’ve made from having insufficient funds after too many wrong bets. While the multiplier may have hit under 2x 32 times in a row once, that’s a very slim occurrence, so I’m risking what I’m comfortable losing under the guise this strategy will work out long term.

The Power of Automation

As I mentioned earlier, there’s an adrenaline rush watching the counter climb higher and your balance sky rocketing. It can be tempting to hold on just that much longer to see if you can triple, quadruple or more your bet and forget about the constantly decreasing odds of it going higher. Interestingly, BustABit includes an automation tool where you can run a little script. It actually has a martingale script built right in requiring you to only need to adjust the variables.

Here’s the script I use:

var config = {
baseBet: { value: 100, type: 'balance', label: 'base bet' },
payout: { value: 2, type: 'multiplier' },
stop: { value: 1e8, type: 'balance', label: 'stop if bet >' },
loss: {
value: 'increase', type: 'radio', label: 'On Loss',
options: {
base: { type: 'noop', label: 'Return to base bet' },
increase: { value: 2, type: 'multiplier', label: 'Increase bet by' },
}

Important! Keep in mind many people will attempt to sell BustABit prediction scripts. There is literally no one to know what the multiplier will end up on and each individual instance has the same statistical likelihood of any multiplier occurring. In that same vein, BustABit scripts may attempt to determine an upcoming win is likely based upon a streak of losing. This is very different from the martingale strategy. Losing 50 times in a row doesn’t make losing on the 51st time any less likely to occur.

Withdraw Responsibly

Once you’ve accumulated some profit, be sure to withdraw any amounts you aren’t willing to risk. And if you’re needing some ideas on how to spend those earnings, I’ve got a few ideas for you, bro!

Of course, if this was helpful, feel free to consider sending me a tip!

Bitcoin: 3H9jYdZyVs7c5nXMpshRqCLJMzhtgPGyyu

USDCoin: 0x09d62D8FDf078414bD041f214e5403794F617342

DAI: 0x2288A9f8a14972a77fD8be2EF37c36bf1F53b9ce

Ethereum: 0xE7E7fF56788d062D514bC9864280d7b759E44962

Litecoin: MWrNpMk66UyyXfU8Lvy5MynHDEWu7DnwsR

Additional Resources

BustABit – The Original Crash Game

Coinbase – Buy and Sell Bitcoin Using A Bank Account