What are some good places to bet on player statistics in the NBA with crypto?

I know that Nitrogen offers some lines but AFAIK very occasionally. Are there better options out there in terms of the level of comprehensiveness in covering all player statistical categories and options for players?

Fantasy bball seems to be a proxy way of doing this but I'd like to bet directly, if possible.

Thank you!

In some casinos where you can invest your bitcoin into the bankroll and earn from it, you are able to also leverage your investment so that the amount of profits/losses you make are magnified without having to actually deposit more money into the investment pot.

What kelly multiplier do you personally use and what do you think is the right balance between safety and risk?

Let me know with your replies

My concern is that there is little room for error with geometric growth.  Lets say that things are happily humming along with bandwidth and block size both increasing by 50% per year.  Then a decade goes by where bandwidth only increases by 30% per year.  In that decade block size grew to 5767% while bandwith grew to 1379%.  So now peoples connections are only 24% as capable of handling the blockchain.

Not a big deal?  Well, except that we can expect the power of nodes to follow some sort of curve ("exponential" in the vernacular) such that most nodes are barely above the threshold to be viable.  Meaning that this event would mean that the majority of nodes would shut down, likely permanently.

There have been two polls about the new unit's name in recent days, one by me and one by someone else.  "Bit"  leads the pack in both polls but there is no clear consensus.

This poll is between the 2nd and 3rd most popular choices in my previous poll.

In about a week I will make another poll, pitting the winner of this poll vs "bit".

EDIT: PLEASE MAKE SURE TO VOTE FOR TWO

I think that I wasn't getting many people voting in the poll because there were too few choices.  So I added a bunch of popular choices.  If we each just vote for one it will be hard to come to a consensus, so vote for two.

Bitpay is making the move to 100 satoshi's being the main unit.  The only strong contenders for names are "bitcoin" (redefining the basic unit) and "bit" (which conflicts with the other uses of the word, such as talking about how many bits a private key is).

I was tempted to put "other" as an option but the reality is that no other option really has sufficient support.  If you prefer something else please vote anyway.  We need to know which of the two popular choices you are willing to support.

Bitcoin as property = 0% tax most of the time, sometimes up to 20%

Bitcoin as currency = 25% tax most of the time, sometimes up to 39.6%

Also you will realize that the record keeping hassle for using it as currency is identical, if you stop to think about it.  Plus wallet software will take care of this soon enough.

There is no practical advantage to it being treated as currency.

[Upon any sale of Bitcoin to Coinbase, all settlements or payments by Coinbase for such transaction shall be paid in local currency (e.g., USD) at the applicable Sell Price Conversion Rate quoted on the Coinbase Site at the time that you approved the transaction.]

Just to be clear up front: this is not about a cancelled transaction.

On March 22nd I sent 60 BTC to Coinbase:

Complete March 21, 2014, at 05:48PM PDT
Amount Received
60.00 BTC
From
an external account
To
Avatar You

After six blocks I sold the 60 BTC to Coinbase:

Complete March 21, 2014, at 06:57PM PDT
Amount Sent
60.00 BTC
From
Avatar You
To
Avatar Coinbase (transfers@coinbase.com)
Message

Sold 60.00 BTC for for $33,713.51.

Payment will be sent to Internet Credit Union ***** by Wednesday Mar 26, 2014.

Note that in the message Coinbase is acknowledging that I sold them 60 BTC for $33,713.51.  The money never arrived.  The transaction was not cancelled.  If it were, it would have said "cancelled" instead of completed.  If I had done nothing at this point I would have no money of either kind: the 60 BTC were permanently gone and I didn't have my $33,713.51.

So I went onto their tech support chat and here is the conversation that we had:

→hello, it says that my payment is complete but my bank account does not show the money

→I sold BTC on Saturday

Ken: Hm, what's the account email? I'll take a look.

→hello_good_sir@email.com

Ken: That's odd, it looks like the transaction was cancelled but I do see that we still took the BTC. We should be able to fix this for you, but you'll have to email support@coinbase.com about this due to the amounts involved.

Ken: Sorry about the confusion here, but it's something we should be able to correct.

→ok so I write and email and what will happen?

Ken: I can't guarantee anything since I won't be the person reviewing it, but most likely they'll be able to push through the original sale for you.

→ok, thanks

At this point the price had rallied.  If they had given me the BTC back then they would be losing money, because I would be able to sell the BTC for a much higher price, close to $40k if I remember correctly.  However I was content to get the money at the price that we originally agreed on.

Also this is how the Terms of Service say that things should be handled:

3.3. Sale Transactions. Once you have successfully completed all necessary verifications with respect to your Coinbase Account (as described at https://coinbase.com/verifications), you may sell Bitcoin to Coinbase (subject to applicable transaction limits as described at https://coinbase.com/verifications). Coinbase will instruct its bank to initiate a credit to your linked payout method, in an amount equal to: (a) the total number of Bitcoin you wish to sell multiplied by the Sell Price Conversion Rate quoted on the Coinbase Site at the time that you initiate the transaction, minus (b) the applicable Exchange Fee (defined below). Coinbase will then initiate a transfer of the relevant amount of Bitcoins from your Coinbase Wallet to Coinbase's own Bitcoin wallet. The related funds will thereafter be credited to your linked payout method. It may take up to two (2) to three (3) business days. Upon any sale of Bitcoin to Coinbase, all settlements or payments by Coinbase for such transaction shall be paid in local currency (e.g., USD) at the applicable Sell Price Conversion Rate quoted on the Coinbase Site at the time that you approved the transaction.

So I sent an email to tech support:

Mar 26, 2014 06:22PM Hello_Good_Sir's_Real_name
Hello, on March 22nd I attempted to sell 60 BTC from my account (hello_good_sir@email.com).
The website said that it would take until the 26th (today). The
dollars have not arrived in my bank account yet but your website shows
that the transaction has been completed and CoinBase has taken my BTC. I used your chat window to
speak with Ken and he told me to send an email to you due to the amounts
involved. Please fix this situation.


Thanks,
Hello_Good_Sir

Here is his response:

Mar 27, 2014 11:57AM Josh
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

I'm very sorry for the delay, for some reason the bank transfer never started. I've gone ahead and returned the BTC to your account manually. If you initiate the sell again you should have the money in your bank account soon.

Again, our apologies for the delay!

So "some reason" being a bug in their software.  The problem with getting the BTC back is that prices had fallen quite a bit.  Here is the transaction of them giving us their BTC instead of our dollars.

Amount Received
60.00 BTC
From
Avatar Coinbase (internal@coinbase.com)
To
Avatar You
Message

Returning BTC from sell that failed to start.

Now one could argue that this is not a big deal, when trading you lose some and you win some.  I am not a trader.  I buy and hold and never sell because I am saving for my family's future.  I really, really need money right now to take a burden off of a loved one and so I forced myself to part with these bitcoins.

So I write back:

Mar 28, 2014 11:14AM Hello_Good_Sir
Thank you, Josh, for your help.

But on March 22nd I sold you 60 BTC for $33,713.51, please see the attached screenshot. It is not my fault that you did not transfer my dollars to my bank account. Giving me your 60 BTC instead of my dollars is not a solution to your mistake. Please initiate the transfer of $33,713.51 to my bank account.

Best wishes,
Hello_Good_Sir
Attachments | hello_good_sir_proofofsale.png

So now Josh should just recognize his mistake, take back Coinbase's BTC and give us our dollars.  Actually his coworker Alex just blew me off completely:

Mar 28, 2014 02:27PM Alex
Hi there Hello_Good_Sir,

Unfortunately we cannot initiate ACH bank transfers manually from our end.

Umm.... then who can?  What a blatant lie.  Maybe Alex can't initiate a bank transfer, but if that is the case then why is he dealing with my case?  Shouldn't someone with the power to fix things work on my case?

So it was Friday night and we realized that we weren't going to get this issue resolved in our favor at least until Monday, if ever.  Meanwhile we have an urgent need for the money and the price is falling fast.  We think about suing Coinbase but we don't have the money to hire lawyers and we don't have years to deal with this problem.  We need money now.  So we decide, as an emergency measure to recover some of our funds, to sell Coinbase's 60 BTC in this transaction:

Complete March 28, 2014, at 08:07PM PDT
Amount Sent
60.00 BTC
From
Avatar You
To
Avatar Coinbase (transfers@coinbase.com)
Message

Sold 60.00 BTC for for $29,747.96.

Payment will be sent to Internet Credit Union ***** by Wednesday Apr 2, 2014.

So we get most of the money that we need now, though it is going to be a hit on the bank account to make up the difference.  An additional benefit of doing this, is that the amount that they owe me still ($3965.55) is less than the maximum amount recoverable in my state's small claims court.

I decided to not post this until I got the $29,747.96 out of my Internet Credit Union account, just in case Coinbase tries to take the dollars back.

Update: Coinbase apologized and gave me bitcoins equal to the difference, so that I can sell the bitcoins and receive the dollars.  I consider this case to be suitably resolved.

I am a big believer in Bitcoin and intend to hold for the long term, however I have another opportunity so I tried to sell a portion of my bitcoin on Coinbase recently.  I don't want to give the specifics of my situation yet, because they are in the process of giving me most of my money.  The end result is that they are stealing a few thousand dollars from me.  I have evidence and will likely take this to court.

Not only is Coinbase robbing me, but they are also robbing themselves of future business.  I'm not a bitcoin millionaire (yet) but I do have a three-digit number of coins (glad I got in when I did!).  The amount that they are robbing me of is nothing compared to the fees that they could have collected from me.

Something to keep in mind if you are thinking about using Coinbase.

I used to use MtGox to buy BTC and I have had only good experiences with them.  However I hear that their USD wire transfers are very slow now.  Is bitstamp the best alternative?

There is no way that I am doing some sort of local bitcoins thing.  The amount of money involved is too much.

I would like to look at the code that creates a random number, then makes a private key from that, then makes the address from that.

I looked here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/src

I checked in a few likely files and didn't see it.  I realized that I might not recognize it when I see it.  So please point me to the file name and function name.

My goal is to make an offline paper wallet generator where the user generates the random number by hand (by shuffling a deck of cards multiple times).  This way I will not have to trust the random number generator.  I don't want to trust anything except myself.  I will make the source code for my program available.

This thread is for debating the merits of microbits instead of millibitcoins.  This discussion is for people who are already convinced that the current price is a barrier to further adoption.  If you do not accept this premise then there is no point posting in this thread.  Ok, so here are my arguments in favor of microcoins:

Millibitcoins is long and awkward.  The fact that it can be shortened with slang is not sufficient to overcome this.

The main appeal behind the name "millibitcoins" is that it uses a metric prefix.  If metric prefixes are so great, why isn't the Euro metric?  How come there is a 100€ bill instead of a h€ bill (1 hectoeuro)?  How come there is a 10c (10 cent) coin issued instead of a d€ (decieuro) coin?  The people designing the euro believed that metric prefixes didn't have any advantage over a more normal type of currency.  I agree with them.

So why am I proposing a coin that seems to use a metric prefix?  The difference is that "micro" has a meaning beyond the metric system.  It comes from a Greek word meaning "small", and this word has entered modern usage to mean very small.  People are very comfortable with the word "micro" as evidenced by the line of toys called "micro machines", the use of microscopes, slang like "micropenis" and so on.  People from all walks of live feel comfortable with the word "micro".  "Milli", on the other hand, is not widely used as a standalone concept.

Notice that I am suggesting microbits instead of microbitcoins.  Again, the purpose of this change is to make something easier to say.  You could argue that microbit is the word for one millionth of a bit, and thus it might seem like some sort of computer terminology.  However actual computer bits are not divisible and measuring data rates in microbits would be absurd.  So there is no conflict.

Hopefully by now I've convinced you that microbit is a superior name, but why set the value of a microbit at 100 satoshis?  (well besides pleasing the metric people).

The answer is that it is hard to get people to accept a change, and this might be our last chance to change it.  Right now it wouldn't be hard to switch to microbits.  We need to convince two people: a developer for Bitcoin-Qt and Mark Karpeles (MtGox).  If these two entities switch over to pricing things in a new unit everyone will switch over.  Now imagine trying to switch from millibitcoins to microbits sometime in the distant future.  Now we have to convince Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Paypal, Amazon, Walmart, etc... and all of the other companies that handle bitcoins.

Another reason is that the microbit is a good size.  Right now the world money supply is about 60 trillion dollars.  Someday this may all be in bitcoin.  If there are 18 million bitcoins (some get lost) that's 3.33 million dollars per bitcoin, which means that a satoshi will be worth $0.03 and a microbit would be worth $3.33 in today's money.  You would also be able to use two decimal places because there would be 100 satoshis to a microbit.  That would be appealing to people.

Ok that's great, but that may never happen.  What about now?  Well right now the price is something like $106 for one bitcoin.  That's written from the perspective of someone who thinks in bitcoin (someone who is selling).  We need to change it to the perspective of someone who is buying.  Instead imagine if the price were shown as 9434 microbits for a dollar.  As you can imagine, that would be very appealing to many people.  It also will help people wrap their price around the scarcity of bitcoins.  Right now you can tell people that the price is going up due to the scarcity of bitcoin, but they don't understand it.  Now imagine if the price goes from 9434 microbits for a dollar, down to 8355 microbits for a dollar, down to 6110 microbits to a dollar.  Look how obvious the scarcity is now.  This explains how ripple (which shows prices this way and has a very small unit) was able to get market cap that rivals bitcoin so quickly, despite the fact that bitcoin has four years and a million users whereas ripple is completely new and unproven.

So, thoughts?

I need an interesting problem, but more importantly I need data.  Relevant citable sources are somewhat important.

Last year I did a couple of semester projects on various topics and I kept hitting the same problem.  I would pick something really interesting and then be unable to find data (or people who said that they would give it to me didn't come through), or I would pick something original and nothing had been written about it by researchers (and thus I wasn't able to cite anything).  So then I would switch topics and I was already behind the rest of the class.  I don't want to be in this situation so I want to make sure that I have the data before I commit to a topic.

First of all, about me:  I am a grad student in statistics.  I am not actually that good at statistics but I am good enough.  I know how to program but I am more familiar with old-timey stuff (C++, x86) and the theory (turing machines) than web programming.  So writing a webcrawler is probably out of the question, but once I get the data onto my harddrive I will have no trouble processing it.

So what kind of data can I get?  I know that the blockchain is public information but I am guessing that it isn't in a user-friendly format.  I know that exchanges have historical information, but I know that bitcoin prices fluctuate and are often influenced by major events (mtgox hacked, pirate40, news coverate).  Apparently silk road does 2 million in business per month?  Do they release this information or are people checking out the block chain?  What about miners?  What kind of information is available on them?

As for my topic, that would mostly depend on what kind of data I can get my hands on.  I am thinking that it might be interesting to try to categorize addresses by their transaction behavior.  Remember that this has to be on statistics, so I have to study this from a data-centric perspective.  Talking about the protocol or the economic model using logic isn't an option, I have to focus on data.


If you can help me I would appreciate it, and maybe interest a few people in bitcoin.  Thanks.

Here's what we need: Merchants need to be able to allow customers to pay in bitcoin without ever having to have bitcoin.  Here is how it would work:

A merchant would get an account with an exchange.  He would put a little bitcoin icon on his website.  The customer would see it and click the button.

Clicking the button would query the exchange for the current price and calculate a price in bitcoins, possibly with a markup, and an address to send them to.  The customer would then send the coins.  The exchange would then sell the coins and credit the merchant, minus a small fee.  The merchant would never at any point own a bitcoin.

Things to think about: when are the bitcoins sold?  The price fluctuates.  The exchange has to quote a price to the customer and then stand by it.  If it sells at that point it can be sure that it won't lose money when the price suddenly goes up.  However that is risky for the exchange because it has to sell some of its bitcoins simply in response to someone clicking on a button.  Someone could click the button hundreds of times, forcing a massive sell-off.  Not good.

Perhaps the exchange should wait until the money has been sent, when there are 0 confirmations.  In this case it is still vulnerable to attacks, but they would have to be more sophisticated, involving broadcasting false transactions.  Additionally now the quote will be slightly out of date.  There is a risk of the exchange losing money due to rate changes, though of course it could gain as well.

The next option is waiting for confirmation before selling the coins.  This makes it harder/impossible to manipulate the market but exposes the exchange to some risk if the currency fluctuates.

For an exchange this could be a major source of revenue.  It would get money from the merchant.  It would create more demand for people to buy bitcoins on exchanges so it would get some of that traffic (all exchanges would benefit).  There would be some risk due to fluctuating exchange rates but if that were a concern it could charge a little bit of a markup, like maybe just by quoting a price 2% higher than it should (so if the item should cost 1 btc the customer would have to pay 1.02 and the merchant would only get 1 btc worth of usd (well actually a little less, because he is paying a fee too).

Actually another way that this could work is that there would be no merchant fee.  No merchant fee?  Merchants would love that.  It means pushing the cost onto the bitcoin consumer.  I think that nearly all of us would pay 1% more if we could pay in bitcoin.

Bitcoin has the potential to be the global currency.  However it has several usability issues.  One such issue is the minimum transaction size and the non-proportional fees.  (Speaking of fees, is there a single sentence explanation?)

I have seen some discussion on micropayments.  I believe that eventually everyone will come around to the idea that we need micropayments.  However I want to speed this consensus up by basically remarking that there is no such thing as a micropayment.

40% of the world population lives on less than 0.1B per day.  Ok so these people are probably too poor to use bitcoin anytime soon.  What about....

Israel, Czech Republic, Portugal, and Poland?  The median income in all of these countries is less than 2B per day.

In Turkey and Mexico the median income is less than 1B per day.

For the purpose of bitcoin adoption let's divide the world into four groups:

Community Founders (CF): these were the first miners and merchants.  These people got into bitcoin when bitcoin was worthless.  These people are few in number and by definition we have recruited as many of them as we are going to.

Savvy Early Adopers (SEA): these are the people that jumped in in the last two months.  Most of them are programmers, mathematicians, or engineers.  Most of them are libertarians of one sort or another.  These grognards are willing to put up with user-unfriendly software.  Most of these people have been recruited into the bitcoin community.  These people got in because they wanted bitcoin to succeed AND they believe that it has a chance.

Hip Young People (HYP): these are the people that read all of the recent articles.  They have gadgets and are comfortable with the internet.  Unlike the SEA these HYP are "tech savvy" but don't really know much about computers.  They have iPads and Twitter but are too scared to backup a wallet.dat.  These people are also not interested in bitcoin for its foundation in Austrian Economics, in fact they often progressives.  These people just want to be hip and maybe make online payments easier.

Regular People (RP): everyone else.  Many of these people think that we need the TSA in airports, want to censor the internet, think that young people just need to work harder, etc...

So why am I describing these groups of people?  Well we have to if we want to understand the price dynamics at work here.

The CF got into bitcoin for whatever reasons, often the same reasons as the SEA.  However the key difference is that the SEA were skeptical or hadn't heard of bitcoin.  When bitcoins were less than a penny you pretty much had to be an enthusiast to get interested.  Eventually bitcoins hit parity with the dollar.  Then people got interested.

Suddenly people like me (I'm a SEA) got interested.  I knew about bitcoin for two years but I didn't get involved because I believed that the government would shut it down before it got too big to shut down.  This group became interested in bitcoin because of the price point.  It was clear that serious money was backing this thing and that it had a chance.  This group has no problem with the decimal point.  We are comfortable enough with numbers smaller than one.  We can work with decimals.  We drove the price to $19 and then once media attention hit we foolishly drove it to $30, thinking that people would join in.

However all of the SEA are already in, now we have to recruit HYP.  If there is one thing I know about Hip Young People it is that they don't know math that well.  Most of them can't multiply fractions, much less add them.  Do you really think that they are going to understand that the price of bitcoin doesn't matter?  They saw that the price was $30 and decided that they couldn't justify spending $100 for a measly three coins.  These people would have paid $100 for thirty coins.  They would have paid $100 for three hundred coins.

Xbox live has points.  80 points cost $1.  Nintendo Wii has points 100 points cost $1  Isn't it logical to suggest that a bitcoin should be worth LESS than a dollar?  Wouldn't it be great if a bitcoin was worth $0.10?  Then one bitcoin would be an excellent "tip" for a website that you liked.  It would also be an excellent chip size for online poker, and you could download a song for 8 of them.  Maybe you could play a game online and each time you download a new part of the game you would send 3 bitcoins to pay for it.  No fractions, no decimals.

So... what am I proposing?  I am proposing that anytime the bitcoin hits one dollar the decimal point moves one place.  We would start by moving it two places.  We might never have to move it again if bitcoin stabilizes.  Even if it does keep moving it would just be a thing that people get used to.  If we do it would be built into the client by then and there would be a huge announcement screen when you opened up the client.

The simple reality is that people can't handle decimals, and that people would be much more willing to buy bitcoins that are worth less than a dollar that are usable for micropayments.  People are much more willing to use kilocoins than they are millicoins.

I believe that bitcoin is a fundamentally sound idea, but that it will languish until the decimal point is dealt with in a way that seems sensible for people who cannot understand math beyond the 4th grade level.  I believe that bitcoin will NEVER get to $100 (nominally), but that its value will continue to grow each time the decimal point is moved.

[On mtgox.com]

Hi, about a month ago I bought some bitcoins on MtGox.  I have decided to move my coins to my computer.  I installed the bitcoin client from bitcoin.org and looked at my address.  I then went to MtGox and initiated a test withdrawal.  Shortly thereafter I had one fewer bitcoin on MtGox.  I have been hoping for that bitcoin to show up on the bitcoin client but it has not.  It has been over 24 hours.  I have checked my MtGox history and it says that they sent me a bitcoin.  It shows the address that they sent it to, which is the same that I am receiving to.  Is MtGox broken?

On mtgox.com
06/03/11 15:17   Withdraw BTC   1wqtFZSdMdxBwut2STY9tqN4sayKamFmM   -1   0   (redacted)   (redacted)

On bitcoin client
Your Bitcoin Address: 1wqtFZSdMdxBwut2STY9tqN4sayKamFmM
Balance: 0.00
5 connections 121065 blocks 0 transactions

Thanks!