Excellent question.  I didn't do a good job explaining it earlier:

When we mine new bitcoins into the physical coin addresses, it's not quite as simple as funding it like others do.  The traditional way would only involve making a bitcoin payment, and there's no risk of accidental double funding.

In our case, with the mining pool funding new coins, we actually spread out the work to our 175+ PH/s of miners, for them to mine the next block into the set of 25 coins.  (You can see this in the blockchain record.) In the normal case, whenever we successfully mine a block (and thus fund a coin), we reissue new instructions to all of our miners, for them to update the destination address, to now fund a different set of 25 coins.

However, when we find successive blocks very fast, in rare cases, we don't update the miners quickly enough, and they go ahead and find a new block, but deliver the coins to the same set of addresses, which had just been found, seconds or minutes earlier.  In that case, we now have twins.  The same 25 addresses now have been funded twice, by accident.

Rather than destroying the coins (by peeling sticker and redeeming the BTC value), we're making these special editions available for you to collect.

Like I said earlier, it takes a special mix of factors for this to happen.  We routinely mine consecutive blocks, sometimes even 3 in a row.  However, it's very rare that the instructions don't get propagated fast enough, where an address gets funded twice.

And with bitcoin, we can't recall the payment!  :-)

thanks,
Bobby

Some of you might like this... (if you are indeed the serious collectors!)

We had a technical error over the weekend, where we mined 2 blocks in very quick succession, and that resulted in the same coins being funded TWICE!  Normally, this doesn't happen, even if we do mine 2 successive blocks in succession.  

We're calling these "twins".  :-)

They were mined in these two successive blocks:
413,851 - https://blockchain.info/tx/3fa343fdb02e28ea8e7205499a692cfe810d9751aa85ecd16e02a40c8340214e
413,852 - https://blockchain.info/tx/5b9a7ee3e9c44f9385a82c910a8ece7db25a9b2ae0c41ee36dc042dabf94863e

There are exactly 25 coins in this batch, and this situation is quite RARE!

Even if we tried, we can't guarantee producing "twins" as it requires us mining two successive blocks, one right after the other.

In fact, we've mined other successive blocks in many other cases, and yet it doesn't result in twins.  (For example, no twins in these successive blocks: 413,942 & 413,943, as well as blocks 414,025 & 414,026)

Like all good things, there's a slight premium for this batch of 25 coins:
1 BTC premium, on top of the 2 BTC bitcoin value.  Total price is 3 BTC.
The coin still says "One Bitcoin", and it'll come in a nice black leather box.

Go here and get it now, before the general public finds out:
https://store.btcc.com/products/2016-v-series-one-bitcoin-rare-double-funding-error

Enjoy this little treat!  The early bird gets the worm!  :-)

thanks,
Bobby

Hi Everyone,

On behalf of BTCC, I want to make an apology to everyone here and all those who have had a bad experience with our customer support and replies.  We were really swamped with the orders and the huge demand.  (It exceeded our own internal estimates.)

Right now, our main customer support team has not yet been fully trained to deal with the onslaught of questions about BTCC Mint.  We hope to remedy that soon.  

Our first priority is to get the coins shipped out to all of you who pre-ordered them!  
We're aiming to send them out tomorrow, Tuesday, May 31.

In the mean time, if you haven't ordered yet, please do so soon during this limited introductory price.  (or they might all sell out!)

thanks,
Bobby

Thanks for the compliment on the design!  We like it very much as well.  It's truly excellent.  :-)

Sorry to inform you: for this V Series, we will only plan to sell them funded.

These coins will be funded straight from the block reward, so the bitcoins in there are brand new and never before spent.  These bitcoins represent the actual new bitcoins being mined in 2016, being added to the growing supply of bitcoins in circulation.

That's the whole point of this V Series of bitcoins from BTCC Mint.  For these reasons, this series will never be sold unfunded.  Sorry!

thanks,
Bobby

What does the "V" stand for?  It's a secret.  You'll just have to guess!  ;-)

Regarding total mintage, we haven't confirmed exactly how many we will make yet.

However, our plan is to discontinue this coin model after the block halving that's coming up in July.
This means that we will only be making this coin, the 2016 One Bitcoin, Titanium V Series, up until the block halving.
After that, we will make a new coin, which will be funded by block rewards of 12.5 BTC each.

This means that not only is this series limited, it can't possibly be made anymore after July of 2016.
After block halving, the newer coins will have 3 stars instead of 2 stars....

After the block halving, we will disclose how many were minted in total for this coin model.

Hope this makes sense!

thanks,
Bobby

Introductory prices will be available until June 15, or until we sell out our current batch!  :-)

See my previous post about total mintage.
In essence, we will only make a limited number of this edition, and will make a different edition after the block reward halving that will happen in July.

So go out and get your 2-star coins now before they sell out completely!  

thanks,
Bobby

Hope you like the video as much as I did!

Our team did a wonderful job with this video.  Kudos to a great marketing team at BTCC!
I'm very proud of all of them, especially the director!

:-)

(Is there a way to inline the video player here on the forum, so that everyone can see it?  Or is that bad practice?)

thanks,
Bobby

Sorry for the delays...

We were planning to ship them out today (Monday), but we've been swamped all weekend, to produce the coins to fulfill all of the pre-orders.
We're now aiming to send out the first batch tomorrow, Tuesday, May 31.

As for shipping to the USA, we're under the impression that US law does not allow us to sell these coins and ship into the United States.  Obviously, we're disappointed if that's really true.  We're actively investigating to see if this is indeed the case, or if there's a decent work around.  Until then, we're not directly shipping to USA customers for now.

(If you have more information and would like to share with us, or have good ideas, please email us at mint@btcc.com.)

thanks,
Bobby

 

See my previous post about "numbered" coins and serial numbers.

Regarding total mintage, we haven't confirmed exactly how many we will make yet.

However, our plan is to discontinue this coin model after the block halving.
This means that we will only be making this coin, the 2016 One Bitcoin, Titanium V Series, up until the block halving in July.
After that, we will make a new coin, which will be funded by block rewards of 12.5 BTC each.

This means that not only is this series limited, it can't possibly be made anymore after July of 2016.
After block halving, the newer coins will have 3 stars instead of 2 stars....

Hope this makes sense!

thanks
Bobby
 

Thanks!  We like the design very much as well.  :-)

All of these coins will indeed be funded.  This is what's special about the V Series... they will ALL be funded from the block reward, the so-called "coinbase" transaction of each block, as the first transaction in the block.  This can only be done by a large miner or mining pool, which is why this has never been done before for a physical bitcoin.  

See my previous post about the pricing.

Enjoy!

thanks,
Bobby

For this series, the coins will not be individually number, other than the fact that they are already properly (sequentially) numbered from the bitcoin blockchain.

Here's the more detailed explanation:

Unlike other physical coins, all of our V Series coins contain bitcoins straight from the bitcoin block reward, the so-called "coinbase" transaction.  As you know, right now, before the block halving, the reward is 25 BTC (plus fees) per block, so we're filling 25 coins for each block mined.

and since each block has a unique block height, then your BTCC Mint coins will indeed have a unique sequence number.  Just look at the block height, and the position of your coin address within that first transaction.

Basically, the coins are still serially numbered, and the best part: this is done via the public blockchain, with full proof. 

We will soon post the full list of all transactions mined into this Titanium V Series, One Bitcoin.

If you like individually numbered coins, maybe we'll think about that for a future product!  :-)

thanks,
Bobby

Sorry for the delay; we've been swamped with making the coins to fulfill all of the orders!

Only now, I'm getting to reply to the questions.  :-)

Limited-time introductory prices:
- 0.10 BTC for the single coins
- 0.15 BTC for the coin in box
- 1.00 BTC for the set of 10 coins (no box)

(you'll have to add bitcoin value and shipping&insurance to this, during checkout process.)

Material is Titanium!  You like it?

We were planning to ship today (Monday), but still swamped with last-minute packaging details.
Will aim to ship out tomorrow (Tuesday), May 31!

thanks,
Bobby

Yes

Hi everyone,

Here's a special trailer that BTCC put together to launch our new titanium physical bitcoins. Hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkmYwsd-VzU

We are proud to announce our latest offering from BTCC Mint, a new physical bitcoin made of Titanium.  It’s a large 43 mm coin, containing 1 BTC, which is newly mined from our mining pool.

Here is a selection of photos. Hope you like them. More to come later.









Pre-order now at http://mint.btcc.com/

Items will ship out on Monday, May 30.

Our Titanium physical bitcoins are large, at 43 mm size. See the photo today!

https://bt.cc/mnt12

The limited-time introductory price is only 1.10 BTC. With a nice box, it’s 1.15 BTC, and then shipping costs are additional.

Pre-order now at http://mint.btcc.com/

Items will ship out on Monday, May 30.

Here it is! #PhysicalBitcoin from BTCC Mint. 1 BTC in Titanium, newly mined. #InCryptoWeTrust

Come back tomorrow for more photos and pricing details. 

https://bt.cc/mnt11

Happy bitcoin pizza day!

Titanium is the ideal material to represent physical bitcoins: strong, lightweight, heat- and corrosion-resistant.  Spacecraft-grade titanium, carrying your bitcoin investments into the future.  In crypto we trust! 

Launching very soon... Stay tuned!

https://bt.cc/mnt10

Yes, it will be huge!  One million bits!
:-)

What would the ideal physical bitcoin be made of? Bitcoin is the world’s first and most successful digital cryptocurrency, the strongest of them all. What would be the ideal material? Come back tomorrow...

https://bt.cc/mnt9

Brand new uncirculated bitcoins, fresh from the blockchain block reward, the coinbase transaction. First time ever for a physical bitcoin! Newly mined, without any transaction records whatsoever.

https://bt.cc/mnt7

https://bt.cc/mnt8