It looks like one is able to create walls in Bitcoin Central without having the necessary funds to do it.

For example, if I have 20 BTC in my account, I am able to place as many sell orders at 9.5€/BTC (let's say 50 of them). They will appear as a 1000 BTC wall at 9.5€/BTC in the order book and in the graph at https://bitcoin-central.net/order_book (note: the current wall is not mine).

I understand the use of having more orders than the funds currently available for people doing swing trading. However, those orders should probably be kept hidden when they are not backed up by any money, as they give a totally bogus representation of the real market depth.

If the software has crashed or is not running, then no transactions are going to go through. This is an all-or-nothing gamble here

That was my first thought: we are Sunday, OP may have a life too, and it's not like the scam would be worth it. The idea behind automatic short-term investment through regular sends is an interesting one. If OP is a scammer, then he should wait much longer to gain much more BTC from it

However, I would understand it if it was difficult to pay the announced 199 and 19.9 prices from the 199k game. But declaring a mistake and a default there is different from not returning investments. In this case, a private settlement with the bet winner to pay the prize when profits are high enough could be attempted.

So, how did it go?

Which part of the patch are you referring to? If this is the lib/gui_lite.py or lib/simple_config.py one, then you do not need to qualify the import as it is done relative to the lib/electrum (depending on whether it is installed or not) in any case.

And why did you call the directory "lib" instead of "electrum" in the first place? This would avoid the need for all this "try..except ImportError" stuff.


I don't use Electrum much right now, so I won't be able to spend a lot of time on it. Using pull requests is fine, I just need to find someone to merge them

I have submitted a fix for this 8 days ago, I don't understand why it has not been accepted yet, I've not even had a comment.

That said, this game is flawed as the game operator has an easy way of winning the game with a very high probability. By investing 201 BTC, it can bet on 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, …, 1.98, 1.99, 2.00, and collect every bets including its own.

Another player could do that too, but would have to make sure that other players have bet at least 7.22 BTC. Otherwise, the 3% taken by the bet operator would be larger than what could be gained, and the winning player will lose money.

Even if a player choses to take that risk, it is always possible for the bet operator to top that, unless this is done at the very last moment, with the risk of having bets sent past the 199k block lost if they were not included in the last block.

So I'm not saying that the game operator will cheat, but that the 3% fees are much more than fees, in that they change the game dynamic and allow the operator to get everyone else bets if it choses to do so. The operator may be honest and let a player win, but there is no guarantee it won't abuse its dominant position there.

Am I right?

This is a clever one, as, in order to win, one has not only to place a bet in the smallest available slot, but also must cancel the smaller ones.

Note that you can do that analysis yourself by looking at the service address in the blockchain.

No.

You pay a .5% fee on the part of your order that can be matched immediately. If any part of it (or the whole order) cannot be fullfilled immediately, then you will pay no fee on this part.

pirateat40 offered 7%/week while you are offering 7.21%/week compounded. Since you will use the new investors money to reimburse older investors (it would make no sense to do it another way and handle seggregated wallets if you need a continuous loan for your players), it cannot be distinguished from a Ponzi scheme until you either reimburse all the funds or fail to do so.

I get that you are not willing to publicly disclose your identity, but why not send some identification proofs to a few trusted, non-anonymous members of this community, with the explicit authorization to release them if you fail to reimburse funds without convincing explanation for a specified period of time (two weeks)? That should make everyone more comfortable trusting you with their money.

It would be interesting to plot the amount lent against the number of confirmations required. Having to wait for 6+ hours makes it much less exciting than it was at the beginning.

It's great to see well-identified people propose deals with exposed business models, congratulations.

However, I don't understand how only the profits would be at risk in the example you gave, as shorting a position usually means that the possible loss is unbounded. If you borrow then sell 10 bitcoins at 9€/BTC and you have to buy them back at 12€/BTC, then you will be 2.7 bitcoins short (32.4€) of the 10.2 bitcoins you have to return to your creditor. If the price spikes to 18€/BTC, you will be 5.2 bitcoins short (93.6€). 90€/BTC (let's take the extreme) and you'll be 9.2 bitcoins short (828€), and so on.

(edited to add that the loss is potentially illimited in FIAT, added the corresponding amounts between parentheses)

One thing that is still unclear to me in your proposal would be the risks for the lenders. If, for example, there is a high spike in BTC price as you describe above, would you still be able to reimburse your lenders and pay the 2%, even if it temporarily costs you money to cover the potentially unbounded losses?

I still haven't received anything concerning my 27+ BTC deposit so far.

In this case, you should send the OP an evidence of this FBI contact, so that he does not unknowingly lie to the father on your behalf if it appears that this contact never took place or was done in a way that nothing will happen (you didn't just drop an anonymous mail to postmaster@fbi.gov, right?).

You're right:


Is it better?

What do you mean? Isn't the expected value this one?


How would splitting into smaller amount help at increasing the expected value?

Also, it will be 2% of a smaller amount, and won't change anything on the long term.

5. Newbies have a great sense of irony

As long as you do not contact law enforcement, nothing prevents Trendon Shavers (assuming he is pirateat40) from disappearing, as he has the right to get out of touch at any moment. Do not forget that a suspect in an investigation may be forbidden to leave the country. It does not mean that he would not be able to flee anyway, but that would make it an additional offense, for which he might be convicted even if he gets away with the bitcoins theft.