3. Now, if all you do is calculate what he WOULD have won had the dice result been shifted by 2, then I calculate +420,784 BTC!
He has said before that "the most common sequence of wins and losses is WLWLWL" or words to that effect. If he bets small, waiting for a win followed by a loss, and then bets big, expecting a win next, he'll be right about half the time. If you shift his big bets back two steps then he'll be right every time (since the two bets before the big one were W and L) - the big bet will land on the first observed W rather than the third hoped-for W. Surely that explains your observed result doesn't it? Or were you shifting in the opposite direction? Nice work dooglus! That explains everything. I checked, and yes, the shifting is in the right direction. So, this work exposes part of Nakowa's strategy, but in no way suggests that he has access to the server seed. The outcome in my graphs was extremely improbable due to "randomness" because it wasn't randomness, it was the result of him weighting his bets based on the outcome of his previous rolls. I should point out that Oleander suggested this a few pages back, so cudos to him too. Which means his entire play is a gamblers fallacy. Correct? Exactly. We spotted that long time ago. He bets "low" until he "spots" the pattern (eg: many losses in a row), and then he starts to bet high because he seems to think that after X losses or a certain WL pattern the probability to win is higher. It definitely looks to me like a semi-martingale strategy (because his "high" bet is at least x2 than his low bet) totally based on gambler's phallacy (eg: after many L in a row the probability of a W is higher). IMO his biggest advantage compared to the house is that he is a) willing to lose insane amounts of coins without stopping; b) he seems quite disciplined, and he quits as soon as he is winning. Obviously the house cannot "stop when its winning", and with Nakowa's bankroll and daring strategy, the house edge is too low and the max bet too high to avoid massive variance. |
|
|
|
|
Let's get this straigh:
did somebody receive an email/call from KnC ASKING to be there on the weekend and/or monday to pick up their units? Or only 'orama got the "heads up"?
|
|
|
|
Following on from my last post. If he waits for 2 small bets where the first wins and the 2nd loses, then bets big, then shifting by 1 will result in the big bet losing, while shifting by 2 will result in it winning.
Pretty nice result. You guys found his betting pattern by shifting. shift 1: mostly loss, shift 2: mostly win... hence pattern is: wait for "WL", then bet high. Which is still unprofitable in the very long run, despite of his rational "betting management" because of the 1% house edge, and would be much more unprofitable if the house edge would be higher. |
|
|
|
I had been talking in the chat about increasing the house edge for bets with profit over 50 BTC (since none of the competition with a 1% edge allows bets that big anyway). This was obviously his way of 'showing me' that it won't help...
I think that'd be a good start, considering that this huge hit is caused by a combination of: a) one single player gambling with a bankroll orders of magnitude bigger than the average player's b) a high max bet c) a low house edge I'm quite sure you've analyzed this thoroughly and I 100% trust you, and my own analysis tells me this doesn't looks like cheating, its just a big but perfectly possible variance caused by the circumstances stated above. I've lost 25% of my investment so far but I don't care, I'm stating the obvious here but all the investments come with a risk. You created an excellent and innovative product and you are doing an excellent job, full support from my side, I'm with you and JD for the long run. Math is on our side  |
|
|
|
How do you explain the timing? The withdrawal problems started around the 5th of June. The first Dwolla seizure happened on June 14th. You have nine days to explain.
Gox admits in their answer to Coinlab that money sent to Coinlab's bank accounts was credited to the balances of Gox customers, but the money was actually held by Coinlab. It seems pretty obvious to me that Gox has been facing financial challenges for a while, and when the two major holes caused by DHL and Dwolla converged with a declining volume at the beginning of June, the shit hit the fan. CoinLab doesn't explain it at all. They had millions on USD in profit, a fat order book and more than 5 million USD on the two bank accounts seized by the DHS. Finally, 5th to 14th June seems pretty close to me. Maybe the DHL action started a few days before it actually hits the news. Anyhow, it looks obvious to me there are diverse factors that are putting Gox under financial stress.
Dwolla were processing withdrawals until Friday 14th. Only bank wires were delayed. Five weeks for SEPA and more than a week for international wires. If the DHS action started earlier, it had no effect on Dwolla withdrawals which it was supposed to target, but on SEPA (delayed for as long as I can remember) and wires from their bank in Japan. Unlikely. DHS didn't even target MtGox. Only Mutum Sigillum LLC. Nope. Your explanation doens't work. We will have to agree to disagree then. In my book, a $10M hole for a young and relatively small company as MtGox is a huge hole. Pretending its "peanuts" is being in denial of the facts. You repeat they have "millions on the order book", which obviously doesn't change the fact that a part of that money, credited to customers balances, is very probably not backed up by fiat in their banks, as they are obviously short of $10M. In fact, they pretty much admit it: Defendants are informed and believe that in March and April, 2013 MtGox customers, at the
suggestion of CoinLab, deposited $12,788,701.08 into one or more CoinLab bank accounts;
CoinLab then caused the amount of such funds to be credited to such customers' MtGox
accounts but CoinLab did not transfer the actual funds into the MtGox bank account. As a
result, such customers' MtGox account reflected a higher amount of currency funds available
to such customers than were actually in the MtGox bank account. In April, 2013, and upon
the demand of MtGox, CoinLab transferred a portion of those amounts, $ 7,473,490.29, to the
MtGox bank account, leaving a balance of approximately $ 5,315,210.79 to be transferred to
the MtGox account and which is being wrongfully held by CoinLab. So they they are admitting they have a big hole, and they do not say anywhere that they had to cover the hole with their own money (I would have stated that clearly in the official document, to wipe out doubt about insolvency - wouldn't have you?). The only hard cold fact they are stating is " such customers' MtGox account reflected a higher amount of currency funds available to such customers than were actually in the MtGox bank account". Plus, instead of being transparent and disclosing their balances as any serious company would do after the mainstream media started to write that Gox might be insolvent (Forbes, Wired....), while many customers started to leave them for good, causing a very unhealthy spread of +10% between exchanges, they just make up absurd excuses such as "the current withdraw problems are being caused by the traditional banking system, not because of a lack of liquidity at MtGox. The traditional banking partners that MtGox needs to work with, are not able to keep up with the demands of the growing Bitcoin economy" Really? The above seems the most plausible answer to you after all the facts Gox have been hiding and that we now know? Finally, I'm amazed by the fact you keep repeating "they have $12M in their order book", like that is somewhat reassuring: - that money is just on Gox balances, it might very well not being backed by fiat in their back accounts (AS THEY STATED IN THE ANSWER TO COINLAB)
- even if that money is fully backed by existing funds in their bank, what do you want them to do with it? That is supposed to be their customers money, they are not supposed to operate/cover holes with that!!
- I don't know if you have any experience in running a business, but it doesn't seem so: the fact is they only have $12M in the order book (again: customers money), and they admittedly have a hole of $10M. So, the hole is almost equal to the full amount of fiat they have in their order book, and roughly half of the all time high fiat amount they EVER had on their order book. That's HUGE, try to extrapolate that to Forex and tell me that covering such a hole wouldn't be a problem for them
- Another fact is they allegedly had only an income of $8M during the 4 months of all time high usd volume EVER, and again the hole is $10M. Let me tell you that's a huge hit for a business, having a hole significantly (20%) bigger that the income you got in your best 4 months ever is a BIG problem for ANY company. When the alleged hole was "just" $5M, I thought it was bearable. Now that we discover the hole is $10M, I can't help being worried.
As I stated many times I hope Gox succeeds, and I do not think that the $10M hole will inevitably kill them. If their finances were managed very well prior to Coinlab's and Dwolla issues, they might be able to cover for everything, but not without a big effort. The truth is a) they are not being transparent about their problems nor with their finances (and being an exchange that manages customers funds, they SHOULD); and b) a lot of customers are leaving for good and their volume, and thus their trading fees and projected income, are shrinking day by day. |
|
|
|
Nice detective work. So, I suppose he used to live in Austin, which is where the confusion lies.
If I were him, I'd want this whole thread deleted. I don't want the whole world knowing where I live, especially if he has a decently large mining setup or something.
Anyways, not like where ProfMac lives is a big deal... props to him though for making it in the WSJ. That is certainly impressive!
His personal info is all scattered on this forum, disclosed by himself. He linked to profiles of external sites registered with his full name, publicly discussed very specific and unique episodes of his past, etc. I'd say that not being anonymous is not a concern for him. |
|
|
|
As for the calls to "change something", if he's cheating then limiting the maximum bet won't stop him winning, and if he isn't cheating and is just lucky then limiting the maximum bet will only slow his inevitable losses. I don't see how it helps in either case.
I disagree with dooglus on this point. Now the investors are in the situation they cannot understand if nakowa is cheating or not, because with large bets what happened in these days is still somehow plausible. Indeed, if you run some simulations as elm did 242962.msg3222672#msg3222672date=1379981987 you can see that few times nakowa is winning. However if you run the same simulations with a much smaller max bet, like 0.01% or so, but the same amount of wagered money, you may check that the same behavior is ridiculously improbable. If he is cheating he would surely reveal the cheat on a lower max bet (less than 1 euro) and the website must surely be stopped. Note that even if he is not cheating (which is what I think) the kelly criterion is known to be quite aggressive (in the world of poker online for example), and again if you run some max betting simulations you may see that some of them are quite scary from the point of view of an investor. Of course I cannot make other important considerations on lowering the max bet, maybe we are to the point that investors could vote for it, for example. And yet the simplest explanation for this is that he knows how/what nakowa is doing and why...again, just sayin' here...why is it so hard to be somewhat conservative and pull your money from the site? Why are people so driven to ignore red flags? yes, it could be legit, or a shadow business operating with a giant conflict of interest and security hole, is indeed untrustworthy. Why risk it? for what gains? GREED! Jeez. It's just variance, nakowas bankroll is orders of magnitude bigger than the average player's, the max bet is high and the house edge very low. Plus, if you'd taken the time to read the many contributions of dooglus to this forum and to study his project JD you would realize there is no "shadow business" here. |
|
|
|
2+2 = 4
Gox is short of $10M and they are heavily delaying withdrawals. They make up stupid excuses such as "the old financial system cannot follow the thriving BTC economy" and "our huge volume is overwhelming the biggest bank is Japan". Still, there's no problem with the money coming in, only with the money going out.
How do you explain the timing? The withdrawal problems started around the 5th of June. The first Dwolla seizure happened on June 14th. You have nine days to explain. Gox admits in their answer to Coinlab that money sent to Coinlab's bank accounts was credited to the balances of Gox customers, but the money was actually held by Coinlab. It seems pretty obvious to me that Gox has been facing financial challenges for a while, and when the two major holes caused by DHL and Dwolla converged with a declining volume at the beginning of June, the shit hit the fan. Finally, 5th to 14th June seems pretty close to me. Maybe the DHL action started a few days before it actually hits the news. Anyhow, it looks obvious to me there are diverse factors that are putting Gox under financial stress. Nothing of this, as far as it makes any sense at all, can explain the problems. The order book is 12 million USD deep in bids. Even if they didn't make any profit at all (8 million USD is from April to August 20th), they would have at least 2 million USD left of customer deposits to pay out of. Only a fraction of their deposits are visible So you suggest they would go full ponzi if they were having liquidity problems? Wow. That would be really retarded. |
|
|
|
- Gox handled a very big volume BEFORE the Dwolla and Coinlab issues, and they handled that volume FINE
This is not true. The intenational wire delays started one or two weeks before the Dwolla problems. After the discontinuation of all other possible withdrawal methods in just two months. - Stating that Gox is "overwhelming" the biggest bank is Japan is laughable at best. That's BS.
At least it is the most plausible explanation so far, and the only I can think of which explains their problems from the beginning of June. The number of customers and trade volume grew tremendously during this time. Last number I heard was 600k verified customers. In the beginning of this year there were much less than 100k. - Gox needed to increase their operational costs during the bubble, precisely to be able to handle the customers and volume growth. We do not know how rationally that growth was managed.
We know that. More staff on AML verification and support. I think they are 14 now. - Gox invested in new servers, trading engine, etc. shortly before the Dwolla and Coinlab issues
A new server cost thousands at most. Not millions. Mark already run a large business renting out servers (Tibanne). - Being scrutinized by US regulators is quite a stress, which certainly leads to more expenses: expensive lawyers, licenses, etc. We can safely assume they are spending a lot to pull their shit together.
Still doesn't explain the problems starting in the beginning of June. The licence they applied for costs 200k USD. The already spoke to the US regulators (the reason for discontinuation of redeemable codes, one of the popular withdrawal methods), and were preparing for further licensing when DHS struck out of the blue. We are not talking millions here either. - Gox is offering an "emergency" withdrawal option that goes with a 5% fee. Surprise! There is no "overwhelming" if you choose that option.
Note that the 5% is a bank fee. Finally, the hard cold fact is Gox is having tremendous issues with withdrawals (delays and more delays), and as per Occam's Razor, the easiest answer is they have liquidity problems.
Yes, and easy conclusions are often wrong. The math and timing just don't add up. Bank problems is a much more plausible explanation. Saying stupid things like "the old financial system is having problems to follow the thriving BTC economy" and such is an insult to the intelligence of their customers. They probably offer the "5% emergency withdrawal" so they can make as much money as possible with such a leonine fee, to eventually cover the holes left by the US DHS and Coinlab.
So you think MtGox is 5% in minus, and the bank doesn't take any fee at all? No, this does not sound anything near a plausible explanation to me. Why is the 5% option very limited then, and not offered by default to everyone? And why only for international wire? A nice collection of speculations, but few are plausible and they certainly don't fit your conclusion. You have to start looking earlier than the Dwolla seizures. It is very obvious they were limited by their bank since June 5th, at least. 2+2 = 4 Gox is short of $10M and they are heavily delaying withdrawals. They make up stupid excuses such as "the old financial system cannot follow the thriving BTC economy" and "our huge volume is overwhelming the biggest bank is Japan". Still, there's no problem with the money coming in, only with the money going out. At the same time, Bitstamp is actually handling a higher volume, and processing withdrawals quickly and smoothly. The most plausible scenario is simply that Gox is having liquidity problems. Some of you repeat that Gox made aprox. $8M in trading fees since April this year, like that means $10M is nothing for them. That's absurd. The fact is their income before expenses during the period of higher usd volume EVER is significantly smaller that the hole created by Coinlab and DHS. $10M is not precisely peanuts for Gox, saying the contrary is ludicrous. Note that the two days of all time high volume happened precisely in August. If you have any experience managing a business you know this kind of hole means - at best - a huge headache for Gox. I for one hope their financials were managed very good in the past, and thus the company is extremely liquid and healthy despite the $10M hole, it's just that being so opaque and outright lying doesn't help confidence at all. In their situation (slow but steady "bank run", media writing about possible insolvency), a healthy company would just disclose its balances to show the world (meaning their customers) how healthy and strong they are. But no, their CEO makes up vague excuses on IRC... |
|
|
|
I've already paid 240USD for shipping, but I'm looking at ways to improve my ROI, so saving on delivery is one of them + maybe safer and quicker + I get to see Stockholm (again).
Is your $240 for both miners? or each? and how did you choose the express method? My shipping to canada is $136.80 per miner and I never had an option to choose any method. It just says UPS ZONE 7. And as far as I know according to the UPS zone chart, UPS ZONE 7 = importing from the United States, so I don't know what that's about. $120.40 per Miner and no options to select. Carl told me over the phone it is UPS Express Saver. Seems a bit expensive for delivery to UK, when you pay $136 to get it to Canada. I'm UPS Zone 3. I use UPS all the time. $120.40 for UPS Express Saver from Sweden to UK for something of that weight is not expensive at all, in fact is pretty much OK. |
|
|
|
So, Bitcoinorama: are you going to be in Stockholm during the weekend? Maybe Monday?
Looks like they're confident enough to ask me to get a flight, so erm i think so. I mean to be fair I was always assuming I would be before, or around this point, but was beginning to question this internally recently myself. This really sounds like it will be down to the absolute wire, if they pull this off. Just for clarity: they asked you to get a plane ticket - for when? When are you arriving to Stockholm? When will you return home? I think this info is important in order to know when they expect to have the first units in hand. F**k knows I haven't booked yet. I ain't bloody travelling Ryan Air again if I can avoid it! I've been asked if I'm free this weekend, but Mon is the 30th. Wow, they are really tight. I hope the can pull off a final stunt and indeed deliver by the 30th, but it seems difficult. Please let us know if they finally ask you to get the ticket, and specifically WHEN exactly they want you in Stockholm. |
|
|
|
So, Bitcoinorama: are you going to be in Stockholm during the weekend? Maybe Monday?
Looks like they're confident enough to ask me to get a flight, so erm i think so. I mean to be fair I was always assuming I would be before, or around this point, but was beginning to question this internally recently myself. This really sounds like it will be down to the absolute wire, if they pull this off. Just for clarity: they asked you to get a plane ticket - for when? When are you arriving to Stockholm? When will you return home? I think this info is important in order to know when they expect to have the first units in hand. |
|
|
|
|
So, Bitcoinorama: are you going to be in Stockholm during the weekend? Maybe Monday?
|
|
|
|
|
I've been saying this for the last 30 days: the coins are gone for good, stop deluding yourself. What else do you need to know?
- the "investment feature" worked as a PONZI SCHEME. Early investors were able to double and triple their investments as other people invested their money
- as soon as the ponzi was uncovered by forum members, withdrawals were suddenly taken down due to "technical problems"
- while withdrawals didn't work (many weeks), deposits worked fine (oooohhh...). OP kept scamming more people.
- OP didn't give a single explanation about WHY his casino was suddenly working as a Ponzi scheme; he did not give a single explanation about WHY withdrawals were/are not working. He did not give a single explanation about HOW he was going to recoup the coins "late investors" and bettors were missing.
To the ones giving the scammer "the benefit of the doubt" just because it hurts too much to accept you lost your coins: you are advertising this site with your blind hope, a site which is an obvious scam which has been scamming more and more coins since the withdrawals stopped.
We were robbed, man up and move on.
|
|
|
|
Very low volume on BTC/EUR. I guess its worthwhile to place a bid for a few thousands BTC at sub-EUR (0.3€ or something like that), a distracted trader could sell a few hundred BTC with a market order and BOOOM |
|
|
|
|
So you are all OK with the fact the OP held on the coins till a few weeks ago, and sold the Bitcoins WAAAAY after receiving them, cashing in a +20% profit?
Really?
You are all OK with receiving considerably LESS Bitcoins you sent, knowing that the OP sold them at a higher rate and kept the profit?
|
|
|
|
I typed a long reply, then the forum crapped on me some error so I lost it. I will try to recreate my answer. 1. How can one be sure? I think if it is 100% provably fair and the OP and player and whoever else has no chance to get hold of the final outcome in advance than the OP is honest. does something like 100% provably fair exist? if yes, then my next question would be, is JD 100% provably fair? 2. if the numbers of the RNG are not random this would explain everything. but why would JD chose a RNG that is not random? a RNG that is not random is not a RNG imho  could You explain Your view in more depth. this would be very interesting to understand (at least for me) thanks 1. The site is provably fair for players. No site or dice game is provably fair for investors other than the owner. Slow games, like my lotto, are perfectly provably fair, but you have to wait 1 week for the results. No one is going to play dice with a 1 week delay. 2. The RNG is not even a RNG. It uses a deterministic but secure hash function in a message authentication code format. The results look random. They are not. They are uniformly distributed. JD's rolls have 3 components: a server seed, a client seed, and an incrementing nonce. The server seed does not change until you Randomize. The client seed does not change. The nonce goes up by one for every roll. I believed, and I still do, that you can predict a pattern. For a short time, I ran a pseudo gambling investment (DIGS) where I collected other people's money and gambled them in a carefully planned martingale strategy. Mostly for fun. Until I made a mistake, which was something I actually predicted. I lost 6 consecutive times. The bet now is, I'm going to win the next roll, or the 7th bet. Everyone calls this the Gambler's Fallacy. Doesn't matter. Nakowa is afflicted with the same disease. For lack of a true scientific explanation, I resorted to just saying I had magic seeds. However, my understanding of statistics and probabilities, or the lack thereof, convinced me that I can exploit this predictable or deterministic pattern. But. No one believes me, and I can't explain myself. If I lose, they told me so. If I win, I just got lucky. Even though I said I knew it, I couldn't possible have predicted it. So, no one is sending me coins, I'll just have to wait patiently until I have enough to go gamble it again. Wanna bet? Send me coins and I will gamble it for you using my so called magic seeds, and I'll send you back the profit, if you'll let me keep the change. I told everyone, send me 100, I will send back 110, after making 112, and I'll keep the 2, if I win. If I lose, it was a gamble huh.... ... Hehehehe. Stupid magic seeds, stupid dragon babies, stupid dung beetle... Anyway, you asked for my point of view. The fact is that both you and nakowa speak about "spotting a pattern" (gambler's phallacy in its purest form), but neither of you cannot clearly explain a) how do you find the pattern and b) why this pattern (and thus flaw) exists. |
|
|
|
This is interesting. I agree it is most consistent with Gox not having enough USD. It costs about 3% to convert to USD at retail in Japan.
The fee is 5% plus some, so it appears there is also an international wire transfer involved, with the various fees along the way.
After their USD losses perhaps they are running a fractional reserve in USD. The real solution here would be for them to actually explain what is going on.
I think it is public knowledge that $5 million was confiscated from Mt.Gox customer funds. Considering that it is a Japanese company that does not likely have such a sum of their own, excess funds, in foreign currency, this resulted in a deficit and fractional reserve in customers' accounts. It is almost certainly the root cause of this bank run. Could you explain where MtGox's 10 million USD profit so far this year has gone, or are you only looking at one side of the equation? Not to mention there are > 12 million USD worth of bids in the order book. 5 million doesn't explain anything. You need at least 20 million USD to explain this as a lack of funds. I strongly believe Gox is an honest company run by an honest manager (Karpeles). They have proved it for the last years. But the hard cold fact is they are short of $10M, which is quite a sum, and they are very probably running fractional reserve in customers accounts. That's the only reasonable explanation to the absurd delays with withdrawals. We know: - Gox handled a very big volume BEFORE the Dwolla and Coinlab issues, and they handled that volume FINE - Bitstamp is now handling a volume that is increasing day by day, and they are doing it FINE - Stating that Gox is "overwhelming" the biggest bank is Japan is laughable at best. That's BS. - Gox needed to increase their operational costs during the bubble, precisely to be able to handle the customers and volume growth. We do not know how rationally that growth was managed. - Gox invested in new servers, trading engine, etc. shortly before the Dwolla and Coinlab issues - Being scrutinized by US regulators is quite a stress, which certainly leads to more expenses: expensive lawyers, licenses, etc. We can safely assume they are spending a lot to pull their shit together. - Gox is offering an "emergency" withdrawal option that goes with a 5% fee. Surprise! There is no "overwhelming" if you choose that option. Finally, the hard cold fact is Gox is having tremendous issues with withdrawals (delays and more delays), and as per Occam's Razor, the easiest answer is they have liquidity problems. Saying stupid things like "the old financial system is having problems to follow the thriving BTC economy" and such is an insult to the intelligence of their customers. They probably offer the "5% emergency withdrawal" so they can make as much money as possible with such a leonine fee, to eventually cover the holes left by the US DHS and Coinlab. TL;DR: the hard cold facts seems to indicate that: a) Gox is an honest company, but they are withholding information regarding why they are having these problems, and in fact they are probably lying; b) they are heavily delaying outcoming wires, while incoming wires work just fine (ohhh... No "overwhelming" with incoming money?). Everything strongly indicates they are having liquidity problems, and that they have been forced by circumstances (seizures, Coinlab misappropriation) to run a fractional reserve. |
|
|
|
|
Truth is that by now they should be able to advertise an exact shipping date for "day 1" customers. They could say "30th September", and then "overdeliver" by starting to ship on the 27th (for example).
As many state here, you do not need to be an electronic engineer to know that in a production process you set clear deadlines. By now they should know for sure if those deadlines will be met, or by how much they will be missed.
|
|
|
|
And that reassures you?
honestly, in this phase I can't imagine the answer, which will reassures me more.) but as I mentioned previously in this thread, is hard to believe, that they are able to assemble, test, package and ship hundreds of boxes within few days. I stand with my pre order couple of months, so last few days are like nothing.) I can tell you which answer will reassure you more: your order will be shipped on 2x September, and its expect to be delivered to you the day after. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
