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Problem solved! Though you might want want to look into the one that BItcoin Faucet uses, as Gavin describes here: - http://blog.bierfaristo.com/node/455But there are always many people wanting free bitcoins, even cent or sub-cent amounts. You'll get visits! Thanks for participating! |
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This MegaMillions madness is making me think about the long-term possibilities and risks of BitLotto.
Now since the winning hash is a SHA256 hash of: luckyblockhash+lotterynumbers I am comfortable trusting that a miner won't be holding on to any blocks mined to affect the results of BitLotto because at that time mining that block occurs the MegaMillions lottery results are not yet known.
One risk is ... what if the block isn't solved by the time the lottery starts? We've had hour plus delays between blocks before. I'm sure there are several solutions, including reverting to the last block solved before the lottery pick occurred I suppose. But not having this decided in advance could give someone an argument against the results on the off chance that this actually happens one day.
But the primary question I have has to do with the sha256 algorithm. The algorithm wasn't built to be used as a lottery picking system. Generally, using an algorithm for a purpose that it wasn't designed for can expose problems that might not normally exist when used for the algorithm's stated purpose. Using SHA256 for this alternate approach, is each "pick" truly random? Or is there some association where, lets say since the megamillions pick can only be 01 through 46 then does knowing that the character in the second to last character position won't exceed 4 mean that the resultant hash will be more likely to result in one that begins with one set of characteristics over another?
I don't know nor do I think that for the current sub-$1K BitLotto prize is there anyone putting much though into any using characteristics of SHA256 to gain an advantage at BitLotto. But with MegaMillions at $640 million or some similar number, at some point the BitLotto jackpot could grow to where if there is any gain possible, the incentive will be there for it to be found.
I've no idea the answer, I just wonder to what degree the question has already been considered.
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The idea is that the visitor can break a crate every 24 hours for free. What protections will there be from bots impersonating human actions? |
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HUGE numbers!
Is it? 56K according to the WSJ report. a total of 56,455 member VISA and MasterCard accounts were compromised. PSCU said fraudulent activity had been detected on a relatively small number of those cards — 876 accounts — and that the activity was geographically dispersed. As far as data breaches go, that's not huge. They're obviously not being generous with concrete info though. I'm sure at least one section of Visa's three football field-sized data center is positively humming right now looking for suspicious transactions: - http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-03-25/visa-data-center/53774904/1 |
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If you won the lottery you could just permanently raise the price of bitcoins. Set a buy order for $15 for 21 million bitcoins and no one could ever penetrate that floor.
Heh, and since there is just under 8.7 million BTC issued thus far, you can start out only needing about $130 million sitting at the exchanges to do that, and send the rest over the years as needed. Which really shows how little value this "experiment" called bitcoin is garnering where buying pressure from a single lotto winner can raise the BTC/USD exchange rate 10X (probably 100X) without even having to use more than the interest income from investing in decent paying bonds, for instance. And then to put that in perspective, consider this: "Wow, MegaMillions jackpot is BIG! So big in fact, if you won it 32,759 times you could pay off current National Debt!" - http://twitter.com/#!/pkelly99/status/185009848579129344 |
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Month 3. There's one bond, 5000 BTC @ 1.7% interest. MPOE sells 900 CALLs.
Month ends. Reserves = 900 BTC. Interest paid = 900 x 0.017 = 15.3 BTC.
I think that gives the answer that I was looking for. So by the first day of month 3 exactly 5,000 BTC at 1.7% was committed for use for month 3's reserves, but by the end of that, only 900 was actually needed. The remaining 4,100 BTC were not used and thus received no interest. I'm presuming interest is paid evenly to all who lent their 5,000 BTC then .. so the actual return for each BTC lent was not 1.7% but 0.306%, in this instance? |
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sgornick: any reason the 'bitcoin first' page is separate from the older History page?
Ya, probably so that the History page was more specific to bitcoin, but firsts was for trivia and only true firsts. Like maybe going to v0.6 release is enough to make it into the History, but not something that would go into firsts. At the same time, the first food truck to start using bitcoin might be something suitable for the Firsts page but would be extraneous in the Bitcoin History page. |
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After the 30th your deposits can only be used for May and onwards, so take advantage. I'm really struggling to follow some of the basics, apparently. First, lets start with the calendar. The options month April 2012 began Friday, March 30th, correct? Does this funding method described here follow a calendar month or does it correspond to the dates for these "options" months (e.g., April 2012 options month runs Friday March 30th through the end of Thursday April 26th.) If it is a calendar month then Friday the 30th is not the last day of the calendar month, so I'm confused. So then next, I am trying to figure out the relevance of the amount. Using a best guess estimate the capital retained for April will be in the 3k to 5k BTC range.
Right now, a few hours into the April options month (thus probably close to the actual number that occurred at exactly midnight, GMT) I see: April 2012
STRIKE | CALL BID | CALL ASK | OPEN
4.5 | 0.71264471 | 1.39455099 | 1493
5.0 | 0.49614665 | 1.02402041 | 300
STRIKE | PUT BID | PUT ASK | OPEN
4.5 | 0.52864471 | 0.90797308 |-1000
5.0 | 0.76348382 | 1.34118064 | 2
6.5 | 1.66619466 | 2.77230290 | 100
Then for May 2012 there is:
STRIKE | CALL BID | CALL ASK | OPEN
4.5 | 1.10729302 | 1.89189439 | 99
5.0 | 0.87283031 | 1.62887959 | -200
5.5 | 0.61814219 | 1.43481613 | -300
So, I'm wondering is it from these numbers that you determine your capital needs for April? Do you then estimate? If so, then does that estimate limit how many options you can offer (to where the buying and selling of CALLs and PUTs aren't cancelling most of each other out) throughout the the April options month? Or am I missing something completely obvious? |
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lets also price them at $5 each... Ok, so that's where the problem lies. Today there aren't very many bitcoins offered at $5 or less. The Mt. Gox Live chart shows only about 25,000 bitcoins offered for $5 or less on that one exchange. Sure there are other exchanges, but the vast majority of bitcoins offered for sale are still listed on Mt. Gox. And there isn't much interest from people willing to sell their bitcoins for $5 or less. - http://www.mtgoxlive.comIf you wanted to buy in one fell swoop every bitcoin offered for sale on Mt. Gox no matter what the price is, that would only find 270,000 BTC offered (though over time additional offers to sell at the higher prices would certainly begin to appear). - http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com (click on Show Calculators and then enter a few million dollars in the Buy Bitcoin field.) Here's the entry in the FAQ that answers your question: - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#What_if_someone_bought_up_all_the_existing_Bitcoins.3FSo, if you were intent on spending every last bit of the lotto jackpot money on bitcoins, that would be possible as new sellers would emerge when the values got higher but you'll run out of your lottery money long before all the sellers run out of all their remaining bitcoins. |
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Not sure if joking.
Wasn't trying... how many bitcoins are there in existence? Oh, you're good. I'm not falling for that though. I've got my spidey-troll sense working. |
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I'm putting 90 percent of into bitcoin whatcha think of this ?  You couldn't put 90% into bitcoin... there aren't that many bitcoin  Not sure if joking. |
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That's a first around these parts ,,, |
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This design would be very modular, easy to extend, and easy to break into parts for many people to work on.
I don't know SMF nor much about this project, but even if work on this new system were to be started today, it is many months (or years ?) before this live, production forum would be migrated over to it, right? Couldn't there be developments to improve (fork) SMF to fix the worst problems in the meantime. For instance, the ability to stop showing certain threads in the "show new replies"? Right now there is data destruction occurring as users delete their posts in hopes that they will no longer keep seeing those old threads reappear. Even if the SMF fork is an all-volunteer effort, at least it is something so that progress forward can start occurring sooner rather than later, no? I've been too busy (and unmotivated) to do any coding, though I've been thinking about the design a lot.
Considering how much larger this community is than it was back in November when the first post was made, perhaps there is someone capable and willing to take your design ideas and with the help of this forum's community, launch development as an open source project right off the bat and start building? Let the bounty go towards building community for the project or whatever. |
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Does Bitcoinica have authentication using an API key, or does this app expect the user to provide the account's username and password?
And just to clarify, you are not affiliated with Bitcoinica -- this is something you created as a third party?
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Here are a few feature requests. 1.) I'ld like an easy way to, in My Wallet, to print just the public address and QR code for an address. The Receive money tab does this, it just doesn't print nicely and has more than is necessary. I would put that paper with the address in my wallet in my back pocket and hand it out to someone later (for them to send bitcoins to me). I know I can also use Wolfram Alpha or something like that too for generating a QR Code + text but it just isn't a nice check-sized slip of paper convenient to carry around. Here's an example: - http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=qr+code%3A+bitcoin%3A1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3hRbph4UN (And yes, I know the BlockChain.info mobile app for Android likely does this, but until we have 100% smartphone penetration and this app on all smartphones, there will be the need for paper-based or electronic transfer of the data.) 2.) I'ld like to be able to use a different address for notifications than the e-mail address in the "account details". Specifically, I'ld like to have the notifications go to my mobile phone's e-mail address so that I get alerts. Right now if I were to change the one address for the account to my mobile phone, then that is where backups of my wallet will be sent each time I click "email backup" -- something I want to do periodically. I might even want multiple notification addresses -- so that my phone and my normal e-mail both will get payment alerts. 3.) Scheduled Wallet backups sent by email. Can I request these be sent on a schedule? e.g., Daily / Weekly / Monthly (and a checkbox "only when the wallet has changes"). I know BlockChain.info stores the encrypted wallet for my account but if some day the site were to go offline (say a multi-day denial of service attack or something) I still would like access to the funds in my wallet and having a local backup copy allows me to access the wallet's keys. So having recent backups is of value. Not having to remember to send those manually would be a nice feature. |
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They have received at least one request from a Bitcoiner already..
This should be the point driven home to every merchant and ecommerce site out there. The merchant is not doing bitcoiners a favor by accepting bitcoin. Merchants that accept bitcoin are doing themselves a favor by accepting bitcoin. The fifth or fiftieth property management company to accept bitcoins won't get much bang from it, but the first one certainly is, and will continue doing so. It's like Meze Grill in Manhattan. How many of us know what that is yet couldn't name another restaurant within a ninety mile radius of there. The fifth restaurant in your town to accept bitcoins won't get as much bitcoin business as the first one will have received though. Each metro area needs the first before there will be a fifth but the biggest benefit goes to the first mover. And the thing is, they don't even need to go in full throttle (i.e., modifying the software for the web interface) like this property manager did. A brick and mortar business can print up and laminate a few bitcoin address QR Codes using My Wallet ( http://BlockChain.info/wallet ) and set the account's notification settings so that an email alert is sent (email or to an SMS / mobile text message number if nothing else) so the merchant will automatically know whenever a payment is made. Yes, that does involve doing a manual calculation to figure the amount of bitcoins for the sale but if that occurs enough that it becomes a problem then that means the experiment is a fantastic success -- time to move up to using Bit-Pay's or Mt. Gox's mobile point of sale app or one of the many options available. But getting that first one of each is key. I'm just not sure what will need to happen before there is a "first of each" in each city for each category. In this case, the business owner is a bitcoiner (or at least is married to one). Is that the only hope though for getting the "first of each" onboard? |
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