I'm blown away that nobody has posted the about the 10% discount on CampBX trading fees available through their new affiliate program.

The deal is the same as TradeHill.com, 10% off your trading fees if you sign up through an affiliate link such as this one (mine): https://CampBX.com/register.php?r=mdslj19rhcD

If you registered before the affiliate program started, email them, and they will get you the discount. (At least, they did it for me).

Their website claims they will disable your affiliate link if people complain that you are spamming it everywhere, so don't do that.

I've posted a lot of TradeHill affiliate links, but I try to not be spammy about it (I focus on articles talking about bitcoins that don't tell you how to buy them). I can tell you it doesn't make much money (usually just a fraction of a penny when somebody places a trade), but it is kind of fun to promote these new technologies.

Keyur, will you give people a way to see how many have signed up from their referral links, and way to see how much they have earned from referrals? I like how TradeHill does it, even though it is a bit depressing to see how little money comes in that way.

I didn't mean to imply that the hacking tools for sale on cypherx.org are trojans (although I suppose they might be). He didn't ask me to download that software. I suspect that if he sends me something, it will be a re-cypher of the program that was available on the site that started this thread.

Thanks for holding the bond for me mndrix! Without your help, I would have just looked like I was trying to steal bitcoins

I created an address for receiving the bond back from you: 18CeiS44ZFP4kXdgzx3yNocwqRqyDZxghu (I will confirm that address via my personal email from which I have corresponded with you in the past)

There's probably no other forum in the world where trust matters as much as it does here. It used to be that being a "hero member" was synonymous with being trusted here, but now they are a dime a dozen. The OTC web of trust is awesome, but not much use outside of that small circle, as most people (me included) have never used it.

Having a history of projects and successful financial transactions seems to be the best way to build trust here, and that is how I decide who to trust.

I have a bit of news/speculation about this scam. I just got this email:



I edited the quote above to disguise his email address from spam bots (******* = alvarez) and hide the URL from Google. I also shrunk the uninteresting stuff and bolded the really interesting claim.

I was immediately suspicious, and thought of this thread. I became even more suspicious when I visited their website, and saw that he writes software to evade anti-virus programs. My suspicion hardened further when I saw this page: http://is.gd/ihpQXb with its unclickable generic badges similar to the ones found on the scam site that started this thread (http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/6800/bitcoinminingaccelerato.jpg)

I'm not claiming that Waldo or his friend created this wallet-stealing fake miner, just putting out the thought for you guys to chew on.

Here is my reply to his email:


If Waldo is following this thread, you can probably guess what kind of reply I will get. If he tries to send me something to install, I'll post it here.

Here is a post by TradeHill yesterday stating that they have some downtime coming up soon:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26669.msg334771#msg334771

You are probably referring to this post by TradeHill yesterday stating that they have some downtime coming up soon:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26669.msg334771#msg334771

Being discussed in two other threads:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26716.0
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26732.0

Here's a "bitcoin" comic for you guys. I've been pasting it in any thread where people are breathlessly commenting on the latest price ticker changes:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

I have some buys at $10, so I guess that is where I think the low will be.

Here's a cartoon showing what is going on:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

Here's a cartoon showing what is going on:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

Here's a cartoon showing what is going on:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

Here's a cartoon showing what is going on:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

Here's a cartoon showing what is going on:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

Here's a cartoon showing what is going on:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

Here's a cartoon showing what is going on:



Just replace "a stock" with "bitcoins".

Payments were sent this morning, but for some reason my client broke them up into a bunch of separate transactions. You can see them all here: http://blockexplorer.com/address/1945qfobZxdnmVJ6qBd4FgcVcWBhDXKiTV

The wallet had been offline for awhile, and was still downloading blocks when I sent the coins, so maybe that has something to do with it.

It appears that the two winners got the right number of coins though. Netrin, can you confirm that?

This was an interesting experiment, and parts of it may serve as a model for future systems doing similar things. Thanks for participating.

I realized I can actually download the trades for the time period above from the list of recent trades here: http://mtgox.com/code/data/getTrades.php

Here's the most interesting/relevant chunk of data:

{"date":1309546534,"price":"16.06869","amount":"0.1","price_int":"1606869","amount_int":"10000000","tid":"1309546534570843"}{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.06869","amount":"0.70603902","price_int":"1606869","amount_int":"70603902","tid":"1309546714395447"}{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.065","amount":"19.79800996","price_int":"1606500","amount_int":"1979800996","tid":"1309546714419664"}{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.05011","amount":"0.15","price_int":"1605011","amount_int":"15000000","tid":"1309546714475023"}{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.05","amount":"1.18","price_int":"1605000","amount_int":"118000000","tid":"1309546714499844"}{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.0234","amount":"1","price_int":"1602340","amount_int":"100000000","tid":"1309546714528446"},
{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.02001","amount":"1","price_int":"1602001","amount_int":"100000000","tid":"1309546714548907"},
{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.011","amount":"2.23962072","price_int":"1601100","amount_int":"223962072","tid":"1309546714566519"},
{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.01","amount":"50","price_int":"1601000","amount_int":"5000000000","tid":"1309546714601679"},
{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.0007","amount":"13.91720362","price_int":"1600070","amount_int":"1391720362","tid":"1309546714633848"},
{"date":1309546714,"price":"16.0007","amount":"10.94612668","price_int":"1600070","amount_int":"1094612668","tid":"1309546714691336"},
{"date":1309546857,"price":"16.05101","amount":"1","price_int":"1605101","amount_int":"100000000","tid":"1309546857305532"},

Using a handy unix timestamp converter (http://www.onlineconversion.com/unix_time.htm), I come up with the following sequence of events:

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:55:34 GMT: Somebody buys 0.1 BTC at 16.06869
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:58:34 GMT: Somebody sells 100.937 BTC all at once, driving the price down to 16.0007
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:00:57 GMT: Somebody buys 1 BTC at 16.05101

It's probably a coincidence, but we can't really know for sure. If someone was trying to manipulate the outcome with the big sell, they failed. It could also be that one or more of the buy orders in place right above $16 which stopped the price from going under were also trying to manipulate the outcome, in which case they succeeded.

The price has been dancing perilously close to $16 over the past couple hours. I used https://mtgox.com/trade/history to see that:

Price at 11:55:00 was 16.06869
Price at 11:56:00 was 16.06869
Price at 11:57:00 was 16.06869
Price at 11:58:00 was 16.06869
Price at 11:59:00 was 16.0007
Price at 11:59:30 was 16.0007
Price at 11:59:45 was 16.0007
Price at 11:59:55 was 16.0007
Price at 12:00:00 was 16.0007
Price at 12:00:05 was 16.0007
Price at 12:00:15 was 16.0007
Price at 12:00:30 was 16.0007
Price at 12:01:00 was 16.0007
Price at 12:02:00 was 16.03
Price at 12:03:00 was 16.03
Price at 12:04:00 was 16.03
Price at 12:05:00 was 16.04

Wow. That was incredibly close. If the price had slipped below $16, the 1.165 BTC bet wouldn't have gotten anything!

The two bets described in my last post are the two winners. They have a combined weight of 0.91294606481481481...

The 0.16 BTC bet came from 16eg1Qs15Vq7mvpi2fPNQuYzBkhp5DhzNq, which gets 0.5462407407407... / 0.91294606481481481... = 59.83275% of the winnings, which I'll round up to 5.72 BTC (more than 35x gain!)

The 1.165 BTC bet came from 1NsvfVxNHzoz484aTSeutayTwGi6VQmqYL, which gets 0.36670532407407407... / 0.91294606481481481 = 40.16725% of the pot, which I'll round up to 3.84 BTC (more than 3x gain!)

I would like at least one person to double-check my math. Please take a look at the timestamps here: http://blockexplorer.com/address/1945qfobZxdnmVJ6qBd4FgcVcWBhDXKiTV, the rules in post #1, my calculations in this post and the last one, and try to reproduce my calculations. Post your results confirming or correcting my calculations in this thread. If nobody confirms/corrects my calculations, you guys are going to be stuck with them!

As described earlier, payments will be made Tuesday 7/5 if there is no controversy about any of this.

Looking at the blockexplorer log, it appears that the timestamps are UTC. Pacific Time is currently -7 hours from that (we are in pacific daylight time right now). I noticed that at one point in my original post I said the time would be "PST" which is not technically correct since right now my clock is running in "PDT". I have updated post #1 to just say "pacific time" now, because I did not mean to imply that I would be ignoring the daylight saving adjustment.

On blockexplorer timestamps, this contest ends: 2011-07-01 19:00:00 (12+7=19)

The 1.165 BTC bet came in at 2011-07-01 11:26:44 UTC which was 7 hours, 33 minutes, 16 seconds early, which is 0.31476851851851... days early. If that bet is a winner, its weight will be 1.165*0.31476851851851... = 0.36670532407407407...

The 0.16 bet came in at 2011-06-28 09:03:50 UTC which was 3 days, 9 hours, 56 minutes, 10 seconds early, which is 3.414004629629629... days early. If that bet is a winner, its weight will be 0.16*3.414004629629629... = 0.5462407407407...

I calculate that any more winning bets placed at this time would definitely be unprofitable (unless the price falls below $15.5). At this point, the pot is 9.743 BTC. My 2% is 0.19486 BTC (which does not cover the 0.5 BTC I gave away to inspire early betting), leaving 9.54814 BTC to be split among the winners according to their weights.

Edit: Fixed several mistakes in the calculations above. I will look for at least one person to double-check my math before this is all over.

Today is the day. This should be interesting. There's a new bet of 1.165 BTC placed on $16.50. Current price is $16.

There was a bet on 9/28 of 0.16 BTC on $16, and that person will be the only winner as of now if the price falls under $16. I note that if the price falls under $15.50 before noon today pacific time (2.5 hours from now), there is currently no winner, although I'm sure someone would make a last-minute bid to collect some free BTC if that happened. There are plenty of bets waiting to collect if the price goes up.

I should maybe point out though, that a bet placed 2 hours before this is over is weighted twice as highly as a bet placed 1 hour before it is over

I updated post #1 because I will be offline over the holiday weekend through Monday. I'll be posting the winners and win amounts (by my calculations) here today, and will be distributing the coins TUESDAY if there is no controversy. If there is controversy, I will respond and allow more time for comments to come in before I make payments.