Yes, but the planned method is different than your method. Read the Bitcoin paper.

In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software, the forum is selling ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page.

Your visible ad text (ignoring link URLs, etc.) must be less than 150 characters in length, and it can only contain links: no other style. It will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Eight of the slots are for sale here. (One of the remaining slots has random factoids, and one links to the current ad auction.)

The ad lasts 7 days starting from when I put it up.

Stats: On the 20^th of November, 2011, there were about 120,000 views of topics. So one slot would have appeared around 12,000 times per day. The ad doesn't appear on topic pages with only one post, though, and it only appears for people using the default theme. Total views per day on more recent days (in December):
- 13^th: 111941
- 14^th: 95266
- 15^th: 94672
- 16^th: 91486
- 17^th: 94174
- 18^th: 96714
- 19^th: 95178
- 20^th: 115599

Efficacy stats:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54182.0

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the max number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all eight slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 8 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 8 slots. If the two highest bids are 8 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 7 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

- When you bid, all of your previous bids are automatically canceled.
- All bid prices must be divisible by 0.5.
- The bidding starts at 0.5.
- The auction end time is 05:00:00 on December 29, UTC. Countdown. (The end time may be extended -- see below.)
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the auction end time, then the auction will be extended by 30 minutes. If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the new end time, then the auction will be extended again, etc. The time will not extend beyond 6 hours total.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slot may be sold to someone else.

Use http://99.188.19.113/testnet for now. I'll fix the other version in a few days.

I see absolutely no fault on the part of old_engineer. Probably I would have done exactly the same thing if it was my contest and I had forgotten to specify a timezone.

It could be more easily argued that you were in violation of the contest rules because you did not specify a single exact date. A date given without a timezone could apply to multiple real dates.

"Donor" makes me think of blood/organ donors.

Yes.

Those go in "trading discussion". There's not enough traffic there to warrant a more specific subsection.

Yes.

You're the only one who can see that envelope. It's hidden from other users.

Probably that is always better than AES encryption.

Some of them have their own newbies sections, and some don't have any restrictions.

Atlas was banned for two days after I deleted this obviously off-topic chain of insults (cunicula was also banned for a few days):

Then he posted this and I extended the ban to 7 days:

Then he posted this and I made the ban permanent and also banned his alts (all 21 of them):

This all seems reasonable and fair to me. It is possible that he will be unbanned in the future (months from now, at least) if he regains his sanity.

State:
Slots BTC Person
1 4 Goat
3 3.5 Goat
4 3 wm-center.com

I don't want to manage a team. If you want to create a team and handle payment distribution, etc., you can do that and bid on behalf of your team.

In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software, the forum is selling ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page.

Your visible ad text (ignoring link URLs, etc.) must be less than 150 characters in length, and it can only contain links: no other style. It will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Eight of the slots are for sale here. (One of the remaining slots has random factoids, and one links to the current ad auction.)

The ad lasts 7 days starting from when I put it up.

Stats: On the 20^th of November, 2011, there were about 120,000 views of topics. So one slot would have appeared around 12,000 times per day. The ad doesn't appear on topic pages with only one post, though, and it only appears for people using the default theme. Total views per day on more recent days (in December):
- 7^th: 116870
- 8^th: 97279
- 9^th: 93605
- 10^th: 92100
- 11^th: 106564
- 12^th: 108442

Efficacy stats:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54182.0

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the max number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all eight slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 8 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 8 slots. If the two highest bids are 8 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 7 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

- When you bid, all of your previous bids are automatically canceled.
- All bid prices must be divisible by 0.5.
- The bidding starts at 0.5.
- The auction end time is 05:00:00 on December 22, UTC. Countdown. (The end time may be extended -- see below.)
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the auction end time, then the auction will be extended by 30 minutes. If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the new end time, then the auction will be extended again, etc. The time will not extend beyond 6 hours total.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slot may be sold to someone else.

Items received.

Satoshi thought that if any government tried to take over the Bitcoin network, other countries would become jealous and compete, resulting in a functional network where no one has >50%. Seems likely in this case: the US wouldn't want China to have exclusive control over a "new global currency", so they would set up an equally large mining operation.