It has not been an easy decision, but complete lack of interest in DR added to running costs in both time and money forced us to pull the plug on it.

There are still client funds lodged with us, so we're giving another 4 weeks of uptime to allow everyone to withdraw, after which the service will have to come down. Assuming funds are still left behind there will be another period of 2 more months (so, September 5) where any eventual funds will be held and we'll return them to those that prove to be the rightful owners, and finally if any funds are still with us we'll take ownership of them.

We'd like to thank everyone for the support they've given along the way, and perhaps soon we'll come up with a better version of this service and give it another go, time permitting!

Let us know of any issues or questions and we'll do our best to address them.

DividendRippler now supports the new Stellar core, and you can read all about upgrading your old stellar account registered with us here.

Also, since there are no transfer fees on Stellar any more, we've removed transfer fees from Ripple too, meaning that bar mandatory fees on the crypto currencies, we are completely frictionless. This will change soon as we implement a fee schedule that works with both Stellar and Ripple, but for now we're as close to free as possible

Let us know of any problem you may have.

Original DividendRippler announcement here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=180717.0

Right now DividendRippler supports BTC / LTC / NMC / DASH / TRC / XRP / STR, serving as gateway for Ripple and Stellar. Of course Alts come and go, but there's a reason for each of these, except Terracoin. This was added because, well, it was one of those "why not?" moments, to be honest, and right now TRC is all but dead so we want to remove it from the supported Alt list, which means getting people to redeem all TRC credits they have within a time frame.

This post is the initial request for comments, so if you feel strongly one way or another, please let us know.

[The original Bitcoin lottery is back!]

The original Bitcoin lottery is back!

And though it didn't go away in the first place, there was no actual public interest shown during 2014 and we didn't push for it as there were a bunch of backend changes that we wanted to get done, but now that much is complete and we're back in business.

For those of you that played in the previous version of the lottery, the changes are subtle; no more paying dust values to the bets that didn't win and the crypto currencies supported have changed.

For everyone else;

The Amazing Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery (TAABL for short) was the first automated bitcoin lottery, one of the first bitcoin games and almost certainly the longest running game in bitcoin history.

The rules are simple:

 - Choose your game amongst the available crypto currencies, currently supported are BTC, LTC, NMC and DRK. From here there are multiple Pick sizes, and these differ in the number of characters that need to match on a block hash to become the winning bid.
 - Place your bids by sending funds to the address advertised for the game. Make sure you send from a wallet you control all addresses for, as the winning bid address is taken from the sent transaction address.
 - Wait for a block to match a bet on that Pick, hopefully it will be one of yours

 All the details about the game can be read at How To Play.

 We have seeded all BTC games and will proceed to seed all the other currencies too, to make things a little more interesting.

I know banks aren't forced to open accounts for non residents within the EU, even though EU citizens can move freely.

I also read that in Germany if you hold on to your coins for at least one year, the profit from selling them is tax exempt.

So I wonder... can a EU citizen that is not resident in Germany open a bank account in Germany, sell and deposit in said bank account taking advantage of the tax scenario described? When moving the money back to the residency country the EU double taxation prevention laws should prevent the local government from getting an extra cut, right?

Maybe even move to Germany for a while, but what would constitute "moving"? Renting a house there? Getting a job?

I've googled as much as I could but can't really understand how viable this course of action would be. Anyone out there has any insight on this matter?

I received their newsletter a few days ago and they state they are now (manually) accepting bitcoins for the stuff in their webshop: http://shopusa.chickenwingscomics.com/

I already have most their comic books but I'll certainly get some stuff there, and for those that don't know them make sure you have a look at their webcomic: http://www.chickenwingscomics.com/

I am in no way related to them, and haven't even told them I would be advertising here. Hopefully they'll not get mad about it

From the newsletter:

You can now pay us with Bitcoin! Our shop software doesn't enable us yet to offer you an integrated payment system, so we can only do this manually. Just send us an email with a list of stuff you want to buy, your address and any gift or promo codes you potentially possess, and we will reply to you as quickly as possible with the total of your purchase in Bitcoin currency, and the Bitcoin address for the transaction.

The price of Bitcoin is volatile. In order to be fair to both parties and even out some of the short term spikes, we will look up the global average price of the day that you sent your email on bitcoinaverage.com and use the daily average exchange rate for our conversion.

Stef wanted to do this for over a year now, but those of us who know us, also know how slow we are with implementing changes in our website. But now that Bitcoin got a new level of publicity, we want to seize the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon. If we're late or early, time will tell, but we're intrigued by the idea of a truly decentralized global currency and wanted to contribute our tiny share to its success.

I missed this at the time it was posted, but Daniel Cawrey wrote a piece at coindesk that mentions TAABL (and DICEonCRACK), both services I developed and, well, the criticism as presented makes me think of the current economical situation of the world and how people look at their governments for a fix instead of trying to do something themselves. Much like an unprotected child seeks the comfort of the mother's skirt, I guess:

The AMAZING Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery
Do you like lotteries? What about one that is anonymous? Then you are going to love the AMAZING Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery. Unlike most lotteries, you won’t know where your money is going. And if you win, you won’t know where your money comes from. If that doesn’t sound suspicious to you, then you’ve probably been involved in money laundering at some point in your life.
amazingbitcoinlottery
In an environment where we’re seeing progress with bitcoin transparency, a site like the AMAZING Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery is a major disappointment. There are problems enough running a regular bitcoin operation, but in the name of making money the owners of this operation don’t want you to know anything about them. Instead, they’ll offer you other diversions to deflect those types of questions: if you get tired of playing the AMAZING Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery, you can play their other offering. It’s called Dice on Crack.

So, all non reported bitcoin transactions (where the outsider doesn't know the source or destination) are suspicious? Also, when you play the state lottery, do you know where the money comes from? Sure you do, from the people that play, just like on TAABL. The difference is that on TAABL you can be sure all the bets are accounted for without the need of an external entity and the cut the service takes is minimal, not covering the costs of developing and running it to be honest (all in the name of making money, of course).

The original TAABL was born as an experiment to interface with the bitcoin daemon, and had its moment of fame. The current version of it is quite different but keeps the same spirit. Now, no one ever asked me or the other people involved about the problems of running this "operation", and as such I offered no diversion to deflect anything. I love how it sounds like the guy tried to contact us and we avoided any reply... oh well. Half baked, silly journalism seems to be the common press style around bitcoins anyway.

All this would be fine, but he is calling bitcoin a "silly currency" and putting what might very well be the longest running bitcoin service (ok, not true, it did stop and was restarted as something a little different) in the same page as scams, schemes, money laundering, blackmail and drug deals. Color me impressed...

This is my second attempt at auctioning my Avalon batch #2 unit, initial attempt was https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=249691.0 and the winner passed the unit to another member that in turn failed to get the coins and ultimately the winner gave up on buying this. Most of the original post still applies and is reproduced below, but I'm going to try slightly different terms this time:

I'm auctioning my Avalon Batch #2 order. It has been shipped to me but stupid customs refused to let it into my country due to lack of proof of payment... I tried to explain as good as I could, with no positive result.

So, it is now being returned to the shipper by DHL and Avalon has agreed to let me forward it to another person, which is where this auction comes in...

I paid 102 BTC for this order in another auction, so that's my starting point.

Escrow is welcomed, I would recommend Graet or John K but am open to others, but I expect full value to be released to me once the winner's address is acknowledged by Avalon as the new recipient of this order. You will also have to pay shipping separately, and I'm waiting on details for how much this shipping will be.

The auction starts now and bids will be accepted until tomorrow, Monday 15th, 16:00 UTC.

If there are bids after Monday, 15:00 UTC  and before 16:00 UTC they will extend the auction to 1 hour after the bid time.

If we reach a bid of at least 138 BTC (the winner bid last time around) the 1 hour rule will start immediately, potentially making the auction shorter. So if you bid 138 BTC now the auction will end one hour from now if there are no other bids.

In a nutshell:
- Minimum initial bid of 102 BTC
- Auction runs until Monday at 16:00 UTC unless bids reach 138 BTC or there is a bid within one hour of auction end
- Each bid guarantees one hour of auction run time after it
- Escrow gladly accepted, you arrange and pay for it
- Shipping will need to be paid separately, directly to Avalon
- Payment or escrow is expected before I send your details to Avalon
- Escrow is to be released when Avalon changes the order to your account/address (not on receiving the unit)

Please only bid if you intend to follow through, wasting time is a waste of time...

I'm auctioning my Avalon Batch #2 order. It has been shipped to me but stupid customs refused to let it into my country due to lack of proof of payment... I tried to explain as good as I could, with no positive result.

So, it is now being returned to the shipper by DHL and Avalon has agreed to let me forward it to another person, which is where this auction comes in...

I paid 102 BTC for this order in another auction, so that's my starting point. The auction will run through Sunday, the 7th at 14:00 UTC.

Escrow is welcomed, I would recommend Graet or John K but am open to others, but I expect full value to be released to me once the winner's address is acknowledged by Avalon as the new recipient of this order. You will also have to pay shipping separately, and I'm waiting on details for how much this shipping will be.

So, that's it, bid away.

[[edit] Changes to the offer, read them at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227905.msg2420433#msg2420433]

I have a bunch of ztex 1.15x clones hashing away (http://www.ztex.de/usb-fpga-1/usb-fpga-1.15x.e.html) that were assembled under license.

THESE ARE NOT ORIGINAL ZTEX BOARDS, BUT CLONES THEREOF. Meaning, they are exactly the same, only using -2 grade FPGAs but not built and sold by ztex, they have no responsibility over them.

The boards are all hashing away at between 208 and 232 MHs. I'm considering selling them all at this point, and will entertain small batch and full stock offers. No guarantee I will sell them, or that I will sell them to the highest bidder, this is not an auction. But make me a fair offer and I will likely close the deal.

I'm in Europe, and shipping outside EU can be troublesome, particularly for larger quantities. If you understand this and still want to take your chances I'll gladly ship anywhere, just realize it may take a long time to arrive.

The boards will be sent with a good bunch of dust on them (no extra charge ) and a low profile heatsink. Some will have a fan attached that may or may not work. I am pushing air externally through them, which is what I found works best.

I also have a few non functional boards. Some mine individually but not when put in the farm, some give bad hashes, some are not detected at all. I am positive almost all, if not all of the FPGAs is fine, probably just assembling issues. I was going to extract and reball the FPGAs and mount them again, but I don't think it is worth my effort at this time. I have extra PCBs so if someone wants to buy the broken boards and requests PCBs I'll be glad to provide them. I can not, however, provide you with the BOM or pick&place data, you will have to request that from ztex directly.

What I have;
~170 (a little more, haven't properly counted them) boards working
10~30 non functional (I'll check and update if there is interest)

There you go. Any interest?

[edit] Changes to the offer, read them at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227905.msg2420433#msg2420433

Announcing another TAABL.net BitPick raffle; this time for one 1oz 2013 Silver Maples.

Particulars to this BitPick;
- This is a Pick 4 game
- Bet amount is BTC 0.01
- No minimum number of bets to unlock the raffle!
- Shipping to non-exotic places included, but if the post office frowns upon your country as destination or asks for a huge premium, you'll have to pay extra. If in doubt, ask first.
- Shipping is from Europe, tracking is provided but not insurance. If it gets lost, it gets lost. If you want insurance I'll be happy to comply, so as long as you cover the cost.

and... good luck!

---

Maples bought from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=151800.0 (thanks rpietila!)
Don't forget to check the other TAABL BitPick raffles

[Ztex did not build these boards no they have any responsibility here.]

Lets try something different, shall we?

The Amazing Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery will be holding a new Pick Pipe style raffle, as an experiment. The prizes will be stacks of 5 FPGA miner boards, each doing 208~228 MHs and taking ~11W @ 12V, for a total of over 1GHs per stack.

These boards are clones of Ztex 1.15x, assembled under license. Ztex did not build these boards no they have any responsibility here. Shipping costs are included to most countries, but if you live in some exotic place known to be hard to ship to please contact us prior to entering the game so we can make sude we can ship at all.

There is guarantee other than the boards are working flawless when they reach you!

What you get if you win:
- The stack with 5 boards, having low profile heatsinks applied without fans
- The 120mm fan
- The power splitter that connects to a computer PSU molex connector to provide power to the 5 boards.

How the game works:
It's a simple TAABL Pick 4 game, with individual bets priced at 0.1 BTC. The game becomes active once 100 50 bets are placed and from that point on every time a block is found the block hash is compared to the placed bets. To identify yourself as the winner you'll need to have control over the address from which you sent the coins, so shared web wallets are not going to work.

Some pictures:

from IRC

Code:

[02:19am] Luke-Jr: nelisky: EclipseMC and Eligius are unaffected; slush, BTCGuild, and Ozcoin are "working on it"

Bitminter appears to be safe too as it mined an orphan on the 0.7 chain, but no official word yet.

If you know of others please speak up.

LOCKING: go here instead -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152048.0

Ok, so I have been hard at understanding the whole ripple concept and it has spawned some neat ideas. As a coder I tend to try and understand frameworks in as much of a hands on approach as possible, so I thought I'd ask those who are in the know how to go about this.

The history and all transactions are public, so I could parse my way through said history to get to the information I need, but is there a simpler way? I want to know, for a specific currency and issuer, who is holding IOUs and how much each wallet has, say I want to know every wallet that has Bitstamp BTCs and how many of them they have.

[No more LTC offers at this point, but check back soon!]

You can now play DICEonCRACK on IRC!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=147722.0

But we need your help things out, particularly on the LTC and TRC versions of the game. To that effect I'm offering 10 LTC to the first 3 people that post a docbot LTC wallet address and 100 TRC to 2 people that post a docbot TRC wallet address. There will probably be more giveaways as I introduce upgrades we have in the pipeline.

The rules are:
- You put at least as much in wagers as I have offered.
- If you win anything it's yours to redeem or continue playing.
- If something goes wrong you report back ASAP.
- If you can find the time to share your overall experience here and help us improve the bot, that's even better though not required.

This offer was originally posted on the linked thread above and has also been posted on the LTC forum, only one taker for TRC so far.

EDIT: No more LTC offers at this point, but check back soon!

Since the market on the only exchange I found that handles TRC <> LTC is way too thin, is anybody interested in exchanging your LTC for my TRC? Most of the LTC I get will end up in TAABL.net and DICEonCRACK.com

So I'm not sure what happened yet, but it looks like diceoncrack.com was caught in a major blockchain reorg, either due to a split or a double spend attack.

I initially believed it was an attack as the rolled back transactions were almost all on the lost wagers, but a closer look made me realize the rolled back tx for winning bets not only existed, but they actually were of a total value of close to the lost wager ones. If it was an attack, it didn't go too well.

We have a few protections against the double spends but there's only so much you can do when accepting 0 confirmation tx, so for now and until I get to the bottom of this bets are processed immediately but only paid out when there's at least 1 confirmation on them, sorry for the hassle.

While discussing alternative uses for FPGAs now that ASICS will (or so I believe) make things a little less interesting for non-ASIC miners (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=138183.0) I posted about supporting multiple hashing algos, not really thinking it thoroughly, but now that I've entertained the idea a little longer it sounds like something we could, in fact, integrate in the bitcoin protocol. It might seem a bit out there, but there are two major points in favor of this idea as far as I can see:

- Makes it a lot harder for someone (read company or government) to just throw money at hardware and overtake the network
- Prevents a potential flaw in sha256 or quantum computing from killing the blockchain (even if temporarily, I understand that we can always address that as needed by just changing the algo, but still)

So the very simplistic view I have of this is that instead of block hashing having to be done exclusively by sha256(sha256()) there would be a flag indicating which hashing algo was being user per block, with, for example, scrypt or sha3 added. Of course the list would have to be definitive per client version and the majority of the miners would have to agree, as always.
A separate difficulty would be kept per hashing algo, so with ASICS taking sha256(sha256()) by storm, GPU users could use litecoin's approach of scrypt. Difficulty per algo would be calculated prorated between the hash counts, so the algos that have the larger work force would have the higher diff.

It seems to me this isn't too complex to implement, bar the fact there would have to be an agreement between miners, and those invested in ASICS would be hard to convince to allow scrypt or whatever, but in the long run this would also protect them, as it would make the network as a whole much more hardened.

What do you think? Should I start sleeping more or is this something that could be done?

"SomePgmr writes with a story about an online gambling site operating planning to use Bitcoin to sidestep U.S. regulations effectively banning online gambling"

http://slashdot.org/story/13/01/10/2147224/online-gambling-site-bets-on-bitcoin-to-avoid-us-laws

[1PipEaL8yRS8n93mUS16wT5SNDiMrMutv5]

I have 3 unopened iTunes gift cards, each for $10.

To match the buyer with the bid we will require that the winner signs the hash id for the winning bid transaction with the key for the first input address of that same transaction and send that through PM here on the forum along with the name and address for shipping the prize (if shipping is required).
For the message signing to be possible you will need to use an address for which you control the private key, so online wallets are probably not going to work.

I will send the redeem code for the gift card through PM or email, GPG encrypted if the winner so desires. I can also mail the physical card, but the cost of shipping must be separately covered by the winner first.

Place your bets by sending 0.001BTC or more to 1PipEaL8yRS8n93mUS16wT5SNDiMrMutv5.

If you rather gamble your LTCs you can use the DICEonCRACK pipe address LPipeGWLJjMcKFZoE8GjDNCJT7mJEfcCpx with 1.0LTC or more.

Also available for TRCs, use the DICEonCRACK pipe address 1PipEaL8yRS8n93mUS16wT5SNDiMrMutv5 with 1.0TRC or more.

The larger the wager, the better chances of winning.

[edit]

Since there has been no interest in the raffle and I want to test a new feature for DoC, only one card will be raffled on TAABL, with the other two up for grabs at http://diceoncrack.com/address?_=1PipEaL8yRS8n93mUS16wT5SNDiMrMutv5 instead. This is a crack pipe on DoC that plays the Minefield strategy with the threshold (and thus the odds) derived from the wager amount. In other words, the prize will be roughly 1BTC 0.8BTC, but the game will change depending on the amount you send to 1PipEaL8yRS8n93mUS16wT5SNDiMrMutv5.

Example: If you send 0.01 then the multiplier needs to be 100x which makes it a game of less than 65233.

You can read the original Crack Pipe announcement here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120239.msg1312797#msg1312797

[edit 2]




[edit 3]

added LTC bet information above.

[edit 4]

Removed TAABL raffle details, added DoC pipe for TRC and fixed pipe addresses that were all messed up.