I've seen an escrow involved in someone losing $50,000, and everyone still trusts him.

What's the point of signing a message from the deposit address itself, instead of an old staked address? Anyone can sign that exact same message with a brand new address, all it does is prove that whoever signed it, has access to that address. It doesn't even prove that julerz12 ownes it.

That's always been the case.

Actually, unless OP pays them back, I believe a Flag is needed. Doesn't matter if OP did it on purpose or really "got hacked", by ignoring basic safety precautions, this applies:

If it's a lot of money, why are you using a hot wallet?

That's not even a rookie mistake, and you're not a rookie.

From the campaign's perspective, the result is the same.

Good luck with that
The good thing of this list, apart from being the answer to life, the universe, and everything^*, is that you can't overtake me as long as I'm a Merit source

^* Not plagiarism, know your classics.

Sniping isn't possible, as each new bet will extend the auction.

I think OP was overly enthusiastic. It happens, and if the comments are used to improve the site, it can still work.

LN would be good, but unfortunately it doesn't work with the required transparency of all bets.

In Bitcoin block data available in CSV format, I have several columns with "usd". It's probably easiest to use generation_usd, and divide it by the block reward.

So import those 2 files into a spreadsheet:
https://loyce.club/blockdata/generation.txt
https://loyce.club/blockdata/reward_usd.txt

Note that there is no "one Bitcoin price". It's probably a good estimate, but different sources can have slightly different values. My data comes from Blockchair.com, which didn't exist in the first years of Bitcoin and I have no idea where they got the data from.

At least it apologizes for it's mistakes. Wait until it gets the power to silence you as a witness

I confirm the same: prizes received 3 and 2 days ago. Thanks

Winning because crypto goes down still feels like a bitter sweet victory. So far, the 2023-edition is much more promising with 4 users above $1200 already!

Even "satoshi bids" increase the Prize. I'd like to see this game with much higher bidding, see what happens if there are 4 bids around 0.005BTC. If a fifth user joins, the prize goes up by at least (98% of) 0.005BTC, even if he bids just one satoshi above the highest bid.
I'm still unsure what happens if someone increases his bid, or if that isn't possible at all and he has to make a new bid from a new address for the full amount.

I just reduce my screen brightness

There's no point in keeping loyce........onion in a list of removed block explorers. I don't think it will ever come back, and even if it does, it may be on a new domain.

This is now my favourite list

Using a Linux Live DVD is quite easy nowadays. Copy an unsigned transaction from a watch-only hot wallet, sign it from a Live Linux OS without any storage or internet, copy it back, broadcast it, and all you have to wipe is the RAM.

When I first checked the Past Auctions, all of them had either no players, or just one. That's a pitty, I think this game will only be fun once a few people join and bid against each other. I like the concept. The more people join, the bigger the prize gets!

Thoughts

• I can't "double click > copy" the Bidding address, because there's a link under it. Can you add a 1-click "copy" icon?
• To stop games for taking forever: how about decreasing the 144 blocks between the last bid and the end of the auction by just one block for each bid? With the exception that if 2 bids are made within the same block, that still only reduces it by one block (to prevent someone from dropping it to zero instantly by making 144 bids). For most bets, it won't matter, but at least it will give each game a hard upper limit in duration.
• Bidding the exact same amount as the previous highest bid may work to "settle" a bidding war into 50-50 (or 49-49 after the house edge) prizes.
• Do you have to bid from the same address to raise your bid (either by using another input from the same address, using the sending address to return the change to, or by funding it from another address)?
• What happens if someone uses more than one sending address (in one transaction)? Do you randomly pick one? I think this is important to know when someone wants to raise their bid.
• The required number of confirmations (5) is still quite large for penny amounts.

Game 32
I joined Game 32 (should it be called Auction 32?) with 0.00004779 BTC, after a few other players joined. My deposit with 0 confirmations was instantly added to the list of Participants (but not to the total Prize yet). After a few confirmations, everything looked as expected.


At first, only the winning addresses were shown on the leaderboard. I would have expected all transactions to show up, that can be useful if someone's deposit is already beaten by someone else before it had 5 confirmations. This was updated already before I posted my review. Follow-up question: can you highlight the current highest bid(s)? And how does it show it if one address made multiple deposits?

After someone bid 1 sat more than my bid, it gave me the chance to see if I can raise my existing bet by depositing 0.00000666 BTC again from the same address. I think the amount was added to the total prize, but my Bid wasn't increased (after 40 confirmations). My guess is this is not the intended behaviour. It turns out you can't raise your bid, you can only make a new higher bid.
Update: Game 32 ended, and my last deposit was never shown. But 98% of it was added to the Prize.

It's common sense for me too, that's why I was so surprised escrows are used in the wrong way. And considering the large fees they charge, I would have expected better.

That's tricky: if you could know that for sure, they wouldn't need an escrow so you always have to assume the worst. I've seen escrow scams on Bitcointalk get quite advanced.

Here's another scenario: 5 Bitcoin was given to an escrow to inspire confidence, and asked back right before they pulled an exit scam. In this case, the escrow should have negotiated for instance a 7 day cooldown time before accepting the deal.

That's one of the reasons I never started such a service. I've only escrowed a few times when asked.

If you think there's a maximum to random numbers, you couldn't be more wrong. If you try often enough, anything is possible.
It may be nice to do the math: I (years ago) called this the "Landen-strategy" (named after a user who played this for months and won big before losing even bigger). Take a look at the spreadsheet, it's a low chance high win martingale strategy. If you play one round, the chance to win is incredibly high, as long as your bankroll is high enough and you're willing to risk everything for relatively small gains.
If you play this often enough, you will eventually lose everything.

I'm still working on my review, but I think you're overthinking it Or maybe I just like simple websites without eye candy, and maybe we got used to having to read fine prints everywhere. If I'd have to write an Howto for this website, I'd write: Click Current Auctions > pick one > send Bitcoin to the Bidding address from your own wallet. That's it.

The Prize (in Bitcoin).

I only add new profiles (and the occasional name change if I see it), there's no need to scrape all profiles again.

Update: I kinda expected this question to be in LoyceV's complete List of all Bitcointalk usernames. The list in that topic has all usernames (the one in this topic only has the usernames with Merit transactions).

You can use FixedFloat.com to exchange BAT^ERC20 to something more useful, but you'll need to consolidate them in one wallet first.

This is the tricky part, and I think many of the existing "established" escrow providers on Bitcointalk fail in this part. Have you read Best practices for Bitcointalk escrow providers? If not, I encourage you to do so.

Before accepting any escrow deal, ask yourself if there's any scenario possible in which none of the involved parties can really prove what happened. If that's the case, I wouldn't accept it.

It's not too complex, I think that's a normal password One that's actually a password, and not just some simple characters.

Once you use a password manager, there's no reason not to use decent passwords anymore. Except for certain websites that restrict the use of characters and length of the password (to reduce security because their system can't handle it).

Of course. And I can remember even a few of them. But that's not enough. I just checked: for webshops alone, I have more than 50 different accounts, all with their own unique strong password.

I can't think of such a situation. I don't do banking on my phone, but have my debit and creditcard with me. I have cash and an encrypted paper wallet in my wallet, I have an emergency loan system in place on Bitcointalk. We have emergency services that arrive within a few minutes, and the country is so densely populated I can crawl to a house in a few meters. I don't need any of my passwords in an emergency.