coolest map EVER!

if that could be my screen-saver...

Looks good, I'll buy a share and see what happens

Simran, keep up the good spreadsheeting!  I want to know which phones are the most productive, definitely keeping an eye on this.

wait, so to win the contest, you would have to have donated the 'most' shares to their account? 

"new contest!  who can donate me the most money in 1 month.. GO!"

This is so cool.  Cellphone has a broken screen?  Make it hash until it buys you a new phone!

Available here:

http://www.bitcointrading.com/forum/index.php?topic=416.msg1785#msg1785

Upload is a bit on the slow side, I will be adding a mirror this week hopefully.  I planned on releasing 0.4, 0.5c, 0.5a64, and the 'new version' together in a torrent shortly.

I don't have the 0.4 fixes...

So difficulty follows price?  So the higher the price gets, the higher the difficulty, lowering the profits but increasing the profits at the same time with the higher price.  The higher the price gets, the more the existing funds "increase value" because they are stored in bitcoin.

We just need to be holding bitcoin at the time when the price goes up.

If price and difficulty do not change, then we will definitely be able to sustain this model with these profits.  Do you think the difficulty is going to go down any time soon?

Take a peek at this spreadsheet.

http://www.bitcointrading.com/files/BitcoinTrading649LottoMiningCompanyv1.xlsx (excel 07+)
http://www.bitcointrading.com/files/BitcoinTrading649LottoMiningCompanyv1.xls (excel 97-03)

I put this together in like an hour, there may be errors, but its just for estimation.

The darker columns are formulas.  Lighter columns are user-input.

I didn't put much thought into which mining companies, how the difficulty would change, etc in the calculation.  I made it decrease the amount of BTC over time, but since the Bitcoin exchange rate closely follows the difficulty, the higher the difficulty means higher value of Bitcoins, company assets go up in value.

Each "page" of the spreadsheet is a scenario.  Dial in your own settings to see how you think it will play out.

Note that in my calculations "winnings" and "prizes" are not mentioned, I assume we lose 100% of the time and still maintain a profit, but we are playing 6/49 "for free" from profits of investments, for the chance that we win it big. 

If 200 people out there invest 1 BTC, I think we can make this happen. 

Who out there thinks that 1 Bitcoin is going to be worth <$11 next year?  What about 2 years from now?  We have a much better chance at the exchange rate going up than we do winning the lottery.  So investing 'long' in Bitcoin is a safe bet, and investing in Bitcoin will net us free lottery tickets forever.

This is how I envision the 7500 BTC investment going:



Assuming Bitcoin increases by 1% per day in value, and the exchange rate is $10 today.  Not another ticket is sold.  1500 BTC invested into mining companies.  Profits from mining companies is added to the "balance" column, the spreadsheet is wider than the picture.

"CDN" is the value of the coins in Canadian Dollars. 

"Weeks" is the number of times we can run a 3-month ticket ($50).

A 7500 BTC would give us more profit per-day than we need to operate per-week. 

Ah, see I think you are slightly mistaken on one fact, we will not buy a proportionate amount of tickets to the number of shares sold.  We aim to purchase at a steady pace of one 25-draw ticket per week.  This way the maximum amount spent is 4.5 BTC per week (currently), but that number will decrease as bitcoins go up in value.  

If we have an IPO of 7500 BTC, we would essentially be "set for life" for purchasing lottery tickets.  Even if we never sold another share after that.  Since 1500 BTC would go into shares in mining companies, we would be able to sustain future tickets with the proceeds of mining.  

Right now, it's like 20 BTC per month to run a new set of 25-draw tickets every week.  When we are just starting, we can only spend 5 BTC per month, and always keep a minimum balance.

So there would be 6000 BTC left in the lottery pool from day one after purchasing all the shares in other lottery companies.  Surely we will get other shares sold down the road, but let's assume there arn't any other shares, just this initial investment (shares sold out).  

By the time we have spent 240 BTC, an entire year would have passed.  In that time, we would have mined many BTC since we are constantly receiving dividends.  Right now people are estimating that Bitcoin price could be as high as $30 again this summer, perhaps much higher.  Putting the remaining 5760 BTC (after purchasing lottery tickets all year) in a very "long" Bitcoin investing strategy, by the next year, we might only need to spend 60 BTC per year on tickets.  The price of a lottery ticket keeps reducing over the course of time, and we are spending the money at a slow enough pace, that it could reach a point where the tickets are basically purchased infinitely. 

It all depends on the initial investment.  We just basically have to reach a minimum balance.

But surely there must be a point in which the amount of assets owned by a company produces enough interest or profits to "afford" to buy a lottery ticket for every draw? 

Insider trading.. but all of the information is public.. and what do you mean by -EV?

Why are you linking to a post which I already quoted that very post and commented below it? 

Mining bitcoins is similar to a lottery, clearly it's a game of "luck" and the more hashpower is put towards a pool, the better chance they have at winning.  This is an OBVIOUS thing to mention, thanks pyramining! 

By the way to those who are reading this, OZLOTTO posted the thread that pyramining has linked to only a matter of hours after the original posting on BitcoinTrading.com, notice how the general idea is the same except BitcoinTrading.com has a 2-page contract and OZLOTTO has only a few fragmented sentences.  I wasn't going to officially post it on bitcointalk until we were publicly available but apparently you can copy someones business model and post it with a moments consideration. 

My posts in this thread are an illusion.

bitcoin.me are you refusing to comment on the fact that your "lottery company" idea was taken from me?

Yes, but lotteries provide a chance at a big win.

Here is the current version of the company pitch.  Subject to revisions.  Click here for the official thread.

-----------------

BitcoinTrading.com Canada 6/49 Lottery Mining Company

Date: August 6th, 2012

Hello!  I am proud to present to you: The BitcoinTrading.com Canada 6/49 Lottery Mining Company. 

I always dream about winning the lottery, and I have come up with a way that we can do it together by pooling our resources together.  This new company will run a lottery pool and a portion of the shares sold will go towards shares in mining companies for long-term ticket purchasing sustainability.  When there are winnings, they get paid out to shareholders of The BitcoinTrading.com Canada 6/49 Lottery Mining Company.  When you buy a share, you are getting a share in the company, not an individual lottery ticket or a portion of one. 

Funds received from shares sold will used to both purchase shares in trusted Bitcoin mining companies on GLBSE.com and pay for the lottery operations.  The Bitcoin received from shares sold will be split in this manner:
  20% invested in shares of GLBSE.com mining companies
  80% invested in the lottery pool

The Bitcoin received from the dividends that mining companies pay to The BitcoinTrading.com Canada 6/49 Lottery Mining Company will be paid into the lottery pool.  This way the lottery pool has a sustainable source of income.

Here is some information about the lottery pool which the company will be running:
The advantage of a lottery in Canada as opposed to the United States is that we don’t pay taxes on prizes.  In the US, almost half is paid back to the government.  More information about the lottery here: http://www.wclc.com/games/lotto_649.html

It costs $2 per draw per 6 numbers.  The maximum number of draws for one ticket is 25 draws, so we can pay for 25 draws in advance on one ticket.  That’s about 3 months, and would cost $50. 

The lottery pool will aim to buy one 25-draw ticket per week, since the tickets are good for 3 months, we will have an increasing amount of tickets in each draw.  If the lottery pool has enough funds, we will purchase multiple 25-draw tickets each week.  The lottery pool will purchase a 25-draw ticket each week if the price ($50 CDN) represents 10% of the total funds held by the company and its lottery pool, not including assets in Bitcoin mining companies as “share value” but the proceeds from them will go to the lottery pool.  This rule is being set to limit the number of tickets purchased if our funds are low. Each ticket will be drawn for 3 months, so we will still have tickets in the lottery (we need to buy a minimum of one 25-draw ticket every 3 months).  We will purchase tickets less frequently if necessary.

All of the information about the assets that the company has will be posted on www.bitcointrading.com each week, plus an update on the amount of profit received from Bitcoin mining companies and if there are any winnings, scans of the tickets as well if necessary.  All information will be public, including the current account balances of the company, reserving the right to make this information only available to shareholders at a later date.  A dedicated website for this will be created in the future. 

The lottery pool winnings will be distributed as follows:
70% of winnings paid directly to shareholders through GLBSE.com as Bitcoin
25% of winnings put back towards the lottery pool as Bitcoin
5% of winning kept by operator as Bitcoin

The company will keep a maximum amount of company funds in Bitcoin, due to its currently very bright outlook, a Bitcoin could double or triple in value very soon.  To pay for tickets, we will sell some Bitcoins on the exchanges.  The price of a Lotto 6/49 ticket goes down each time the price of Bitcoin goes up.  If the lottery pool has a large amount of money in Bitcoins, and the price keeps rising over months and years, then the tickets get cheaper.   

When there are winnings of the lottery pool, they are paid to the company in Canadian dollars, to be converted to Bitcoin and then distributed.  If the amount is small (under $100), the prize will be paid out from the company funds instantly and then the winnings will be converted on the exchange to Bitcoin.  If the prize is over $100, the winnings will first be converted to Bitcoin on the exchange, and then paid out.  The current plan is to choose numbers for the lottery based on the latest hash of the most recent Bitcoin block solved.
10,000 shares issued initially, more issued if those are all sold.  The price of each share is 1 BTC.
The share is a portion of the assets the company has, which will be
1) Any funds the company possesses, in Bitcoin from shares sold
2) Any funds the company possesses, in Canadian dollars (if any)
3) Any proceeds from the company lottery pool
4) A portion of shares held of other Bitcoin mining companies

A shareholder in this company does not have voting rights.  This company does not include any other assets owned by BitcoinTrading.com.

In the event that the GLBSE.com website goes offline permanently, all assets will be liquidated and paid out to shareholders.  Shareholders would be able to contact BitcoinTrading.com in that event.

IPO date announced soon.

maplesyrupghost (on bitcointrading.com)
mc_lovin (on bitcointalk.org)

It's funny you have this idea only hours after I post mine.

http://www.bitcointrading.com/forum/index.php?topic=958.msg1856#msg1856

Already submitted for approval, and the current version of the company should be approved according to Nefario's post above.

Side note, you last logged into my forum August 5th at 10PM.  That means you "happened" to see it on my forum and I will now consider you to be an idea stealer.

Well if they can't stop bittorrent, just release the blockchain updates on torrent

I'm sure he will Clean you of your Coins