[CLOSED] S.DICE - SatoshiDICE 100% Dividend-Paying Asset on MPEx

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I think it's a lot far away from scam at this point. Just that evoorhees seems to hire some incompetent people, and pays close to nil attention to SDICE.

[MPOE-PR]

My sympathies. Indeed compared to investing in bitcoins, sdice has been a disaster the past months. Basically totally collapsing from around 0.0070 to the current 0.0020, losing 70% of it's btc value. It's rightful to feel bad about that.

I agree with you that they are undervalued. It's very simple, it returns an average 10% dividend, but $ earnings and $ value have been tenfolding in only 1 year. This means this extremely fast growing company is valued at a P/E of 10. That is ridiculous. Sure there is a lot of legal uncertainty but still. Normally such fast growing company is valued at a P/E of 50 (dividend 2%).

Well here's the thing, past 30 day volume (all PTs included) is 372,209 shares, or about 500-1k BTC. That's another way of saying nothing (about 0.1% of total corp mkt cap or thereabouts). So therefore:

A. Current price is reflective of not much with a view to nothing at all. The people holding it obviously aren't selling, the book hasn't much moved etc. Seems like a few speculators working on very little capital have been working themselves into a tizzy, going into some sort of downward spiral the past month or so. This trend can easily reverse in about five minutes, which leads us to:

B. Lay off all the analytical talk and buy some shares.

Obviously B may not be feasible for very practical reasons, but I do think all the excitement over what looks more like market inefficiency/immaturity that any sort of actual changes is perhaps a little over the top. S.DICE is not significantly different from whatever it was back in January, when it was trading at 3x current share prices, the dooglus reports still show it at 5x% of all network transactions, what exactly is the problem?

I doesn't take into account the fact of SD's competition. It's simply being out out competed. There are more and more sites popping up with better features, lower house odds and more invested developers

None of this matters, as has been discussed constantly since about August, as has been proven constantly since August. Anyone can make a website in about five minutes, that's not a business. S.DICE has the proven ability to pay 10s of ks of BTC to winners. No competitor has this. End of story, really.

SD is having it's cake cut slice by slice while it waits to be out performed by all these alternative sites. It will only survive a year if it acts now whilst it still is largely in the bitcoin community public eye. Otherwise this user base will slowly dwindle and diversify into all the other sites leaving SD a husk of a once potential filled 'business'.

By this sort of reasoning Coca Cola would not exist today. You have to at some point appreciate that the "developers matter", "a website is a business", "stuff has to happen!!!" ADD approach to life and everything else is specific to a very narrow group of people (young, mostly male, mostly poor, mostly urban etc) which doesn't translate into much social traction or broader relevance (if it did they'd have more sex and chill the fuck out). It's, in other words, a market nobody wants to sell to (this is why they mostly buy computer games rather than luxury cruises, sky and scooba gear, exotic vacations and other high value, high turnover pastimes).

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

A. Current price is reflective of not much with a view to nothing at all. The people holding it obviously aren't selling, the book hasn't much moved etc. Seems like a few speculators working on very little capital have been working themselves into a tizzy, going into some sort of downward spiral the past month or so. This trend can easily reverse in about five minutes, which leads us to:

That would mean none of the big investors want to acquire any more stake in S.DICE even with this 'undervalued' share price. Even if this is true, it's not positive.

I'm thinking that most people aren't selling because they believe that SDICE will still keep it's marketshare even without doing anything (which I disagree with) or that SDICE will add updates and promised features like account betting sometime soon. The situation of "nobody selling" is not going to continue forever (unless people lost their gpg keys). With every second the competitors gain more trust while offering features like actually instant betting.

Oh, and you need to explain where the costs are going to in detail (ie how it is calculated) to shareholders. Especially when you just hired a PR rep that has not signed in for a week. What are you paying them for?

[SatoshiDICE_PR]

A. Current price is reflective of not much with a view to nothing at all. The people holding it obviously aren't selling, the book hasn't much moved etc. Seems like a few speculators working on very little capital have been working themselves into a tizzy, going into some sort of downward spiral the past month or so. This trend can easily reverse in about five minutes, which leads us to:

That would mean none of the big investors want to acquire any more stake in S.DICE even with this 'undervalued' share price. Even if this is true, it's not positive.

I'm thinking that most people aren't selling because they believe that SDICE will still keep it's marketshare even without doing anything (which I disagree with) or that SDICE will add updates and promised features like account betting sometime soon. The situation of "nobody selling" is not going to continue forever (unless people lost their gpg keys). With every second the competitors gain more trust while offering features like actually instant betting.

Oh, and you need to explain where the costs are going to in detail (ie how it is calculated) to shareholders. Especially when you just hired a PR rep that has not signed in for a week. What are you paying them for?

Just because I have not logged in does not mean that I am not watching
A statement is being prepared to answer the questions and concerns brought up.
Best Regards
The Spirit of Satoshi

[Abu22]

My sympathies. Indeed compared to investing in bitcoins, sdice has been a disaster the past months. Basically totally collapsing from around 0.0070 to the current 0.0020, losing 70% of it's btc value. It's rightful to feel bad about that.

I agree with you that they are undervalued. It's very simple, it returns an average 10% dividend, but $ earnings and $ value have been tenfolding in only 1 year. This means this extremely fast growing company is valued at a P/E of 10. That is ridiculous. Sure there is a lot of legal uncertainty but still. Normally such fast growing company is valued at a P/E of 50 (dividend 2%).

Well here's the thing, past 30 day volume (all PTs included) is 372,209 shares, or about 500-1k BTC. That's another way of saying nothing (about 0.1% of total corp mkt cap or thereabouts). So therefore:

A. Current price is reflective of not much with a view to nothing at all. The people holding it obviously aren't selling, the book hasn't much moved etc. Seems like a few speculators working on very little capital have been working themselves into a tizzy, going into some sort of downward spiral the past month or so. This trend can easily reverse in about five minutes, which leads us to:

B. Lay off all the analytical talk and buy some shares.

Obviously B may not be feasible for very practical reasons, but I do think all the excitement over what looks more like market inefficiency/immaturity that any sort of actual changes is perhaps a little over the top. S.DICE is not significantly different from whatever it was back in January, when it was trading at 3x current share prices, the dooglus reports still show it at 5x% of all network transactions, what exactly is the problem?

I doesn't take into account the fact of SD's competition. It's simply being out out competed. There are more and more sites popping up with better features, lower house odds and more invested developers

None of this matters, as has been discussed constantly since about August, as has been proven constantly since August. Anyone can make a website in about five minutes, that's not a business. S.DICE has the proven ability to pay 10s of ks of BTC to winners. No competitor has this. End of story, really.

SD is having it's cake cut slice by slice while it waits to be out performed by all these alternative sites. It will only survive a year if it acts now whilst it still is largely in the bitcoin community public eye. Otherwise this user base will slowly dwindle and diversify into all the other sites leaving SD a husk of a once potential filled 'business'.

By this sort of reasoning Coca Cola would not exist today. You have to at some point appreciate that the "developers matter", "a website is a business", "stuff has to happen!!!" ADD approach to life and everything else is specific to a very narrow group of people (young, mostly male, mostly poor, mostly urban etc) which doesn't translate into much social traction or broader relevance (if it did they'd have more sex and chill the fuck out). It's, in other words, a market nobody wants to sell to (this is why they mostly buy computer games rather than luxury cruises, sky and scooba gear, exotic vacations and other high value, high turnover pastimes).

Holy shit... Where do I even start with that?

'Lay off the analytical talk and buy shares'... shit we're dealing with a pro here.
...

>Competition doesn't matter because SD can payout highest
>Everyone is a whale
>SD didn't grow from that initial small amount
>SD is being out performed feature wise... But people obviously dont use a website based on what they can do on it..they do it based on how much they can bet in a single tx.

SD can payout the most so that's the End of the story? Are you even reading what you write?

Why are you even following Bitcoin if you can't see the merit of finding alternatives to systems such as fiat that are unsuitable for sustained use.
Bitcoin was worthless but feature rich -> fiat was shit -> bitcoin grew in worth
gambleSiteX is worthless but feature rich -> SD is sh-...owing no competitive advantage -> gambleSiteX growths in worth

Both of these examples detract from worth of the out performing 'new' system.

Now..
You couldn't have picked a worse comparator thank Coca Cola...They're probably one of the fiercest competing companies out there! Are you that blind that you think Coke has even the Slightest similarity to SD. Tell me how long it takes for you to read each of the avenues they've expanded into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca-Cola_brands Not only their product expansion but the sole advertising and promoting of their product is absurd.

Put away the keyboard and sit down, you're drunk.

Best Regards
The Spirit of Satoshi

Also why always sign with this? Are you 12? Top professionalism.

[MPOE-PR]

That would mean none of the big investors want to acquire any more stake in S.DICE even with this 'undervalued' share price. Even if this is true, it's not positive.

From my (limited) experience and from what I could get together eavesdropping on MPEx people, generally speaking investing works thusly: optimal chunks are decided (we want 1%, 0.1%, 10% of this company for strategic investors, we want 1%, 0.1%, 10% of our capital in this company for everyone else). This process is based on some sort of fundamental considerations, into which price (current or historical) does not figure. The trades are then executed (there may be some timing skulduggery involved here) and the desired positions entered. This situation continues until a new decision as to the optimal chunks is made (perhaps on a yearly review), after which more trades are executed to attain the new desired position.

I'm not saying it's positive necessarily, I'm not really discussing that angle. Just trying to make the point that not everybody is as last price driven as the average forum user - in a probably doomed attempt to restore some balance to the discussion. And when I say "not everybody" what I really mean is "no actual investor".

I'm thinking that most people aren't selling because they believe that SDICE will still keep it's marketshare even without doing anything (which I disagree with) or that SDICE will add updates and promised features like account betting sometime soon. The situation of "nobody selling" is not going to continue forever (unless people lost their gpg keys). With every second the competitors gain more trust while offering features like actually instant betting.

I suspect people are looking at the dividends and the market share, then try to read some of the forum discussion but quickly shrug and move on. Informal polling shows that not a single one of the larger investors we know of/are in contact with actually reads this forum.

Oh, and you need to explain where the costs are going to in detail (ie how it is calculated) to shareholders. Especially when you just hired a PR rep that has not signed in for a week. What are you paying them for?

Why are you telling me this?!

[greatscott]

Two things that I think may help instill a little bit more confidence:

(1) Switch to paying the dividend weekly. Even though this isn't normal, all the popular ASICMiner divs seem to be setting a precedent with this.

(2) Eric should probably get an independent audit done on the statistics by someone or a company who specializes in gaming. In particular, I think the standard deviation / variance on the game needs to be mapped out and have the min/max bet calculations reset correctly. Further, I'm guessing people have looked at this already, but it should be verified that that taking the top digits of a sha512 hash on txids is a good uniform distribution. Either way, making the stdev smaller should help reduce these profit swings and keep profits in the green with a higher probability.

[Abu22]

Two things that I think may help instill a little bit more confidence:

(1) Switch to paying the dividend weekly. Even though this isn't normal, all the popular ASICMiner divs seem to be setting a precedent with this.

(2) Eric should probably get an independent audit done on the statistics by someone or a company who specializes in gaming. In particular, I think the standard deviation / variance on the game needs to be mapped out and have the min/max bet calculations reset correctly. Further, I'm guessing people have looked at this already, but it should be verified that that taking the top digits of a sha512 hash on txids is a good uniform distribution. Either way, making the stdev smaller should help reduce these profit swings and keep profits in the green with a higher probability.

You must be new here. Good suggestions get ignored and burried with post of irrelevance. Shits tragic.

[greatscott]

Two things that I think may help instill a little bit more confidence:

(1) Switch to paying the dividend weekly. Even though this isn't normal, all the popular ASICMiner divs seem to be setting a precedent with this.

(2) Eric should probably get an independent audit done on the statistics by someone or a company who specializes in gaming. In particular, I think the standard deviation / variance on the game needs to be mapped out and have the min/max bet calculations reset correctly. Further, I'm guessing people have looked at this already, but it should be verified that that taking the top digits of a sha512 hash on txids is a good uniform distribution. Either way, making the stdev smaller should help reduce these profit swings and keep profits in the green with a higher probability.

You must be new here. Good suggestions get ignored and burried with post of irrelevance. Shits tragic.

Lurker since mid 2011, but still as naive as ever.

[MPOE-PR]

(1) Switch to paying the dividend weekly. Even though this isn't normal, all the popular ASICMiner divs seem to be setting a precedent with this.

Asicminer is not setting any sort of precedent. Dividends used to be weekly back in the old Global Scam Exchange days (with some daily). MPEx set a precedent by getting rid of the sort of bullshit. The only surviving corp off the Global Scam Exchange hasn't yet gotten the memo, they're stubborn. They'll learn. So will you.

(2) Eric should probably get an independent audit done on the statistics by someone or a company who specializes in gaming.

Google "MtGox heist auditor" or something.

In particular, I think the standard deviation / variance on the game needs to be mapped out and have the min/max bet calculations reset correctly.

You need to read up on Bitcoin. Don't start with the concept of provably fair, start with the very basics.

Further, I'm guessing people have looked at this already, but it should be verified that that taking the top digits of a sha512 hash on txids is a good uniform distribution. Either way, making the stdev smaller should help reduce these profit swings and keep profits in the green with a higher probability.

You need to read up on cryptography. Don't start with "why does a hashing function have to yield uniform distributions", start with the very basics.

You must be new here. Good suggestions get ignored and burried with post of irrelevance. Shits tragic.

Tragic indeed. Why are you doing it?

[evoorhees]

Earnings Report for May

Data can be found here along with comments/details on all expenses for the month: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aiec3-Eo_yO5dHB2dVdiaEltUHAtTWlBcFhXQVBYeGc#gid=14

Bets: 506,686
Volume Bet:  175,136.61
Paid Out: 174,750.31
Network Fees Paid: 531.28

Revenue: -144.98
Op. Expenses: 290.0325


Expected Earnings (discounting variance and incl. Op Expenses):  2,892 BTC
Actual Earnings (incl. Op Expenses): -435.01035497

Notes:
- Many people asked for details on expenses. These are now provided fully in the spreadsheet w/ comments.
- As heads-up, June will incur a payment of roughly $10k for remaining new website work
- May expenses were high due to $20k convention sponsorship 
- Bet Volume was up over 2x from April, despite US blockage.
- No hacks, no thefts. Lifetime earnings are nearly identical to expected earnings.
- Some people noticed I donated 150 btc to the blockchain pruning/lite nodes development here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=204283.msg2137338#msg2137338  I've received a couple angry PMs from people who thought SD was paying for this and it would come out of dividends. So I'll say it again - this was paid by me personally, not SD.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Why are you telling me this?!

Not talking to you I'm talking to evoorhees. Looking at the divs and marketshare is cool and all, but that can only tell you so much about future outlook.

Glad to see that the new website is being worked upon.

I don't see comments on the spreadsheet?

[greatscott]

Asicminer is not setting any sort of precedent. Dividends used to be weekly back in the old Global Scam Exchange days (with some daily). MPEx set a precedent by getting rid of the sort of bullshit. The only surviving corp off the Global Scam Exchange hasn't yet gotten the memo, they're stubborn. They'll learn. So will you.

Did I strike a nerve? Anyways, I didn't know - but even if it's not a precedent, I think moving to a weekly dividend pay-out could make confidence in the stock return more quickly...

You need to read up on Bitcoin. Don't start with the concept of provably fair, start with the very basics.

You need to read up on cryptography. Don't start with "why does a hashing function have to yield uniform distributions", start with the very basics.

I think you misinterpret what I meant. Provably fair means that the game isn't rigged (i.e. the house isn't cheating the gambler), not that the statistics of the game itself are good. I know Satoshi Dice is provably fair: the public keys (that represent the secret daily message) were put into the blockchain before the site's launched. I've gone through the whole verification process of both validating that the secret matches its public key from the SHA256 hash, and that the "lucky" number is properly produced, by doing the keyed SHA512 on the txid+secret message and looking at the top 4 digits. This part of the system certainly work.

I'm talking about the casino statistics of the game itself, and setting the game parameters (such as allowable min/max bet) so that the profit/loss variance is smaller (i.e. you're less likely to report a loss for the month). It is probably uniform, but if the distribution of "lucky" numbers happen to not be uniform, then this could be probabilistically exploited. E.G. If numbers < 32,000 tend to lie more in the 1:16k range than in the 16k:32k range or vice-versa. Something like this could contribute to a bigger profit/loss variance or bias it.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

No, it wouldn't. Having 2 or 3 weeks of negative returns / none dividends would not make the stock return more quickly.

There has being statistical analysis done on SDICE, it is very uniform.

[greatscott]

No, it wouldn't. Having 2 or 3 weeks of negative returns / none dividends would not make the stock return more quickly.

There has being statistical analysis done on SDICE, it is very uniform.

*Assuming the game parameters are tweaked so that the probability of seeing a negative return is lower or not as low.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

That's a double edged sword through. Reducing variance (eg decreasing max bets) makes it harder for "good" variance to turn the tide. Don't forget the extra overhead with paying out divs and such 4x as frequently - people got other things to do.

[Deprived]

Asicminer is not setting any sort of precedent. Dividends used to be weekly back in the old Global Scam Exchange days (with some daily). MPEx set a precedent by getting rid of the sort of bullshit. The only surviving corp off the Global Scam Exchange hasn't yet gotten the memo, they're stubborn. They'll learn. So will you.

Did I strike a nerve? Anyways, I didn't know - but even if it's not a precedent, I think moving to a weekly dividend pay-out could make confidence in the stock return more quickly...

You need to read up on Bitcoin. Don't start with the concept of provably fair, start with the very basics.

You need to read up on cryptography. Don't start with "why does a hashing function have to yield uniform distributions", start with the very basics.

I think you misinterpret what I meant. Provably fair means that the game isn't rigged (i.e. the house isn't cheating the gambler), not that the statistics of the game itself are good. I know Satoshi Dice is provably fair: the public keys (that represent the secret daily message) were put into the blockchain before the site's launched. I've gone through the whole verification process of both validating that the secret matches its public key from the SHA256 hash, and that the "lucky" number is properly produced, by doing the keyed SHA512 on the txid+secret message and looking at the top 4 digits. This part of the system certainly work.

I'm talking about the casino statistics of the game itself, and setting the game parameters (such as allowable min/max bet) so that the profit/loss variance is smaller (i.e. you're less likely to report a loss for the month). It is probably uniform, but if the distribution of "lucky" numbers happen to not be uniform, then this could be probabilistically exploited. E.G. If numbers < 32,000 tend to lie more in the 1:16k range than in the 16k:32k range or vice-versa. Something like this could contribute to a bigger profit/loss variance or bias it.

Weekly dividends would increase the apparent variance not reduce it.

In terms of reducing the variance in general there's a few ways to do it :

1.  Increase the house edge.  Can't see this being a flyer.  A fairly low house edge is one of the best means SD has to make it hard for significant competition to arise.
2.  Reduce max bet size (variance is much lower on 100 bets of 1 BTC than 1 bet of 100 BTC).  This isn't viable for very similar reasons.  People who want to make a 100 BTC bet won't settle for making 100 1 BTC bets.
3.  Remove the higher-odds wagers.  Not a good idea - if SD doesn't provide them, other sites will.

Which leaves the ONLY viable way to reduce variance without losing market share - increase volume.  That's what efforts need to be focussed on, not analysis to establish very basic facts already known (e.g. to minimise variance you'd ony allow bets of exactly the same size on a single bet type).  You have work within the range of what those betting actually want - and, unfortunately for SD, people don't want to bet a fixed amount on a single bet.  They want to be able to try to design variations of Martingale and other betting systems.  Whilst none of those systems can work some DO add a lot of variance.  Variance is the price the house has to pay to get people to wager on an unfair game (by which I mean no more than a game where one party has an edge).  You beat variance with volume - and over the long-term - not by driving away customers to try to avoid short-term losses.

[MPOE-PR]

Did I strike a nerve? Anyways, I didn't know - but even if it's not a precedent, I think moving to a weekly dividend pay-out could make confidence in the stock return more quickly...

The model here is to deliver long term value, not to cater to the Ponzi crowd.

[greatscott]

Asicminer is not setting any sort of precedent. Dividends used to be weekly back in the old Global Scam Exchange days (with some daily). MPEx set a precedent by getting rid of the sort of bullshit. The only surviving corp off the Global Scam Exchange hasn't yet gotten the memo, they're stubborn. They'll learn. So will you.

Did I strike a nerve? Anyways, I didn't know - but even if it's not a precedent, I think moving to a weekly dividend pay-out could make confidence in the stock return more quickly...

You need to read up on Bitcoin. Don't start with the concept of provably fair, start with the very basics.

You need to read up on cryptography. Don't start with "why does a hashing function have to yield uniform distributions", start with the very basics.

I think you misinterpret what I meant. Provably fair means that the game isn't rigged (i.e. the house isn't cheating the gambler), not that the statistics of the game itself are good. I know Satoshi Dice is provably fair: the public keys (that represent the secret daily message) were put into the blockchain before the site's launched. I've gone through the whole verification process of both validating that the secret matches its public key from the SHA256 hash, and that the "lucky" number is properly produced, by doing the keyed SHA512 on the txid+secret message and looking at the top 4 digits. This part of the system certainly work.

I'm talking about the casino statistics of the game itself, and setting the game parameters (such as allowable min/max bet) so that the profit/loss variance is smaller (i.e. you're less likely to report a loss for the month). It is probably uniform, but if the distribution of "lucky" numbers happen to not be uniform, then this could be probabilistically exploited. E.G. If numbers < 32,000 tend to lie more in the 1:16k range than in the 16k:32k range or vice-versa. Something like this could contribute to a bigger profit/loss variance or bias it.

Weekly dividends would increase the apparent variance not reduce it.

In terms of reducing the variance in general there's a few ways to do it :

1.  Increase the house edge.  Can't see this being a flyer.  A fairly low house edge is one of the best means SD has to make it hard for significant competition to arise.
2.  Reduce max bet size (variance is much lower on 100 bets of 1 BTC than 1 bet of 100 BTC).  This isn't viable for very similar reasons.  People who want to make a 100 BTC bet won't settle for making 100 1 BTC bets.
3.  Remove the higher-odds wagers.  Not a good idea - if SD doesn't provide them, other sites will.

Which leaves the ONLY viable way to reduce variance without losing market share - increase volume.  That's what efforts need to be focussed on, not analysis to establish very basic facts already known (e.g. to minimise variance you'd ony allow bets of exactly the same size on a single bet type).  You have work within the range of what those betting actually want - and, unfortunately for SD, people don't want to bet a fixed amount on a single bet.  They want to be able to try to design variations of Martingale and other betting systems.  Whilst none of those systems can work some DO add a lot of variance.  Variance is the price the house has to pay to get people to wager on an unfair game (by which I mean no more than a game where one party has an edge).  You beat variance with volume - and over the long-term - not by driving away customers to try to avoid short-term losses.

Great counter, thanks. I'd just like to see the perception of SD itself look more like a business with a steady revenue stream, rather than a gambler itself. I think you're right - the long-term key is volume. Nonetheless, it does seem that SDice might be due for a good optimization.

[Abu22]

Great counter, thanks. I'd just like to see the perception of SD itself look more like a business with a steady revenue stream, rather than a gambler itself. I think you're right - the long-term key is volume. Nonetheless, it does seem that SDice might be due for a good optimization.

lol, oh yea. And if you don't get ignored you'll get criticized by obnoxious know it alls, who actually argue like three year olds. Nothing supporting their counter statements.

...


So Erik, the comments in the report appear to suggest you pick a set date/time and pay the month wages in full then. This does notmatch any other payment, and as I suspected proves to show you're gaming the payments with an unjust bias...While also being very difficult to even get a comment on that..Why so evasive? If you're going to shit on us, at least don't tell us it's chocolate.

So are you willing to confirm that you have in fact been, arbitrarily calculating payments?

On another note...Whens the 'Big news' going to be announced. You said at the end of the month, not the start of the next. Can you not keep your word even once!?