Bitcoin Forum

Hello fair denizens of bitcointalk!

I noticed that there were a number of bitcoin lotteries out there... some pretty dubious.  Many are clearly chinese scams (nothing against chinese people) or just in existence to become someone's personal account.  I made a lottery for multiple cryptocurrencies, mainly to give people a safe harbor in playing lotto.  People will play the lottery, I'd just rather see them not get robbed.  Please check it out and help get it going!

http://www.crypto-lottery.org/ (http://www.crypto-lottery.org/)

I wanted it to be a "players" lottery, not a "house takes a bunch of your money" lottery.  100% of the pools get paid out.  The site exists on donations alone.  There are some slight variations on the rules to make it more interesting than a normal lottery.  Have fun and remember not to bet what you can't afford to lose!  Let me know what you think and if anything could use improvement.  It's up and running.

What is the minimum allowed bet ?

People are greedy. I suggest taking some small amount for yourself to make a profit and keep the lottery running otherwise you might not be able to run the site although there would be plenty of money in the lottery! Just offering a suggestion. :)

Erono, the minimums are listed next to each coin type on the play page.

Droganan, thanks for the feedback.  Making money from this would be fun, of course, but that's not really the goal.  I just want to give people a safe place to try and win alot of bitcoins, and also be the only place people would get to keep all of their earnings.  Interest has been tiny so far though.  I must be doing something wrong :(

Ok I've tweaked it a little and the pools have been seeded to get things going.  Enjoy!

How can you prove that you won't declare a ticket purchase by you as winner?

seems kinda dodgy  :-\

Uh oh, which part seems the dodgiest?  I'll try and fix that.

I won't be purchasing any tickets.  I had to decide on if there would be a digital algorithm to pick the winner or use an analog method like the real lotteries do (physically drawing a number).  There are disadvantages to both.  There is no true randomness in the digital method.  Those can be hacked.  The physical selection does take some trust I suppose but is more secure.

and how you can prove that?


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=161236.0

I appreciate the input, BRules.  Honestly, though, if I or any other lottery runner wanted to cheat, it's as simple as not paying out the pot and keeping the coins, just as many "trusted" ones have in the past.  Provably fair might protect dice games pretty well but lottery still comes down to trust in the end, so I'm not sure it would help any to implement it.  I can try and work that out though since it seems to at least add an air of legitimacy to the game.  Whatever I can do to earn some trust, the better.

You can run away with the money ONCE.
You can draw your own ticket as many times as you want.
Pretty huge difference, making provably fair a 100% must.

Thanks for the feedback, all!  I've decided to drop this project.  It was going to be a service to players and since it's looking to take up more time/energy/resources than I had intended and there's so little interest, I'm giving it the axe.  Hopefully someone else will end the run of shady lotteries.  Watch your coins!