https://bitcoinbonus.com/ was doing this on a massive scale. Seems to be down at the moment.

 - Almost all the groupons I buy are for local businesses, mostly restaurants. I imagine it would be hard to set up something that local, but maybe you could sell gift cards for chain restaurants someday?
 - Really, gift-cards to any nation-wide business would probably sell well.
 - Maybe in a year or so, a compilation of the bitcoin comic would sell well?
 - I really like the minethings one you did today. I don't play many games, but I imagine that there are a lot of games that would like that kind of exposure, and a lot of people would enjoy seeing different games they can use their bitcoins on

Thanks! I love your site!

He was on a smartphone, and I was on a keyboard

I had to block it anyways. Can't have that on my screen at work.

I say allow them, but limit the size.

If I were you, I would just use the current spot price. 50% of the time you will win, and 50% of the time you will lose. If you lose more than you win, I bet it won't exceed what you lose every time you take a credit card.

I'm glad they posted this. I trust them a lot more after seeing this. The only thing missing is the exact number of coins stolen and the address they were sent to. I can't imagine why they didn't make that public.

Yeah, it looks like you might do pretty well in this contest!


Hmmm. Somebody just bet 1.175 BTC on $17.50

You are correct that a late entry can lose money even if they guess correctly, but that is only true if they are late enough and there aren't many losing bets. That is intentional.

I'm pretty sure it is not possible for a late bet to cause an earlier winning bet to lose money. Here is my example:

A bets 2 BTC 10 days in advance, loses
B bets 2 BTC 10 days in advance, wins
C bets 10000 BTC 1 day in advance, wins

The pot is 10004 BTC.
I would get my 2% fee = ~200 BTC, winners get 98% = ~9804 BTC

A gets nothing (loser!)
B's weight is 10 days * 2 BTC = 20
C's weight is 1 day * 10000 BTC = 10000
Total of weights = 10020

B's share is 20/10020 = 0.2% (19.57 BTC, a 10x gain)
C's share is 10000/10020 = 99.8% (9784 BTC, oops!)

Of course, in reality there will be a lot of losers, and only a couple winners, so I expect all winners will do well as long as they didn't bet an absurdly high number of BTCs. Doing that only helps me

It's possible that there IS some way to game the system, but I haven't thought of one. This is an experiment. If anybody can see a way to cheat, definitely post your idea (or just go ahead and cheat, and I'll try to figure out what to do about it).

I want stupid people to be able to use bitcoins safely someday. Plenty of stupid people use cash, and if we limit the bitcoin economy to non-retards, it will be pretty small.

Hopefully future generations of clients will prevent stuff like this.

Yes - you will be doing the community a huge favor if you secure these coins as you gain access to them.

I got this email too.

Whoever did this did an amazing job on the website. Everything looks believable to me except those stupid badges. I sent them an email asking them to post on this thread.

Has anybody actually downloaded/scanned their software? I'm not going to be the test case for that!

Somebody is submitting a lot of bets in the last few hours. I think all the "nearby" prices now have at least one winner registered.

I see bets at $16, $19, $20, $21, $22, and $23. Probably all by the same person who would probably rather I not bump this thread (sorry!)

Pot is now 7.2 BTC

I think you will find this thread interesting (about distributed contracts): http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8821.0

This was exactly how I discovered bitcoin (by accident), and this was exactly my reaction. Of course, bitcoins were 100x cheaper then. IMHO, they will do that 100x thing again (see my signature).

They replied to my support ticket as follows:

Ticket #****: Re: [Mt.Gox] Password recovery

Your request (#****) has been deemed solved.

To review, comment and reopen the request, follow the link below:
http://support.mtgox.com/tickets/****


Jiraiya, Jun-28 18:33 (JST):

Hello,

We have identified an issue with our password reset system that caused many users to receive unsolicited password reset emails. It is likely this was the cause of you receiving this email.

We would, however, like to remind you that having the same password for multiple online accounts is not secure.

Thanks,
Regards,
Jiraiya

MtGox.com Team

Bitcoin price increases are just getting started (see my sig)

I hope their bottom feels better soon!

My wife gets these extreme coupon deals - sometimes they pay her to take stuff out of the store!

I got it too. I'm relieved that lots of people got this - I thought maybe someone had hacked my email and they were trying to reset my password because they knew they had access to my email.

Of course, I don't have enough BTC to be worth stealing, so they would be disappointed even if it worked

Also, check the resume trove (see my sig)