I've noticed this as well as a guy who tried to expand his business ventures into more areas with very few takers on here.I'd like to get feedback from potential customers in the BTC community as to what things they want.My lottery was the only thing that had very few takers (0.25btc total but hey a winner was picked randomly, so at least some good came out of it).My loans venture was a loss maker (lost 4BTC to a scammer,it's not that much lost but still nice to sell off the debt asap or sell part ownership of that venture about 5-10% of all total ownership while I hold majority control for now).

A good business minded person will ask for and listen to feedback from potential clients/actual customers as well.So I'm listening. This is also the mindset (as well) that makes me question whether it's worth keeping my ventures in the BTC world or to take it back to the real world (like it was before).Oh well,no turning back now.Got to restructure some of my ventures by letting people have a chance of part ownership (for BTC of course) as well as trying harder to give people what they want.

I've checked out this site and I love the choices of chocolate.As a guy who likes fine food (and fine chocolate),I'm happy with the range on offer.nice designs especially the one where the mask itself is made out of chocolate while containing more chocolates inside.Talk about clever design.

Only a day or so left to enter.Don't miss out on the jackpot.
Round 1 is over now.The winner has been selected by random number generator www.random.org
Only 5 tickets were purchased (the generator starts with 0 because the first ticket started with 0 instead of 1 like normal and finishes on 4)
The jackpot is 0.25BTC for the winner.
Results will be uploaded shortly.Here they are:

Looks like ticket 1 is the winner (S001).The winner has 24 hours to claim the prize.If he doesn't claim after that,a new random drawing will take place and this repeats only once.If no one cliams after that,this wil go to good causes instead.

Once the winner claims the prize,these games will stop for a while while much needed improvements take place (expect work to start on 5th June 2012).
Expected changes to take place:
1.Well,the random selection process needs fine tuning
2.More automated/easier way of entering the games (instead of going through me)
3.New game types added giving the players new possilbities for gameplay.
4.Many more to come.
5.Expect the games to be up and running again within a month (or less depending on what changes could be implemented in that timescale)

Edit:Ticket S001 did claim the prize in time (late 1st June 2012).Sorry about that ,but I was a little slow in updating this thread due to other work getting in the way.The lottery is now closed so that much needed improvements/changes can finally take place.This thread will be locked temporarily.Once more info is available,I'll reopen this thread and add the info at the time.Thank you for your patience and I'll be looking forward to unveiling the new and improved games later this month.

Enjoy your day

Only a day left to enter the lottery.If you haven't entered yet,don't miss out on the chance to win the jackpot

He never issued me a photo of himself at all.He never even mentioned it.All he mentioned to me was giving his steam account containing a game that was valued at 3BTC at the time.He said that in the event of things going wrong,that I could sell it off.He never actually gave that to me either as he then said that he couldn't change the email address on that account as steam was acting up (or something,I don't really know). Safe to say Dovah is a scammer and has moved onto the next username by now.If you didn't lend to him,you saved yourself from losing BTC.If you did lend to him,well I hope you can get it back some other way (like selling off the debt or doing something else to recoup the loss).

To the last 2 posters,thanks for the interesting replies.I kind of had a gut feeling that Dovah was long gone 2 days before the loan payback date but oh well.I've lost my money.Maybe putting the debt sale in auctions may give me better luck.

Edit-Maybe the better approach is to offer something extra rather than just selling off the debt.

In UK,a lot is expected from Govt and as you rightly say,this does include providing healthcare/social services free at the point of use.Taxes go to loads of stuff in UK.
1.Health care (called NHS in UK)
2.Social programs
3.Lots of regulators (Ofcom-TV/advertising,Ofwat-regulator of water companies,Ofgem-regulator of the energy companies,well too many to list here)
4.The Queen (how else does the Royal family get funded? Via our taxes of course)
5.Environmental programs (save the earth kind of thing,plus funding renewable energy projects)
6.NI (national Insurance-UK equivalent to your Social security,funds govt programs/your pension)
7.Roads (funded by road tax which is based on your cars emissions.Low emission cars are tax exempt.)
8.20% VAT applied to all goods/services sold in UK (It's much more for cigarettes and alcohol though.Sports nutrition products are currently tax exempt but not for long though)

Well there are too many things to list for what taxes in UK go to.If you stop paying NI,you'll be stopping funds to everything that depends on it (pension,NHS,social programs).

We should think about what we would do if we needed help from those programs,that we stop paying into.Being self reliant (or as close to it as you can) will mean you can stop paying certain taxes and still enjoy a high quality of life.

I like this thread.Very amusing . Sounds like hunting Atlas is fun.Add a bounty on top of that and that's just the icing on the cake for me.

Well since you want to create a reputation for yourself.There are many ways you can go about it.If you contribute something to the community,make sucessful trades with other people (not just loans,buying and selling stuff counts as well),donate to this forum (as that earns some reputation and shows that you care enough about this forum for you to donate).Other ways,you'll learn how to gain reputation, as you go along really.

Avoid making the common mistake where people think that taking out small loans and repaying them successfully will earn them reputation and then taking out larger loans.This doesn't work as well as it used to as scammers have caught people out doing this (out of their BTC and running off with it).

Making good posts will add to it as well.

I like it.That's good . You should be a comedian.I also liked watching Inception.Good film though.

I like the idea of a syndicate run by BTC to increase the odds of winning.I recently entered the Euro millions lotto about 2 weeks ago.I didn't hit it big but got a smaller prize instead (got 2 matching numbers).

How much can a syndicate increase my chances of winning?

ah damnit.Lately we seem to be flooded by scammers who borrow money and never pay back.I was caught out by a situation just like this a while ago.Now trying to sell off the bad debt of 5BTC.Whats the best way to sell debt on here? As I've seen people do it before on here.

Update-I need to sell 5BTC debt as TheLastDovah owes me (and failed to give collateral) BTC.
If anyone is intersted please PM me and I'll give a separate BTC address for selling off bad debt.I need to keep this venture afloat by selling off bad debt.

If someone has advice or is interested in buying some of the debt please reply to me via PM or on here.Once the debt is resolved,I plan to restructure the lending business so it's much less prone to losing money in future.Improving business practices is important to a successful expansion at this early stage for the lending portion (of it anyway).

There's nothing mandatory about offering a donate feature on the forum to complement the sell off of ad space like this forum does (which is also optional by the way).This forum did very well as I can see myself using that method, so I figured I'd adapt this, to my forum to get things moving along.Payment is never mandatory on my forum and it never will be.

Or are you suggesting some kind of membership fee?

That seems to be the smart thing to do with such a young forum.Why didn't I listen to my own advice of focusing on growing a happy userbase instead of just jumping straight into raising funds for development? I was hoping to get the word out about my own forum on the net.So far I've just told friends/family plus a few others on the net.I like this forums way of raising funds by letting people donate and those that do get special priveledges.I'm still trying to sell some ad space upfront though to speed up development by purchasing some decent features to make it better.My own forum isn't mainly about bitcoins though so that'll put off a large audience from here I presume (surely some will be interested in other topics though) but I do need to raise funds off it for development.

Hi,
I'm looking to sell some ad space on my own forum (that was recently developed) so that I can fund further development that will add new features and make the experience better for my users.
More info can be found here:http://dreamislands.forumup.com/viewtopic.php?p=28&mforum=dreamislands#28

I'm looking for people who are intersted in buying ads space.I will make sure my price is more reasonable.
The link should explain everything,thank you.
P.S.If interested please PM me or if you want more info PM me also.

Hey,I'm the same with film screenings when I watch other people's films.As a film maker you have to be quite critical of other works to get anywhere.You speak the truth in that the current form of the games is beyond my abilities to keep things 100% fair-that's why major redevelopment needs to take place as soon as the winner is chosen and gets his winnings.There will be many changes in there.For now,I'll just make sure the winner gets the prize.mems feedback really helped me with how to improve things so I'm following that now.

Thanks for that N.Olmos.My bitcoins were already withdrawn.People who still have coins here need to know.

I could really use that help mem,as things have really slowed down :/

What's so bad about trying to revive a slow business? I see other examples of this on here so I know I'm not the only one.I just didn't know what else to do.You can move this if you like mods. Look I've done everything that I can to make things fair within my abilities.I'd like to see proof of how this is actually unfair? Have people actually complained? I say to you Otoh,where's the proof for your claims? Can you tell the difference between smear by other competitors vs an actual dishonest businessman (I've never behaved like that by the way,see my post history)?