Penny

The sports-betting site that arbitraged ad-watching multipliers

Shaan recalls Penny, a sports-betting site that gave everyone 10 free cents but only let you cash out at $10. Users watched ads for variable 'multipliers' to climb, watched tons of ads chasing higher ones, then lost it all on a bad bet back to the house.

“And then when you would stop, uh, sorry, when you would place a bet, it would say, cool, do you want a 2x multiplier? So you put down 10 cents, this could be worth 30 cents if you watch this ad. And then you would watch the ad and the thing would like variably spin and tell you what your multiplier is. And like sometimes you'd get like, you know, just a 1.5x multiplier. So it's like, try again, watch another ad. And these guys were just arbitraging the shit out of this where people would just watch a bunch of ads in order to get their multiplier higher.”