Bitcoin Forum

At my job - once every quarter - they pass around the option for employees to participate in a 50/50 raffle - where everyone puts in $10 and receives a number  00 to 99 - at the end of the week, the boss uses one of those wire basket ball selectors and selects a winner - the winner takes 50% of the pot and the company puts the other half in petty cash, which is spent on company luncheons etc

Would something like that work here with crypto? Say for example, create 100 slots: 00 - 99  and everyone puts in $10 or even $5 worth of Bitcoin or Litecoin or Ethereum even (I would suggest staying with some of the more popular cryptos) once all 100 slots have been bought - select a future bitcoin block and use the last 2 numbers of that block to determine the winner.

for example:

0000000000000000000c93cdcb0f51dabfc547e4960b84cc675d5407f290268a  - 68 is the winner
0000000000000000000a0ab5bf76c9dabbb14d32632efb92e80ff237121d9703 - 03 is the winner
00000000000000000003e4f14676347e82158f367a6657115ab4b3e935bc74a9 - 49 is the winner

The winner would collect half the collected value (could accept is 50% of each donated currency or opt to have it all converted to one specific and take payout) - the other half could be donated to a charity organization - obviously proof of the donation would be necessary. And may need to set up some sort of selection process for choosing which charities. But I see this as an easy way to give participants a chance at winning a decent prize while also contributing aide and funds via crypto to various charity organizations.

Would this be considered gambling? Is there even a chance that this could or would work here on the forums?

When we do talk about lottery then it is indeed considered gambling and talking about chance that this could work in forum? Frankly speaking lottery games doesnt really get that much attention.
On the example you had given above then it is not something new on where people do fill out slots and when its full then it is being drawn according on what kind of ways and using
up those hashes had already been existed back in the past.There are lots of lottery sites that had launched and majority of them had die along the way due to lack of interest.

It would be considered gambling in my opinion, there's a wager involved, the outcome is unpredictable and totally random; entirely dependent on luck.
I have joined a couple of such games on the forum, but the were mostly some kind of giveaway (involving bitcoins or some form of collectible) and there was no need for the participants to pool funds. There has also been gambling pools involving the EPL (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4479837.0) and the UCL (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4919683.0).

You can run such a lottery game on the forum, but there's no guarantee people would be interested as there's no skill involved to spice it up, despite the honest motive.

^ That is, it will consider as gambling like a lottery, the winner take all but your criteria is 50% for the winner and the rest 50% is on the charity. I saw a thread like this before, but I cant remember where, something on Games and Round section.
Just try to post it there, probably there someone interested but I think a few people only since the chances of winning is very small percentage. Nevertheless, in my part, probably I will try. $10 would be fine!

That's a form of gambling. There are lots of players that will lose every round.

Unfortunately, the lottery in any form isn't catchy here. The reason is, simply it's difficult to win.

And trust issues are also concerned even how good the system is.

Yes, in fact you have been in one of this kind of stuff before on Hhampuz's Birthday Raffle (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5264076.0). Thats how JohhnyUA won with block #640605

Last two digit was 15 Ignore this, I wasnt reading your post properly lol


It works but not popular around here. Most of the time, it is just some free raffle or some sort like this ongoing Free Raffle (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5268974.0)

If it is not some free raffle then it probably wont get any attention at all, here is an example of Unpopular Raffle (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256901.0)


You need to be lucky and so does the other game. Pretty much the same

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Using hash from the future block to determine numbers are probably one of the fairest way in raffle. If you are looking to set some raffle up in here then probably you need something that could attract people otherwise it will be unnoticed just like the example above

P.S : This thread should be in gambling discussion section instead of the gambling board. You might want to move it  ;)

Some members have made it already by himself (and also in some giveaways) that just like it mentioned above but it was a different way and whos the lucky one that wins the raffle will take it all, unlike it runs at your office that 50% will send to petty cash fund.

But in your case, I can't see losing ends because you all have to share the other 50% left. It is not difficult to have it in here just like you did but the problem is whos gonna have the guts to offer his hands to hold the fund and did the raffle since I know that most of us here are also busy.

Thank you for all the input - I have done a number of raffles both paid and free in Collectibles - all of those were to give the winner some sort of crypto collectible. I have also done raffles in hardware to raffle off Asic Miners.

I was looking to see if it could be done to provide one forum member with a decent prize while still being able to donate to a worthy cause and lastly bring awareness to crypto (as the charity would need to accept crypto)

as for using escrow, I can use anyone on here or can self escrow, as I also provide escrow services on the forums. My trust level is 100% positive.

I will await more input and maybe I will try and maybe I will not, I am not  yet decided.

Maybe try one round and see if there will be sufficient users that will be interested in joining the raffle. But what I've seen here is that lottery is not gaining good support, whether they have their own website or not. You have good intentions but attracting users will be your main challenge here.

Yes, the lottery is considered gambling. Money is at risk that's why.

And the lottery served a good purpose. I see it's really good. It's more of a charity lottery.

But I think you need to adjust the winnings as you know, everyone here is also affected with the pandemic so they might instead skip joining. To fulfill the lottery, you need lots of participants right?

A paid lottery is really not that attention seeker here even before but you can give it a shot and see what will be the result. You can count on me that I will participate.

It will be considered as gambling because you would be asking users to wager a certain amount. If you do not ask them to wager and plan to donate a certain amount using the same method it would be considered as charity.

You can check this post to understand the concept of charity more - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5269125.0

It's not gambling as long people aren't risking what they can't afford to lose.
I think I like the way the randomness is obtained (the last two block numbers). Is there a chance that the future last two block numbers can be rightly predicted by someone/people through knowledge, experience, skills etc?

Well, I wish the bet is not restricted to $10 ... People could simply be told to bet what they can afford to lose, then you make it possible for more people to win. Everyone gets equal chances of winning despite the amount they bet. << This's more suitable for charity bettings.

It's like betting in a number but that number will only be yours it is called a riffa in my country with using Bingo Balls to determine the winner the last ball wins, it's quite popular in my country now during this Pandemic. And this post gives me idea especially this days that many are in needs and this may be a way to help others. It may still consider gambling but the different in type is that it's purpose is for a good cause as their it will have like a beneficiary in that game, the winner will be able to win at the same time share his winning for others.

My only problem with the example that you gave at the OP is the number of people, convincing 100 users on this forum to try to participate in a raffle is going to be very challenging in my opinion, I think that a number of 20 to 30 could be the most that you could hope to get if we are being realistic about it, however I'm not really an expert on this topic and you have organized several raffles already while I haven't.

Taking out a look at your trust indicates that you are a very trustworthy individual, but still it could be a good idea to use an escrow just to dissipate any doubts that any member could have about participating in your raffle, if you decide to move forward with your idea.

It could work and it is for a good cause, but the thing is that most people don't like to pay for things, and 100 users is a pretty large number. Even if it were a free raffle it would take some time to fill all those spots.
Another option could be to change the reward ratio from 50/50 to 70/30 or even 80/20 in favor of one user getting more, and the smaller amount gets donated to a good cause. 

OP could always use an escrow, but from what I can see, he doesn't really need one. He provides escrow services himself and has a clean record.

Like it is included in the gambling category too, because of course everyone who joins hopes for victory, it's just that your idea goal is very good to become charity, and escrow for me must be prioritized so that all transparency and suspicion

Being a participant in a lot of raffles conducted in forum (I risked my money only once in a paid raffle and lost  :( and others are free) and conducting monthly raffle myself, I think I am eligible to post my thoughts about these raffles. Right from the beginning there wasn't much of interest towards paid raffles and one person winning the whole lottery amount. I guess, @Steamtyme created a raffle topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5163670.msg51771223#msg51771223) where each person will donate 0.00345BTC to the pool and the total 0.1BTC will be won by one single user based on the block hash. This didn't receive enough traction and was closed miserably. From the above mentioned raffle we can infer that there are higher chances the type of raffle which you have mentioned will never work practically.

Regarding the question of why these types of raffles work particularly well in collectibles section, it's primarily because collectors are willing to take the risk of losing/winning a beautiful coin but practically none would donate for a bitcoin based raffle. From my point of view I am willing to participate and lose in a collectible raffle but I will never participate in a bitcoin based raffle. The idea you have mentioned is purely a speculative gambling but what I am doing monthly is a kind of something different. Please see this :  [BLOCK HALVING RAFFLE] #5 - Pick a lucky number and win 0.001 bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5245651.0)

El duderino_ and an anonymous user donated to the pool at some point last year which was held in a escrow and I am using the pool prize to conduct raffle in the thought of bringing additional interest to my local board. I think the idea really worked out and many newbies started participating in our local board in a healthy way. The idea of my raffle is to encourage local board posters to participate more in discussions thereby driving away bounty hunters.

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So what might work here? @LoyceV's 10 month 10 altcoin investment game was an excellent thought out process. The process includes 10 forum members to choose 10 altcoins and they would provide LoyceV 0.01BTC each to buy their favorite altcoin at a particular start date. LoyceV will be holding them for 10 months and the participants along with LoyceV will be going through a wild enjoyable pump and dump ride. The total bitcoin (traded back from alts) after 10 months will be divided upon by 10 and distributed to participants. This was really fun to watch and was enjoyable though I was only a spectator for 2 years. You can probably try something similar where the user funds are risked but they have a equal opportunity to get the profit or loss percentage!

thank you all for your comments! I was not really looking at doing it as a way to give away items - I do that in the collectible section from time to time as both free and paid raffles.

I was looking at as a means for the community to give back to the world outside of the forums - with one lucky person winning half the pot.

Ideas that I liked from the above comments:

1. decreasing the number of slots - ok so not 100 - what about 50?
2. allowing people to put in more - I like this because everyone could put in what they want, what they are willing to risk. The winner(s) are still entitled to half the pot - I say winner(s) because of the next point
3. having more than one winner - maybe do 5 winners? where each get 15% - and this is more than 50% which is the next point I liked
4. increasing reward ratio from 50% to 75% - with 25% going to the charity. I would like to give more to a charity but I understand that if the ratio is too low, there are not enough joining and thus nothing goes to the charity

1.50 slots is considerable but the amount shouldnt really be on fixed ones.
2.It would be unfair on general sense yet you do bet more but you do get equal prize.
3.Its preferable and much be more preferred rather than on seeing just 1 winner.
4. Even 80% would do and 20% would go to charity.

Its good that you do have considered on listening up on community feedbacks.

1. in a community of thousands, I do not think 50 is that much but maybe it is?
2. true with multiple winners it would not be fair to make the prizes equal in that regard. so possible set limit on price per entry - but maybe allow people who want to risk more to be able to buy more than one slot?
3. agreed.
4. maybe 75-80 %

@OP, do you think you can make it even one round of this lottery of yours? There are pretty good suggestions here and maybe try it. You will see what kind of attention you will get if you will make it happen. But if this will end up in talks only, you will not get further useful feedbacks because we don't know what went wrong, right?

Idk much about how the blocks work, or their sequence for that matter, but does it guarantee that all numbers from 0-99 show up on the future blocks? Just asking!

1. 50 should be more than enough, but make a minimum-maximum amount of participants so that some people wouldn't be left out by being late on the party possibly.
2. This should work. Though set a limit of maybe 2 or 3 additional slots though.
3. Nothing to say here
4. If you want, you can try using the 80-20 posted above, and the remaining 5 would be given to a random lucky winner again (everyone including the 5 winners has a chance), or redistributed to the ones that lost, though that amount is low as hell by then, so the former could be the best option.

There's a chance that no more than 50 people would join though, so adjusting some stuff there could possibly work. You can also try out what you did in the past, collectibles, add that as a win or something. Pretty optional, like only the 1st or 2nd winner could have them. Or add that to the guy who would win the 5% I said above.

I do plan on trying to do one yes. whether it works or not we will see. I will plan to post it around first of September.

With regards to the possible outcome, yes 0-99 will be available since we will select the last 2 number characters in the blocks. If I am not mistaken, some raffle have already done this and the most famous one is from krogothmanhattan (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1000199).
 
I am just not sure if there will be someone that will manage this because it is a big task to manage a lottery, to be always updated without anything to get. Perhaps, we could allot a small percentage of the pool to someone who wants to manage.

Though, I like the idea of this kind of raffle, it will help us allot with just small amount of BTC and if we lose, we know that a charity will benefit from it.

I am not looking for someone to manage it, I plan to manage it myself - Just curious if there was interest and for ideal on how to improve my original idea.

While reading this I expected your boss to double the amount, this sounds like a very cheap way for your boss to pay for company luncheons (I did learn a new word!). Maybe suggest your boss to increase the amount and double it into petty cash?

From what I've seen back in the days at Rollin Lottery (https://rollingames.wordpress.com/lottery/), there aren't many participants. Even when it's EV+ (because of a donation added to the prize pool), not many people join. And when people do join, they often complain about the winner.
The only thing I've seen that works, is if there's a social aspect to it: active users in a chat for instance, or probably the thing at your job. That may also explain the success of raffles on the Collectibles board: it's a tight community.

If it's EV-, I expect even less people to join, unless you make the charity the main event and the raffle a social thing for joining.

Yes that is form of gambling but I don't think it would work on this forum we all know that the percentage of winning is very low and only users will going to join knows that the chance of losing it very small. You could try a small amount may $1 per slot and user might win $99 or maybe $79 and the remaining $20 could be saved for jackpot etc. It's worth trying maybe many users would join and if not you could just refund their money.

Great idea Mopar , I was trying to work out something similar and had the exact same queries/ headaches.
I’ll certainly buy a few tickets !
If you are still looking for a charity, this is a great one to support

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5246208.0

you said the chance of winning is small but your suggested fee is 1 usd ? that 1 usd is huge and the prize would be more bigger than 99 dollars because this was a kind of raffle and raffles are simillar to lottery that chance of winning is also small  .

lotto or any kind of raffle are known to have a high prize . this is gambling and it will work best inside a seperate site and  not on this forum

Yes this is definitely gambling because you put in 10$ and have a 1/100 chance of winning, like any lottery. I think this is a good idea for this forum. There are many trusted users here who would easily function as escrow and another for lottery management. Some part of the winning would need to be used as fees for the two.

The only problem I would assume would be choosing which numbers to pick. Easiest would be if you assign the 100 participants a random number but I bet people would prefer to choose their own numbers. But then most people would try to pick their lucky numbers like 3,6, 13, or 19. It could be hard to fill all 100 numbers.

I do not need escrow (I provide escrow on these forums) I also do not need someone to manage it (I will) and there is no fee for myself - the goal is to raise funds for a charity not myself.

I was thinking to let people pick their own numbers - I do see your point in that some may not participate if they do not get their number - so that would be an issue as well if the numbers were randomly assigned as well.

Do you plan on making a sole website for this or would just make a thread on this forum just like on what we do saw on common giveaway or lottery thread?

This is still gambling though in a good cause. The only issue is who would organize and facilitate the draw? This could be done in this forum too, with a bunch of trusted members who built their reputation over time and proved themselves worthy of some trust. Anyway, you, the OP can do this and just provide us with a list of charities you have in mind should you continue with the idea. Also it will be good if people can choose numbers for their own at a first-come-first-serve basis to ‘at least’ give a little freedom to participants on this lottery.

Totally doable and a nice concept, since I know most gamblers here are itching to play new stuff.

Yes it could be a good idea but half of the bets going to a third party, it's huge and most people won't be interesting by a house edge as big as that.
20% or 10% would be more attractive IMHO

It would be on the forums.



Thank you - when I post it, the post will contain a list of charities - when people join the raffle/lottery they would post their transaction id and mention the charity they would like to see receive the funds - count those like votes, the charity with the most mentions will be the one that funds go to.



As stated a few other posts up - I would entertain the idea of having maybe 4-5 winners and providing 75%-80% to the winners with 25%-20% going to the charity.

I will be taking zero percentage - some may find that hard to believe but having lost 2 family members to COVID and at least 6 family members to various forms of cancer, I already make personal donations to several agencies. This idea was spurred when I read about an unnamed early bitcoiner that made a fortune and decided to give vast quantities to various charities - while I do not have vast amounts of Bitcoin to do that with, I would like to see the crypto community do something similar - now if I need to offer a prize, so be it :) I cannot fault that at all.

I will be looking to do this start of September.

In this forum there are 2 types of raffles, one is when you need to pay to join and the other one is a free raffle like you don't need to pay anything just post your number. there are lots of them in games and rounds. The first one will be considered gambling since you are gonna pay with an odd chance to win but not 100% sure. while the other one is not because that does not involve any money in your pocket.

What you tell a type of raffle in the opening post includes gambling, I prefer to call it a lottery. Actually your idea is very good,
by holding raffle on this forum. With the level of trust you have, surely many members here participate in the raffle that will be
held by you. Moreover, the rewards offer is quite large, 75%-80% of the money raised from participants. My advice is that every
participant is drawn a fee of $ 5. Not too big a value for issued by participants and not burdensome. I will continue to monitor
this thread, to know the progress.

Yes it is lottery. And in this case there are many of here offering this kind of gambling. Try to check establish crypto gambling sites and see it for yourself that there are winners already in doing lottery. Even here in the forum I guess someone had organize a lottery but it was being escrow to a certain user for all we know that funds should be secure. Payments should be done using escrow service if lottery is to be done here.

But usually gamblers will play lottery at establish gambling site. Therr are many gambling to start playing lottery.

What happens in your company consider as gambling because you and other employee have to participate to puts in $10 for every people, and I think that is kind of lottery. We don't know if a chance that could work here if you don't try, but I wonder how it will look like because if we send some money to buy one or two tickets, that still lottery.


I think your idea can work in the name of donations, and perhaps, you can use at least 7 names of charities, and we can select what we want. And the winner will be select for 3-5 winners.

I am sorry, I thought you were looking for someone to run this for you.

To give a part of the winnings to charity sounds like a good idea. I think there should be plenty of people here on this forum to be interested in such a gamble.

Maybe just start to run it on a monthly basis and see how it goes. Advertisement shouldn't be a problem here.

Yes, this is among the many forms of gambling. I was wondering if this plan of yours is going to be conducted in different site if not, how will be the process of participation? And you have mentioned that this for a charity? What specific charity is it?

Its like Gambling since people are still placing their money on something that they can gain from BUT only 50% of the total price money and in some way it also becomes a Donation to charity like the one that happens on your company. Though the way to pick the winners are a bit complex, it is still possible to create a way to present a clear winner. Its like gambling with a raffle touch. That would be cool since you can have lots of players to cater.

I will post sometime after February 1st - there will be a list of charities and the participants can select their favorite charity from the list when they pay for a slot in the lottery/raffle - the charity with the most votes will receive the funds.

I will go with 50 slots of two numbers each slot (00-01, 02-03, ..... up to 98-99) for the first attempt at $10 per slot - with two numbers per slot, participants will have 2 chances to win. I will allow payments in BTC, LTC or ETH.

there will be 4 winners that will be selected in order by using the hash of  4 future sequential BTC blocks. I will select the starting block number after the raffle/lottery is closed.

the first winner will get 25% of the pot, second will get 20%, third will get 15% and fourth will get 10% -- this will award 70% of the pot to the winners with 30% going to the charity with the most votes.

I am going to close this thread for now - look for my  new one shortly after September 1st !

and thank you all for your recommendations/ideas/criticisms - all were helpful in deciding what I would do.