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Anyone know what the valuation is? Their series A was $5M.
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So after roughly a year of bitcoining I have come to the conclusion that mpex.co or Mircea Popescu Exchange (Formerly Mircea popescu options emporium?) does literally nothing but move bitcoins from one wallet to the next and in most cases ending up in Mircea Popescu's wallet.
30 Bitcoin Registration Fee and you get the choice of an failed video game company, bitbet.us (not sure why they need funding with all the fees), and MPOE itself whose profits consist mostly of those 30 bitcoin registration fees.
Normally "investing" is when you give capital to someone who needs it to create something of value. I don't see any value coming out of mpex.co whatsoever. Their biggest success story is a gambling website (again not really creating value, just taking btc from one person and giving it the next.)
One last thing that does not really prove that mpex.co is a scam but I cant be the only one to notice that Mircea Popescu speaks like a sci-fi super-villain.
I would love for someone to explain to me how mpex.co is not a scam bit I simply cannot understand.
In the end it looks like Mircea Popescu is walking away with 30,000 btc (according to some richest bitcoiners thread)
Has anyone else besides him made a profit from the site?
People made an enormous amount of bitcoin off of call options purchased on the site from January to April of 2013. If you ask people in the bitcoin-assets channel, they know. The site paid out 19,000 BTC on March options expiration. That's probably the biggest hit any bitcoin financial product ever took without going under. Here is the financial statement for March. There are people out there that made an utter KILLING that month. MP lost basically all the gains of the previous year. Options were repriced shortly afterwards to more accurately reflect the tail risk volatility, and volume has fallen off dramatically. http://trilema.com/2013/mpoe-march-2013-statement/ |
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Just a thought.....
This forum probably has a lot of clout when it comes to these hardware company releasing new products etc. It seems all of them follow the same game plan.
They don't offer anything really, but promises. they start a preorder for their miner 4-5 months in advance. They take our cash/btc and use that to develop their product. Now if they can actually get their miner produced. They almost never release it on time because "Of some manufacture issue" then once they do (If they ever do) your purchase is now the iPhone 2 in an iPhone 5s world.
IM TIRED OF IT. If we stop funding these CRAPPY Companies, their business plan would have to change...
What do you guys think ?
This is exactly what every forum user with half a brain has done since BFL blew their FPGA miner preorder deadline by >6 months. Sadly, there are enough others that continue to sustain the scammers. I blame the naturally trusting and optimistic nature of humanity that is being exploited by these bad actors. |
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Essentially you need a re-insurer with coins to back your coins
NO. No no no no no. The reinsurance scam has already used to great effect with insurance of pirate-pass thru funds, etc. Guess how all those schemes ended. The only solution is to NEVER loan your coins to anyone. It never ever ever makes sense. |
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BTC withdrawls have been taking about 48 hours lately in my and my friends' experience. High volume I'm sure.
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Apparently it won't be, since some people here seem to think stealing from its users is a commendable practice.
Seriously, how would you handle the case "someone sends an unconfirmed TX right before the bet ends, TX confirms after the bet has been decided" ? Refund? You want to discourage scammers, not have to guess every time whether the request is legitimate or not. Just add a reasonable fee for this kind of refund, it is more than enough to keep scammers away. Charge, let's say, 5% of the amount received. There is also the case "someone sends a transaction not so right before the bet ends, TX confirms after the bet has been decided", refund at 5% fee, too, obviously. I can't even start to understand why you think this is not the proper way, and stealing is the correct choice. MP really got a legion of fans. The underlying theme of any MP-affiliated business is that the rules will be set up to protect that business's bitcoins at all costs, despite their user-unfriendliness. The unfortunate fact is that even though its very unlikely that OP was trying to scam, bitcoinland is full of people that can and do scam any service or person that has an exploitable weakness. The level of fraud among bitcoin users is tremendous, much higher than any other consumer financial environment. Hence, rules that seem reasonable based on real-world experience where perhaps 2% of transactions are attempted fraud leave bitcoin businesses too exposed, as this is an environment where perhaps 20-50% of transactions are attempted fraud. |
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Don't expect BitBet to change a policy that supplies a sizable proportion of the S.BBET dividends.
How many of the #bitcoin-assets chatters are here because they own shares in BitBet and my complaint threatens their dividends? Bugpowder is yet another #bitcoin-assets guy. ---------------------------------------- I'm a bitcoin-assets guy, because that's where people that know what's going on in the bitcoin space hang out. That said, I don't currently own shares in any MPEX listed security, nor any other bitcoin denominated security. I don't like the counterparty risk associated with virtual shares in virtual companies in a virtual world now that bitcoins have tremendous fiat value. Everyone is a hustler in the bitcoin space (much like the general financial services space), and its hard to avoid getting burned at least once, particularly since getting legal relief is usually impossible. 10BTC is a small price to pay to learn this lesson, relative to what others have paid in the past (myself included). Good luck collecting on your non-currency based gambling transaction with a virtual company run out of deep eastern Europe. |
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Don't expect BitBet to change a policy that supplies a sizable proportion of the S.BBET dividends. Maybe you could purchase the rest of the S.BBET shares on the market in order to get a partial refund?
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Alright guys, this Mercedes lady said we should let the whole psuedo-anonynimity part of bitcoin go. We gotta redesign the protocol now. Sorry about that.  Yeah that was pretty gross. |
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While I think full Kelly is still the best approach, half Kelly is a pretty good alternative, you really cut the variance in half and only sacrifice a quarter of the profit.
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The site is 'probably fair'. LOL! |
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Here is an analysis of cake's betting today using his real bets.
This same sequence of bets was performed 20,000 times with a 49.5% chance of winning on each bet.
He had a 17.6% chance to finish as well or better than what he did.
To be clear, is this what you are saying? "If he had made that sequence of bets *with his eyes closed* he would have had a 17.6% chance of doing at least that well" He didn't stop after those bets at random. He stopped immediately after hitting a balance of 10k BTC for the first time. So a better question, rather than "what is the chance he was doing well after exactly those bets" is "what is the chance he would eventually get to be 4430 BTC up if he bet that sequence of bets over indefinitely until he either got there or lost his entire bankroll (which is unknown, but at least 10k)"? Here it is with a 10,000BTC initial bankroll and if he stops if he touches +15,000BTC 5.8% chance of massive success, 66.7% chance of blowing up.  bets = []
outcome = []
nSessions = 10000
bets = nakowaCrop(:,4)*1e-8;
outcome = nakowaCrop(:,6)*1e-8;
shuffledResult = sign(rand(length(outcome),nSessions)-.505);
shuffeldOutcome = repmat(abs(outcome),1,nSessions).*shuffledResult;
%%
cso = cumsum(shuffeldOutcome,1);
%%
bustedIdx = repmat(50000,10000,1)
winIdx = repmat(50000,10000,1)
for i = 1:10000
try
bustedIdx(i) = find(cso(:,i)<-10000,1);
end
try
winIdx(i) = find(cso(:,i)>15000,1);
end
end
finalOutcome = sum(shuffeldOutcome);
finalOutcome(find(bustedIdx < winIdx)) = -10000
finalOutcome(find(winIdx < bustedIdx)) = 15000
%%
figure(1);clf;hold on
hist(finalOutcome,100)
%plot([15000 15000],[0 1800],'r--')
title('Outcome distribution if Nakowa stops at +15k with 10k starting bankroll')
ylabel('# of outcomes')
xlabel('Nakowa''s total profit (BTC)')
probProfit = 1-sum(finalOutcome<15000)/10000;
probBust = 1-sum(finalOutcome>-10000)/10000;
text(12000,1000,['p = ' num2str(probProfit)],'color','r')
text(-9000,1000,['p = ' num2str(probBust)],'color','r')
set(gca,'xlim',[-10500 15500])
print(gcf,'-depsc','NakowaStopping')
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Here is the expected outcome distribution of all of Nakowa's bets, (excluding the 3% that were of non 49.5% odds of winning). 1.9% chance of doing at least this well if he bet the same sequence again. Expected profit of -8,522 BTC  |
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He had a 17.6% chance to finish as well or better than what he did.
When that percentage is constantly single digits then we worry. It is probably in the high single digits for his combined sessions. Waiting for that data to be provided. |
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Here is an analysis of cake's betting today using his real bets. This same sequence of bets was performed 20,000 times with a 49.5% chance of winning on each bet. He had a 17.6% chance to finish as well or better than what he did. His average loss was expected to be 3,750BTC. Of course with a random walk and a large bankroll, as long as he is disciplined to stop when up, he will probably finish up. However, one day he may just keep losing and losing and losing.  |
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Here is a simulation of someone betting the max bet on JD with an unlimited bankroll. After 2,000 max bets, how far up or down might they be? What would be the peak profit during that time? This is relevant for determining how lucky Nakowa is. Nakowa is up about 50 max bets at the moment, off of around 2000 max bets wagered.
so...you're saying there's a chance? That is a very simplified calculation, that doesn't take into consideration a lot of factors. The probability of what is happening is very very low. Of course it is simple. When Dooglus provides me an updated total betting history of nakowa, we can do a shuffle analysis and see for real. Last time I did it when he was up 4000 BTC, it was around 7% chance. |
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Here is a simulation of someone betting the max bet on JD with an unlimited bankroll. After 2,000 max bets, how far up or down might they be? What would be the peak profit during that time? This is relevant for determining how lucky Nakowa is. Nakowa is up about 50 max bets at the moment, off of around 2000 max bets wagered.   Matlab code n= 50000
cutoff = 50
bets = sign(rand(n,2000)-.505);
outcomes = sum(bets,2);
sum(outcomes>cutoff)/n
sum(outcomes<cutoff)/n
intBets = cumsum(bets,2);
peak = max(intBets,[],2);
sum(peak>cutoff)/n
sum(peak<cutoff)/n
%%
figure(1);clf;set(gcf,'paperposition',[0 0 8 6])
hist(outcomes,50)
hold on
plot([cutoff cutoff],[0 5000],'r-')
ylabel('Number of outcomes')
xlabel('Profit (number of max bets above zero)')
title('Results of 2000 consecutive max bets, unlimited bankroll, (50,000 simulations)')
text(55,4000,['Chance of exeeding = ' num2str(sum(outcomes>cutoff)/n)])
print(gcf,'-depsc', 'MaxBets1')
figure(2);clf;set(gcf,'paperposition',[0 0 8 6])
hist(peak,50)
hold on
plot([cutoff cutoff],[0 6000],'r-')
ylabel('Number of outcomes')
xlabel('Peak profit (number of max bets above zero)')
title('Results of 2000 consecutive max bets, unlimited bankroll, (50,000 simulations)')
set(gca,'xlim',[0 max(peak)])
text(55,5000,['Chance of exeeding = ' num2str(sum(peak>cutoff)/n)])
print(gcf,'-depsc', 'MaxBets2')
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Seems the loss has gone down a bit, now at about -400.
Now +2950... with 2000BTC deposit incoming in the next block! |
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We profit 76 % of the time over 1,000 bets - not 50.8 % of the time like with 1 bet.
THAT'S being an investor, not a gambler.
Also - has anyone noticed that despite the 1 percent edge JD has never made a 1 % profit? It was about half that - before the current fiasco - now we know why.
Variance. Lets lower it by refusing big bets.
I'm sorry, but this is the biggest load of BS I have ever read. Clearly you have not done the math. If you make 1000 bets with a 1% house edge, you will win 490 times and the house will win 510 times. The house will not win 76% of the time. Variance means nothing as far as house edge. Playing many tiny bets and playing one huge bet provides precisely the same house income over time. As a gambler, you will have no advantage by placing smaller bets and winning and losing small amounts than by placing a single large bet. Over time it's just a matter of scale. A casino runs the risk of losing the bankroll only if they don't cap the size of their maximum bets. Because obviously there's only a 51% chance of winning that bet, and thus a 49% chance of going bust from the casino's point of view. But JD does have these limits. Noone is placing bets of 1000 BTC or more. The max win is 1% of the invested capital, which makes good sense. There is no reason to limit that further. What we have here is a situation where someone appears to be actually beating the house edge over many thousands of bets. And this is intriguing, because from a statistical point of view this should not be possible. You can't win a coin toss came if the coin is balanced towards the house, no matter what system you use. -Michael House edge is 50.5% vs 49.5% |
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