Bitcoin gambling site Primedice will shift its focus to Russia and China following its decision to block US and Australia-based customers.
The company, which announced Thursday it had stopped serving US and Australia-based customers due to regulatory uncertainty in both countries, is now seeking to grow its second and third largest client bases.
A spokesperson for Primedice said that the company was not expecting to come across legal issues in neither Russia nor China.
When asked about the implications of the restrictions, the spokesperson continued:
“We’ve had to give up nearly 50% of our client base but with such an uncertain legal landscape surrounding bitcoin gambling [in the US] we feel this is better off in the long run.”
They added: “Australia only accounted for a little under 5% of our client base so blocking it was an easy decision in terms of mitigating unnecessary risk.”
Primedice is not the first online gambling service to block US-based users.
In October last year, SatoshiBet announced it would restrict US customers from accessing its gambling platform, also citing the uncertain future of online gambling regulation in the US and legal problems that could result from servicing American customers.
Transactional volume
According to Primedice’s spokesperson, the company has surpassed 5 billion individual bets since its inception in May 2013.
The site’s activity accounts for a significant portion of daily bitcoin transactions too. Analyst Tim Swanson recently found that Primedice’s activity from 1st January to 18th April roughly equalled BitPay‘s daily transactional volume in 2014.
According to an infographic released by BitPay, it processed a total $158.8m last year, resulting in a daily average of $435,068.
Disclaimer: CoinDesk founder Shakil Khan is an investor in BitPay.
Gambling Roulette image via Shutterstock.