BetCoin Turns to New Technologies to Power Bitcoin Gaming

There are some kinds of gaming that aren't commonly done at home, though some refer to such games as “gambling” instead. Initiatives designed to bring gambling to the home have often been viewed with skepticism, concern and even outright indignation; for some however, this is a dream come true. One of Skype's earliest investors—a Hong Kong-based technology investment holding firm known as Massive Luck Investments—is finding some of that massive luck in Bitcoin, specifically, in finding ways to apply Bitcoin into gaming.

Recently, reports suggest the firm turned to Amazon Web Services as a way to cut the costs of its BetCoin platform, which is said to include such services as BetCoin Circle, BetCoin Dice and BetCoin Prize. By bringing in Amazon Web Services (News - Alert), the company could reportedly drop the costs involved in managing the servers required to run BetCoin, and drop said costs did: reportedly, the costs fell fully 75 percent by making the switch, which is an impressive feat regardless of where it's being applied.

Indeed, the use of Amazon Web Services hasn't been lost on other such firms; Bitcoin casinos all over are reportedly starting to look into cloud services, and other such emerging technologies, to offer a whole new way to lower costs, expand opportunity, and in general make such businesses more profitable than the ordinary. With Bitcoin steadily on the rise in value (it started out at around 30 cents in 2011 and rose to around $600 today) and in usefulness, as companies from Dish Network to Zynga (News - Alert), to even Overstock.com, accept it in normal operations. Bitcoin is becoming a more viable alternative as an investment tool and on some levels as a kind of alternate currency.

One of the biggest problems faced by such fields is that of security, an issue common to most online concerns but of particular interest to online gaming operations, like BetCoin, due to the close connection to money involved outright. With issues of account security and customer protection topping the list—not to mention outright hacker attacks and threats from competitors in the field—protecting systems is becoming extremely important, and itself has raised new opportunities for those who can protect such high-value targets.

BetCoin, meanwhile, has turned to Imperva to address issues of security that crop up. Imperva has a particular capability, according to reports, in protecting against distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks that take place at the network level. A properly-executed DDoS attack can leave a website down for hours, even days or longer, and for a company like BetCoin, uptime lost is money lost. So having protection against this particular breed of attack represents a major step for BetCoin.

Online gaming has been big for quite some time now, and online gambling is a concept that's gaining ground as well. It's not surprising to see technologies like Amazon Web Services and DDoS defensive countermeasures and the like come into play; as more players get in place to take on the various worlds of online gaming from Tamriel to Azeroth to the casino floor, being ready to not only accommodate those players but keep out those who would spoil the game is a more vital prospect than ever.

Just as those who would ruin others' fun or seek to profit illicitly advance and refine methods of attack, so too must those who host such games be prepared to stop such attacks. Online gaming of all stripes will only keep growing, so being prepared for the worst is the smartest play of all.