Bitcoin Forum

Hello fellow bitcoiners,

Here's my new weekend project: the magnificent bitcoin gem (http://www.bitcoingem.com/).
This is intended to be an entertaining bitcoin experiment – I hope you like it.

Your thought, comments and bug reports are appreciated!

LOL

...a chain gem. Pass.

Upgrade your server before you ruin the chain!

Upgraded. Should be safe for some decent traffic now.

Classical pyramid scheme

Will there be any other magnificent gems?

P.S. I am surprised someone has not started a chain letter on bitcointalk. Perhaps it is against ToS.

You don't understand how a pyramid scheme works.

If I were to buy the gem right now, only the previous owner would get coins - not everyone that came before him.

Ok, so this is not a very classical pyramid scheme. But how do I know the OP is not pumping the price himself?

Interesting, watching.
Since it won't collapse,
how hight will it be?

You can see all transactions in the "List of previous owners" section. The only transaction I made was the initial buy for 0.1 btc, which was on Jan 24.

At first I thought, hmm. .wtf this is kind of weird. Last time I checked it was at like 1 or 2 bitcoins. Now its over 25 bitcoins. Pretty interesting actually

The only thing that runs the Bitcoin economy is bitcoin gambling lol...pretty pathetic...

would be slightly more interested if it was run by a well trusted person in the community and they guaranteed that a person holding it unmoved for a certain amount of time would be refunded

You don't get it. There's no way to refund the current owner. The money is used to pay the previous owner (who cashed out and left YOU holding the bag). This is like musical chairs. While people keep buying the music goes on, until it gets so expensive that no one wants it.

Eventually this will get up to a few hundred BTC and the operator will just up and leave, taking the profit for himself and leaving some poor fool holding the bag.

LOL I'm retarded

Did not think that one through  8)

This is a great project. Lots of fun to be had :)

where do the extra BTC come from?

You missed the same thing I did, maybe

Think about it a bit more


What extra btc? Each user pays 10% more then the last 95% goes to the last holder 5% to the site owner

Last person holding gets nothing


First time I saw this thread I thought ok site refunds money to last holding but no that money already went to the previous buyer


It's already up to 50btc whoever is the last brave enough to buy is going to be hurting

lol, here's me: tblob.org bought at 44.45 btc and is about to make 2.225 btc profit
I'm done, too risky for my bankroll after this price point.

The last buyer will have the pleasure to keep the gem all for himself for the rest of is life. :)

Holy crap, I'm about to buy a computer, and the bitcoin gem's most recent buyer spent about as much as my computer will cost???

This will end poorly.

I think it would've been a lot cooler if it was linear growth, then there could have been lots of gem holders over time. This exponential business gives a pyramid structure to this musical chairs game.

-bgc

it could only end when the gem's worth 10 million btc

The site owner should use some of his profits to send the loser an actual gem.

Yeah but you can use any name you like

Haha great idea :D

or lynch him when he lets the last owner hold the bag

This is a great idea. You can view it as a clever pyrimid scheme, or an advertising scheme - Kim Dotcom apparently owns the Gem right now, and I am sure he thinks it worth it at that price to advertise Mega in the link, so he would say not a pyramid at all!!

A possible bug though. I don't think the prices reported in the list of previous owners are correct, and the order looks scrambled. Last night vagoods was about to own the gem, and purchase it for 70 odd Bitcoins. Now it seems he got it for 40.41. Hmm, I smell the reek of melting code...

Seriously, I am awed by your bitcoin-foo, I think this a stunningly simple and great idea, and I only wish I had thought of it, I mean really how cool is this? A 1 page business idea that actually delivers, wow!

Maxmint will earn 100 to 1000 bitcoins out of this stoling the bitcoins once that some stupid trows in the good amount.

Fuck you.

mintymark, I see it exactly the same way: it's advertising for the person willing to pay the highest price. Plus, most of advertisers (except one) will get their money back AND make a profit. Advantage for the last one: his or her link will be on the site forever.

Regarding your bug report: I just couble checked stats and transaction, vagoods bought for 40.41 BTC as stated in the previous owners section.

This sort of thing is why bitcointalk posters are quickly becoming the stereotype of idiocy. Just FYI.

No vagoods is correct, I purchased right after vagoods for 44 BTC, so vagoods can't have purchased for 70 BTC.

Also I agree that it does have some ad value, after owning the gem for a short period of time, the bitcoingem site sent me over 100 new visitors. I imagine if this bitcoingem site becomes a bitcoin novelty site (like every bitcoin newbie will want to see this site for the lulz), then it can potentially send the last gem owner hundreds of visitors per day, which is worth something in ad value. So it's a win-win situation, you either make some profit, or you get potentially tens of thousands of visitors in ad value.

Site's pretty slow.

Just wow..... imagine the day when the operator just walks off with the btc instead of reopening it...eg guy buys it for 10kbtc, operator takes the 10k, end of story

Forever? when the game end, you will continue pay domain and hosting... forever ?  ::)

Just like megaupload lifetime accounts.

Ok, "forever" is not quite the right diction, that would really blow the budget...
Let's say, it will be up for the next 15 years.

The new owner has just sent payment. We're currently waiting for 8 confirmations, 5 already in.
http://blockchain.info/tx/615bc97d4e9ba2039bd412745a6b5419eaada02299997eacc0645d823e8e6083 (12 confirmations ATM)

What gives?

I think the site has glitched out. Too little payment was sent and it's not confirming.

Maybe 230 BTC is too tempting...  :-X

OP is selling the site he got in way over his head!  :o

Source?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139529.0;topicseen

He's good. Real good.

Heh. That's an expensive diss now that the site is frozen.


Freezing ownership without prior notice is a despicable move by the site owner,
scammy, yes, and can or will kill what minimal trust there was in the idea.

(Not only do you need to worry about being the biggest fool in Bitcoin,
but now also about the site owner hanging you out to dry on his whim.)

I fail to understand the motivation...

Freezing/selling is not the best move if the owner is a profit-maximizing scammer.

Why not let the gem fly, and land at some ridiculous price?

Why not make the bitcoingem a red-paperclip of stupidity for the papers to write about?

I don't get it.  :)

Looks like that they closed the website and refunded everything. A 1000$ lost for the owner, he deserves some kind of recognition at least.

What can we do for him?

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

I don't understand why closed... Is a really profitable scheme :S, I miss something?

This is the best thing I've ever seen on bitcointalk.

We are not all scammers and trollers and spammers and drugs addicted. The OP showed that there is some good in us.

No it shows how blindly greedy the folks here are that's the stupidity not that OP could have run for the hills.

I thought you where talking about the fact the the website is now closed, sorry.

That was... Unexpected.

I still don't get it.

:)

That was pretty sudden. Although I didn't expect the price to rise above 100BTC THIS fast.

I'm wondering if maxmint was getting a threat from BFL, because of that one dodgy message

Or maybe it just shows that a market for GLBSE still exists, if anyone actually wants it.

He's a good and honest guy. Rep ++ in my books.  ;)

Maybe. (http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/Taoist_Farmer.html)


 ;)

ejem... http://glados.cc/gold/ yours too?

Edit:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139647.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139649.0

Bitcoin gem, version 1: the aftermath

Some of you might have seen the price of the bitcoin gem skyrocketing to 126 bitcoins (http://bitcoingem.com/v1.php) 2 days ago. This first version of the bitcoin gem had a vicious flaw: there was no exit point. The price just went up and up and I did not want to produce a really big loser at the the end of the chain. That's why I stepped in, refunded the last 2 buyers and took down the website. Some say that was the dumbest move ever since I could have made a really big cut here. But it just did not feel right for me.

Of course, I would have loved to see how far the gem would go, especially since there was so much traffic coming in. Would it reach 500? 1,000? 10,000? Some of you suspected that 126 btc was the end of the line and that people wouldn't want to buy any more. I'd say it was just the other way round. Traffic to the site was about to explode and I guess the price would have exploded too. But I'm really happy that I could stop the gem at this point.

Bitcoin gem, version 2

I then thought about how I could eliminate the problem of runaway prices. Some suggested a upper limit, but I guess a hard limit just would not work because the closer the limit gets, the less people would still buy. So I implemented a random reset of the gem, the odds for a reset are 6.25%. Basically, any purchase can trigger a reset and can put the gems price back to the start. I also raised the profit for buyers (10%) and lowered the house edge (2%). This means you can make a 10% profit with winning odds of 93.75%.

So unless version 1 of the gem (where there was only one biiiiig loser), the new gem on average makes 15 winners and 1 loser. That feels much better for me. In the end, I'd like this to be a fun game.

I just reopened the bitcoin gem at http://www.bitcoingem.com (http://www.bitcoingem.com). Your comments and suggestions are, as always, welcome.

It's a gem, it cannot disappear with a 7% chance every time.
What's the difference between this and satoshidice?

However thank you for what you did.

At the start of each new round (when someone has lost), you should randomize the starting price and the reset chance for that round.

That's an awesome idea!

Good man.


But... That doesn't sound fun. :)


This, this and this.

The gems odds are better than at Satoshi Dice (10% return at 93.75% winning change ) plus you can place your link.
But of course Satohsi Dice operates with 0 confirmations, that's a big plus there.

Good idea. I guess I leave the gem as is for some rounds and see how it does, might implement your idea later.

Awesome!  ;D

Kudos for being decent.

My first thoughts in more detail: To start with the conclusion, V2 doesn't sound very interesting.

Diamonds don't suddenly turn into charcoal for no reason. If they did, they wouldn't be worth a lot.

The bitcoin gem is in it's essence, worthless. Obviously.

But! The bitcoin gem had potential to be a good story. Like Laszlo's pizza. Like The million dollar homepage. Like The Red Paperclip.
Those stories have a sense of uniqueness and permanence about them that no copy-cat can emulate.
"Look at this shit... Back in 2013, someone actually paid [a bajillion dollars] for having their name on this pretty picture."

I guess I just wanted to see it featured in Wired and ArsTechnica as an example of the fascinating stupidity, brilliance and opportunity of Bitcoin.
It could be... I dunno, an epic monument of that stupidity or a warning against greed.

With resets, that uniqueness and permanence is gone. Now, it's just another game.
This is probably for the best, but it's not very exciting compared to the original.

Lastly, a question: Are names, links and addresses retained between resets?

i say do both. two games. one permanent, one that resets. thus people who want to can knowingly take the big risks, and those who just want a game can have that too.

Call it the Bitcoin Crystal, those things shatter all the time.

This would certainly satisfy elux's concern (post above yours). But a warning of sorts on the page would be warranted: The last player to purchase has the potential of not being able to procure a buyer.

As a game, the way it's currently set up is not that bad. But, what if this wasn't a game, and structured as a viable endeavor without any losers? That's what I propose here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139532.0

for my btc, i'd go with the actual chance to win something. but i'm sure there's an audience for the other as well.

And you don't want the viable endeavor affiliated with the gaming one, not saying that it's a bad thing.

hmm. honestly, i don't know. i think i, personally, would be fine with them being associated. but i don't own bitcoingem or anything, so i don't really get a say. :D

Why are confirmations taking so long?

0 transaction fees...

I'm curious...why does a brand new bitcoin sending address generate for every single transaction? Your wallet must be MASSIVE with all kinds of receiving addresses. Are you doing that for security purposes?

a lot fo different sites that accept bitcoin do that for book keeping purposes. use a different address for everything, then you have an obvious receipt of the transaction, without having to figure out which send to the address it was.

That's the normal way to handle payments from different customers. Just set up one address for one customer and you can easily track incoming payments.
Yes, there's quite a lot of addresses on the server, but there seem to be no problems so far.

Version 1 was fun as it was a biggest balls/ego/wallet 'Are you feeling lucky, well are you punk?' type game, very popular I gave up on trying to get a look in between 50 & 100 btc as the next levels went so fast one couldn't catch them before someone else got in (& 6 confirmations was silly & a pain, but it was obvious that it would race over 100 btc in no time for a nice safe punt or two).

But version 2 is a fail I feel, still hyped a bit on the old version I joined & quickly found of course that next to no one is playing this > 3% Russian roulette, then checked the FAQ as to why = BS things like after 24 hrs your bet goes to the house = sucks, so you end up needing to buy the gem from yourself to continue in such a slow interest game (I had Gollum lined up as my next, in the hope of attracting a naive Bilbo Baggins to run with it), thanks goodness that I managed to get in & out with only having to do this re-buy once - lucky maybe it was the weekend, I fear this version is doomed & doubt that it will ever get above 10 btc balance (except for the same person rolling over by having to buy their own top spot within 24 hrs), not fun to play at all, still I'm 1.31 btc up overall on it but it wasn't worth what I had risked imo.

Version 1, everyone knew what the end result would be, that was it's edge & for the spectators/traffic too, even for anyone left/stranded at the top spot that was cool, expensive risky crazy cool maybe but cool nevertheless.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21285262

https://i.imgur.com/vDZSaJ0.jpg

i agree with you, now it's just a gambling site like many others, nothing "special" :-\

There are similar games out there

This could have went down in history. Now its just ....ehh.

No need to fret...

http://www.tuftsmedicalcenter.org/Research/Phoenix_Lab/default/phoenix.jpg

...soon, a commerce site will emerge, based on maxmint's game.

Stay tuned!

there's still the bitcoin gold bar: http://bitcoingoldbar.com (http://bitcoingoldbar.com)

It still runs on the original idea of the gem.  It's out of my price range, but still cool.

Will it be a Bitcoin diamond?

This should be moved to the gambling section.

One minor tweak I would make to this game: It should have an automatic reset after a certain amount of time of inactivity (say 1 day). When that happens, the site BUYS BACK the gem and resets it to the initial price.

Now everyone has a chance to participate again at the lower price. Otherwise, once the price reaches a certain point you're pool of vict... err "customers" shrinks to near zero.

Won't work, for there's only approximately half the last purchase price in the site owner's coffer.


No, purplewolf, it won't be a BitcoinDiamond.

I has an automatic reset after 24 hours but as Phinnaeus Gage correctly says, the system can't buy back the gem, because the price paid goes to the previous owner.
@Phinnaeus: looking forward to your site – is it already in the works?

Yes it is! Being developed as we speak (why doesn't this sentence make sense?--you know what I mean). The key part was overcoming the value lost(?) by the last option holder.

The .com domain name consists of 6 letters, two syllables, and easy to pronounce, coupled  with personifying the site somewhat.

There's a mistake in the description on the site:

(my emphasis)

The correct text is:


Just because you're offering something for someone to buy at 2.63 BTC doesn't mean it's worth 2.63 BTC. Only if someone buys it at that price was it actually worth 2.63 BTC to the person who bought it.

You're right, there's a difference between worth and price – I just changed that on the site.

This is actually a ponzi scheme.

technically, it's a chain game, and people like it.

Wait till you see how the concept was turned into a commerce site.

I would suggest that you recommend the buyers of the gem pay a 0.001 btc (under 3 cents) miner's fee when sending their payment as some of the transactions hang for hours when ppl send with no fee at all (player BitBears recently for over 5 hours I believe) or too low for what is needed to get the confirmations. Better still insist upon this or the tx is cancelled, funds returned & game open again for new buyers.

Anyway I'm enjoying playing 'pass the gem' these last couple of days ~ thanks for making it, a Litecoin version would be sweet with it's faster confirms.

Edit: Bitbears is running a version of this game so that's prob why he jammed up this one that he just ripped off the idea from = pathetic really to see how low ppl will stoop to try & grab a few cents from other's creativity & work.

I look forward to it!  I have been waiting for it, let me know if you need any help or advice on the backend of things.

I didn't even realize my purchase went without a miner's fee.  I normally add a .0005 fee with all transactions.  But, looking back through the transaction history, it appears the game was idle for 1.5 hours.  It also appears that I'm not the only one that forgot his fee...  I'm sorry for that, I did not intend it.  I will make sure that doesn't happen again.

I have no competition with the Gem.  I like that site, I often play it, and I've reset it a time or 2, as well.  I've only ever wished the best for Max and his site.

While BitBears was inspired by the Gem, it wasn't a total ripoff.  One of the things I see with the Gem is that there is a lot of downtime, pretty much every day, as the price maxes out.  That was the idea behind BitBears, to create a game with little to no waiting, there is always a Bear to buy, it moves faster, and the game keeps going.  And while we've had a healthy amount of playing on BitBears, it doesn't have the following of the Gem, and I'm fine with that.  When the Gem maxes out for the day, people come play my game.  I think everyone is happy with that.

"BitBears - better odds, lower price..." = no competition? A lot of your reply was more a thread jacking advert for your derived copy cat site than an apology, anyway as you've now promised at least pay a miner's fee in the future so as not to sabotage & spoil this game for others, thanks.

https://i.imgur.com/xSq25eK.png

Look at the transactions:
My transaction was sent at 2013-02-16 15:43:09 http://blockchain.info/tx/84b7b17968391d7a9610c02d8cfeefa0a694171dc4aacb0e454991e5662e1b08
The next Gem purchase was sent at 2013-02-16 17:24:02 http://blockchain.info/tx/5c6738e996ce88f7a36d56486cc7332c61e6393ec64e29b769ff54b9febfb3ab

That's a difference of about 1.5 hours. 

Listen, I didn't mean to hang the game up, and I certainly didn't mean you to miss out on 1.5 hours of play on the Gem.  If you look at all of my last Gem purchases, they have always included the miner's fee.  And my future ones will as well.

This is supposed to be fun, it's a game.  Don't take it so seriously.

anyone (http://bitcoingem.com/)?  ???

24 h seems to be too short  :'(

Sadly you bought at well over the current 'chicken out' price, the only (risky) option then is to keep re-buying in the hope that someone else will stumble in & make the same mistake as you did, or re-buy a few times fast so that it looks like there is still some interest in the game at that price, I feel your pain & have been there - though never ended up as the bag holder, this game has a nasty sting in it's tail for those who over anticipate when the music will stop - just write it down to experience (learning the hard way wise) & at least it looks like you are earning a decent living with your meister skills otherwise so will make it back soon enough.

yeah, those resets sting!  ouch!

I wish it would never reset.

'chicken out' price, tse, i thought that's where it gets interesting and the fun starts  >:(  :D

I added a new section showing the total stats for the gem (http://www.bitcoingem.com/). So far, it changed hands 271 times, out of which it reset 13 times (4.80%). This include both idle resets and unlucky resets.
Also, there's now verification links for unlucky resets in the "List of previous owners" section, so unlucky transactions are fully provable and transparent.

Consider maybe adding captcha? It seems its being botted .. I cant get an entry in if I hit F5 fast enough now =(

yeah, there's a lot of traffic these days.  I haven't been able to get on in a while. 

I had ti for about 5 minutes this evening, first time I even had a chance to buy all day!

That was the reasoning behind the Bears, have 3 going at once to always have one playing.  There's no waiting that way, and the game can keep going.

There seem to have been an unusually high number of random resets today, well over 3.125% - can you confirm it's just random variance.

3 resets in the last 15 buys = 20% atm

Was wondering myself and checked with today's secret – it's a random losing streak. You can check proofs yourself tomorrow when the secret gets released.

Cool, at least they were all lowish buys (unlike my only one so far of 1.73 btc last Thursday :'()

I wonder if the random resets are needed at all any more as the 24 hour idle period will & does now always cause a reset before the price goes crazy mad & anyway if it did that's the punter's choice, or at the least make the random reset 0.3% or something less off-putting if you'd like to keep that Russian roulette frisson aspect, I believe that it would increase your take & lead to happier players.

Can this be moved to Gambling?

I see your point. I don't wanna remove the random reset completely, but I lowered it to 1.5%, that's half of what is used to be.

+1
(or to the trash...)


bitcoin gem = pyramid scheme

We currently have a "lucky round" without a random reset.

Move this to Gambling please. 

Nice, I think that it works best kept as this type of game without any random resets - they're just annoying.

Another annoying thing is when ppl send in their payments with no fee, like this one by the appropriatly named 'MyGem' http://blockchain.info/tx/444879a6144f23be55d16f811436db3979b4f00f1e9e4b78811cc34f114eb5ba atm so the game just grinds to a halt for hours, would it be possible to treat these no fee payers the same as dual payments & just refund them & cancel their turn or better still tax them with a reset for doing this & to make it clear that entries without the requested/required minimum 0.0005 btc fee will just go in to some random super jackpot or something.

1 hour & counting now with no confirmations. Estimated Confirmation Time:    Unknown

I'm aware of this problem. An automatic reset would be too harsh imo. But I will implement an automatic instant refund if someone does not include a miners fee.

Fair enough, all rules & requirements should be on the first page imo as ppl will click through fast without reading any info when trying to buy the gem, that way ppl will know beforehand & also if there was an option to just buy the gem & then afterwards enter address, name, website before sending payment that would be more relaxed, whoever hits 'Send' first has 2 or 3 minutes to enter these details & send the funds.

I see that Mr 'MyGem' did pay a fee when he re-entered the current game for a second time @ 1.83 btc & also I congratulate HH Pope Francis 1st on his astute bet before that which made a cool 0.138 btc profit for the Holy See.

https://i.imgur.com/BQtTHz8.png

Wishing the current holder: GemMaster2000 that the force be with you ;) Re screen shot - I'm on my niece's comp atm.

are bots why somebody was able to buy it out from under me today when the counter said there were 73 seconds to go? have a swell day.

I do know that there's some automated requests querying the price of the gem. But I doubt that there are bots actually buying the gem.
Maybe some people have a form autofill plugin or something similar.

Someone suggested making a single "Buy" button and showing the form after clicking this button, I guess that would be a good idea.

Is the game as a whole for sale atm btw?

PM sent

Thanks, answering, enjoying the link on the latest buyer's entry there

It looks like you changed the game to start at 0.5 BTC instead of 0.1 BTC. Actually, it looks like you changed it from 0.1 to 0.25 and now 0.5. Care to comment on why?

Gamble on the gem now starts at around $50? I reset the gem twice somehow when it was supposedly a 3% chance. Once for 0.85 BTC (http://www.bitcoingem.com/showproof.php?tx=6c4f38f9cad01fee76cc63082b2d35d2ab7622b66433526e8e3a56a92b8a6b6c), and once for 0.64 BTC (http://www.bitcoingem.com/showproof.php?tx=921e7b3ee65c4892b456d674fe48b4c3d8e3d037bde8b785004b5c5405b7ee4c). Now your game just looks like a race to lose a bunch of money, and the race is even shorter than it used to be with the new higher cost to start.

Now I mostly feel bad for the people I see lose their stake after the gem gets high enough that new buyers are scared off.

Start price will be lowered again. Just trying out different settings to see how they are doing.

The higher starting price the more income site owner has. Because you have to buy from him your first item. Also, more random resets, more profit especially if starting price is high. Thats why i removed random resets from my game because if they are not often (like they should) then they could not exists at all, and it should not be noticable in game. It simplifies game rules too and makes everything more clear.

Actually i think the random die is the most profitable way, as stated above. And just like the owner of a chain game above. My solution is have the last owner to gain profit share over the new chain and everyone will get something back at least. (Where my game' cut is at 3%, visit http://tree.chromaticcreative.net to know more about this one-of-a-kind homemade non-template chain game)

like this btctreasure.com (http://btctreasure.com) ?

Some one just tried to buy the gem but sent 4.0135 BTC instead of 4.13 BTC.
This was refunded: https://blockchain.info/tx/37bd7d76249ebcc4e31d1c291440bf11c0e56d107dd92930459aa7b569045839

What happens to the reset timer as a result?

The timer is always on 86400 seconds and it seems it just reset, this happens automatically

I think the buy button would indeed be a good idea. Thats also interesting about automated queries.

Hi, I'm one of the new owners of the site and I'll be mostly responsible for new development. We have a few new ideas for this model and we'll strive to deliver the best customer service possible and the most popular and reliable website of any game like this.

I'd love to hear any feedback and questions that anyone may have. Thanks in advance!

We are excited about upcoming projects for the site, and will be posting changes as they occur.  Again, feel free to let us know of any ideas or comments that you may have.  We will also address questions and feel free to PM us if you have anything you would like to discuss.

A facebook page has been created for the site, and I encourage all to look to the page for updates on the site.

We also have a twitter that has live updates of the bitcoin gem prices.

Thanks all for playing, we are seeing great traffic and are looking forward to sharing future projects.

We are close to announcing a new release of the site that will include a wide range of game play and player experience improvements. 

We recieve over whelming inquiries about not being able to play the game due to high traffic, we will also be addressing this.

Look for an update soon in regards to changes to this site!

No time stamp for previous transaction? 40 owner loss because of volume too small ?

I suggest putting a captcha on the buying mechanism, so bots cant do crap

We have discussed this upgrade and we will be introducing an enhancement to make playing easier in the earlier rounds.

We will be rolling out a large upgrade in the near future.

Stay tuned..

Just a heads up:

We had some technical issues overnight and had to take the db and site down for a few hours. No bitcoins were lost, but we had to restore a database that's a few weeks old, so the previous owners list won't be complete until we manage to make a full restore. We preserved the current owner's data and were able to manually restore his transaction and payment address. We've restarted the timer till reset at 24 hours and will keep a close eye on things for the time being.

Thanks.

Dead spam link.

I'm performing some maintenance on the back end of Bitcoin Gem to resolve some issues - occasional double buys and payments being sent to the wrong previous owner. The gem won't reset due to time in the meantime and the site may be down briefly overnight, but it should be good to go by tomorrow and buying the gem will be a smoother process.

I am also working on adding a CAPTCHA to the site, but that will come in a future release.

Thanks to everyone for playing and please direct any questions or suggestions my way.

Maintenance is done and the site is now running on an entirely revamped database and backend. I was up all night testing as much as I could to ensure a smooth transition, and so far everything is working as expected. This should be the end of double-buys or any other intermittent quirky payment behavior.

New with this update are counters displayed on the front page for total number of owners and bitcoins paid out since the Bitcoin Gem's inception. The list of previous owners is also displayed in a table format to make it more readable. There are a few more changes coming on the way that should improve the overall user experience as well, but I'll hold off on those until I make sure there are no kinks with the current setup.

Thanks for your patience and business.

Umm, my bet from when Bitcoin Gem never resetted is not listed. You're not listing all bets since Bitcoin Gem's inception! :(

Those transactions are listed here:

http://www.bitcoingem.com/v1

It's separate from the main history because it worked so differently from the way it does now. It's definitely very neat and interesting - the gem was bought as high as 115 btc! I'll try to make that link and history more prominent on my next round of updates to the website.

The new update appears to be running extremely smoothly!  Thanks again for the hard work, Sangaman!

I bought the second last round :D

I am pretty convinced that this site has multiple bots running who bet every time there is a free spot to buy the gem. I have been manually refreshing every second and everytime when I could buy the gem, I used my address only and pressed send, and within a half second it has already been bought by someone else. For a human it is impossible to buy and send a payment within a half second. There were even times where I was just casually refreshing every second, and suddenly someone else bought it already. And this has been happening since there was a reset to the 0.01 BTC, and will go on until it reaches 0.80~ BTC or just 1.00~ BTC.

I'm going to stop playing the gem until you introduce a captcha feature or something, because it's obvious that there are bots being used here by other people to keep buying the gem.

Thanks for contacting us. A captcha is in the works, it will be released soon (within the next week) and I will PM you personally when it is ready and working. I hope you'll come back and play again.

The owner of this site helped me through the recent site maintenance.  A few errors cropped up which he quickly and transparently took care of.

Just a thumbs up.

Thank you for the compliment we do strive for excellence in our customer service.  Have yet to have an unsatisfied player yet!

And yes captcha is coming!

We'll be putting in a few changes to the site before the next update. The layout for the FAQ and previous owners will be changed a bit, and we're also adding some new information and a tab that shows the most expensive gems and their owners over several time frames.

We're also making a few tweaks to the rules. The chance of a reset is now dynamically calculated according to price:

Price < 0.25 = 1 in 32 chance of a reset
0.25 < Price < 0.5 = 1 in 64 chance of a reset (this is what all transactions are set to currently)
Price > 0.5 = No Random Resets

Now there's a bit more incentive to buy the gem as it gets more expensive, while the early levels are still free money the vast majority of the time.

Lastly, the gem will reset after 18 hours of inactivity instead of 24 hours.

We'll have the captcha up this weekend, in the next cycle or two.

Thanks to all the players and any feedback would be appreciated as always. Good luck.

Phase 1 of some of the site updates have been successfully deployed to our site!

Enjoy the new format, as well as well as the "Most Expensive Gem" Leaderboard!

A new captcha has been added to our site to allow all to play without fear of bots.

Hi,

Seems to be broken for a while now?
Just get the spinning arrows and unable to purchase...

Testing shows this captcha is working for everyone else, perhaps its a problem with your browser. Feel free to contact our customer support directly at bitcoingem@gmail.com

Thanks for playing!

We are having technical difficulties with the site. Our developer will work on the problem ASAP. Thank you for your patience.

Will test when you come back online, but the problem has existed for me with both Safari & Chrome on OS X

Hello, the site back up! The server crashed and needed to be restarted. Enjoy and good luck!

OK, seems to be working on OS X as well know. Thx.

We've moved the timeout period for the gem back to 24 hours. Thanks!

So, iv made a new site very similar to how Bitcoin Gem worked, but better :) Also instead of you just losing your money if no one buys you out in 24 hours, you just get your money back (minus a standard tx fee).

Check it out and read more details here: https://coincontroller.com/