Bitcoin Forum

At the Bitcoin 2013 conference on Sunday Matija Mazi (Mati) and I (Jim) agreed to a multi year Bitcoin bet and I wanted to go on the record about it.

The Bet
Jim bets Mati 1 BTC that he can provide a photo from "one of those trashy celebrity magazines" of a celebrity wearing a blinged up Bitcoin hardware wallet.

The deadline for the bet was four years from when the bet was made. This is 3.30 PDT, 20th May 2017.

If Jim can provide such a photo before the deadline, Jim wins and Mati pays Jim 1 BTC.
If Jim cannot provide such a photo before the deadline, Mati wins and Jim pays Mati 1 BTC.

Witness and referee
Antonin Hildebrand ("Tonda") is both the witness and referee for this bet.

Rules
Jim cannot make it happen by creating a blinged up hardware wallet and giving it to a celebrity.
The definition of "one of those trashy celebrity magazines", "celebrity" and "blinged up" were left unspecified but we figured out we would know when it happened.

Forever on record now haha :P

Andy B

Thanks for inventing new nicks for me and Antonin, Jim :)

Anyway, I am the other side of the bet and I confirm that the bet was the way Jim describes it above, with a small note: Antonin agreed to be the witness, but I'm not sure he agreed to his role as a referee. In any case, hopefully a referee won't be needed.

Hi Mazi,

Great - that is both of us on the record now !

I expect the next four years will zip by - I think I'll put a reminder in my phone now to remind me.

:-)

I shall watch this with interest. 1 bitcoin in 4 years time could be worth a *lot*.

We were talking about that and figured the best thing to do was set 1 BTC aside now to cover it. That way there is no risk. We were guessing how much 1 BTC would be at the end of the bet - the best I could come up with was 'less than a million US dollars'.

Hello,

I'm Antonin Hildebrand and I'm witness of the bet. Also I agree to be the referee in case of a dispute.

See you in 2017 or sooner!

Hi Antonin,

Thanks for your post.

Now that the Winklevoss twins are starting a Bitcoin Fund it is only a matter of time before the NY fashionistas start wearing bitcoin fashion items . . .

:-)

Mati means dead in Indonesian. :P

That said, this is an interesting bet - bookmarked for 2017!

Would you guys like a third party escrow for this? Send the 1 BTC to a cold wallet made just for this bet. Each one sends 1 BTC, so the cold wallet will contain 2 BTC. Winner gets the private key or the amount is sent to his own wallet in 4 years.

There is of course John K. However, I was hoping I'd get the job. :)

Nah, I don't think that jim618 needs an escrow here, especially considering the amounts involved.  ;)
People trust him for Multibit on a daily basis.

We did consider a multisig transaction to store the funds for the duration of the bet (eg. 2-of-3 with Darwin the natural third party) but we decided against it -- I think because we wanted to avoid the need to store private keys for 4 years. It's still an option though as far as I'm concerned since I haven't tried multisig yet (or seen it used) and this seems a nice use case :)

Okay. I'm curious to see what the bling hardware wallet will look like. So far, I see Trezor that is gold-plated or something like that.

What bling hardware? There will be none.

I think there was a phone brand Vertu where they added those fake diamonds to the case.
I've seen phones where (mainly young women) attach Hello Kitty keychains etc.

In a world where there was a fad for ripping off VW car name badges and wearing them as medallions anything is possible.

Epic bet.

Posting it here for record.
See you guys in 2017 :D

This sure looks pretty . . .

http://allaboutbit.com/Images/bitnecklace.jpg

I'll do the escrow for free. Just for the epicness of it. It's not about trust (since one of you make multibit), but rather the idea is that I'm a third party. (For reference, I just did a 4 BTC escrow, I've got to start somewhere.)

An escrow for 4 years is a bit risky
The possibility of him dying before it is not negligeable IMO

Who's going to die? There will be 3 people involved. I can set up a dead man's switch that will send an email on May 30 2017 to both parties, in case I get hit by a bus before then. If either of them gets hit by a bus, then of course, the coins go to their heirs.

Sorry if this sounds morbid, but my experience with insurance says, you are dead on paper if you lose two arms and two feet. They also count fingers and toes.

Anyway, it's a 1 BTC bet, don't make me spend on an attorney to handle any dying issues. hehe. (Oh, in 4 years, 1 BTC might be worth something, I mean, 4 years ago a pizza was worth 10,000 coins.)

Yeah a dead man switch is what I had in mind in case the 2BTC are kept in a cold wallet whose key is only known by the escrow

Should I send the email to them? Or a backup escrow? (to you?)... Maybe to them is better. GPG encrypted. Signed. The message would be something like:

"Hi, you are getting this email because I got hit by a bus. The private key to the escrow address is Kyjelly9293012913. Whoever won the bet should redeem it. Now since I'm probably in a coma, don't go about scamming each other ok? And post pics of the bling hardware wallet."

From the LA Bitcoin meetup last night:

http://s24.postimg.org/lc543ya0l/1376343_10151964008881411_415819359_n.jpg

(the bitcointalk post is here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309609.0


Also, I saw a 'Bitcoin bling' jewelry site has just opened:

http://bitcoin-bling.com

(reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1o9ufp/bitcoin_meets_bling/)


:-)

Still a very long way util any non-geek wears stuff like this :]

Now the 'Bitcoin Bling Necklace' that first appeared at the LA Bitcoin meeting last Friday is on Thingiverse:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:165826

You can print your own !

And then you can get mugged in the street! Yay!

"Stop! Thief! He stole my bitcoins!"

I still can't decide who's the smart guy in this bet: Jim or I.

You could say it's Jim: if he wins, Bitcoin will probably be mainstream, so worth a lot, so his win of 1 BTC will be large. If he loses, Bitcoin will probably have faded or not succeeded very much, so his 1 BTC loss will not be worth a lot. So he can gain a lot, and loose little -- almost a win-win for him.

Or one could reason this way. If I loose, so a bitcoin-bling-wearing celebrity appears, Bitcoin will probably be mainstream, so do I loose 1 BTC, but my remaining coins are worth a lot, so overall I'm happy. If I win, well, that's obviously great -- what could be better than winning a bitcoin bet :)

So perhaps it's a Win-win--Win-win situation in any case :)

Matija

P.S. I wouldn't have made the bet today as now I think I'll probably loose; but no regrets -- bitcoin seems to be actually going mainstream and I'm quite happy (see above) :). I just hope to loose this as soon as possible...

Bookmarked for 2017

Sounds like a fair bet...

Bump. 35 Days Remaining now.

Good catch

Hmmm, jim618 not logged on the forum for over a year though

Well, I'm not yet dead, so ... anyway... Jim still the main dev of multi-bit wallet? Maybe he'll show up.