BTCOracle : Bet on the future price of bitcoin !

[DarkEmi]

Hello,

We are launching a new service, BTCOracle, that allow users to bet on the future price of bitcoin

http://www.btcoracle.com/

Right now we only have two possible types of bets as the site is in the beta phase :

- Bet that the price will rise in the next 3 hours
- Bet that the price will go down in the next 3 hours

Please dont hesitate to make us feedback we welcome all of them ;-)

Edit :

We have just proceeded to a major upgrade including the following changes :

Added 2 new time frames : 15 minutes and 1 day
Improved leaderboard
Improved address selection system
Added Coinbase support
Added live chat
Added history page
Improved FAQ

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[KarlChappe]

I really like your idea.

I think you are the first that have implemented this concept to Bitcoin. And I like that you've written your real name in the FAQ.

I've never played satoshidice because it's -EV. I don't say your site is +EV but I'll try to beat you ;-)

[puffpuffpass]

only problem I see with your system is that there may be a delay in receiving the bitcoins and by that time, the dynamics of the market have changed from the moment the users decides to bet, and that is an annoyance for me personally.

[KarlChappe]

only problem I see with your system is that there may be a delay in receiving the bitcoins and by that time, the dynamics of the market have changed from the moment the users decides to bet, and that is an annoyance for me personally.

The delay is part of the game. That said, I would prefer one hour delay than 3 hours.

[puffpuffpass]

only problem I see with your system is that there may be a delay in receiving the bitcoins and by that time, the dynamics of the market have changed from the moment the users decides to bet, and that is an annoyance for me personally.

The delay is part of the game. That said, I would prefer one hour delay than 3 hours.

no, I mean the delay in time between when they receive the bet and what the price was when sent it. it could be 10 seconds, or it could be 1 hour. that's the nature of Bitcoin transactions from my experience. example, say I want to bet at $141.00 and by the time the payment is received, it has gone up to $142.00? then in 3 hours, the price is $141.50, I will then lose. Get it?

[KarlChappe]

only problem I see with your system is that there may be a delay in receiving the bitcoins and by that time, the dynamics of the market have changed from the moment the users decides to bet, and that is an annoyance for me personally.

The delay is part of the game. That said, I would prefer one hour delay than 3 hours.

no, I mean the delay in time between when they receive the bet and what the price was when sent it. it could be 10 seconds, or it could be 1 hour. that's the nature of Bitcoin transactions from my experience. example, say I want to bet at $141.00 and by the time the payment is received, it has gone up to $142.00? then in 3 hours, the price is $141.50, I will then lose. Get it?

Sorry, I read too quickly what you said. Maybe you're right but I played 4 times and it was saved in few seconds for me.

[Hoco]

I think, this is a really unique idea. Is there also such an site for LTC?

[dooglus]

How does the maximum bet work?  Can I send multiple 1 BTC payments in a single transaction to exceed the maximum?  Or do I have to make multiple transactions from different addresses?

If you suspect that two bets are from the same person, will you cancel the bets?

It seems that your game is open to exploitation.  If I'm planning to sell 100k BTC soon, and know that the price will drop at least a little as a result, I can profit very nicely from your site by betting that the price will go down.  I can even tell everyone I know and have them all place multiple 1 BTC bets with you.  What do you do in such a situation?

I checked the FAQ but all I saw was that your "aren't really" worried about it.

By the way, I ran a spellcheck on your FAQ page for you:

Code:

-This is a bitcoin gambling website based on the prices from Mtgox. It allows you to bet wether the price will go up or down for a given period of time, directly with the bitcoin blockchain acting as an inteface. 
+This is a bitcoin gambling website based on the prices from Mtgox. It allows you to bet whether the price will go up or down for a given period of time, directly with the bitcoin blockchain acting as an interface. 

-In any case, it might happens that our bitcoin client crash or some unexpected issue but we will honnor all bets so if you happens to not get your bitcoin immediately please wait a day.
+In any case, it might happens that our bitcoin client crash or some unexpected issue but we will honor all bets so if you happens to not get your bitcoin immediately please wait a day.

-Dont trust us blindly. 
+Don't trust us blindly. 

-We are also working with the swedish guys from http://btcx.se/ on other projects. 
+We are also working with the Swedish guys from http://btcx.se/ on other projects. 

-We use the time of the transaction from http://blockchain.info/ to determine the exact second where the bet has occured, and then we use the list of mtgox transactions that is available via the http://bitcoincharts.com/ mtgox historic API to determine both the opening price of the bet and the closing price. 
+We use the time of the transaction from http://blockchain.info/ to determine the exact second where the bet has occurred, and then we use the list of mtgox transactions that is available via the http://bitcoincharts.com/ mtgox historic API to determine both the opening price of the bet and the closing price. 

-If your bet is expected to close at 12:00:00, we will take the price from the last trade that occured at 11:59:59. 
+If your bet is expected to close at 12:00:00, we will take the price from the last trade that occurred at 11:59:59. 

-We will reject the bet. It means that it will be sent back to you minus the 0.0005 BTC transaction fee the bitcoin network requires after a certain time. If the bet is egal or smaller than the network transaction fee, we will simply ignore it.
+We will reject the bet. It means that it will be sent back to you minus the 0.0005 BTC transaction fee the bitcoin network requires after a certain time. If the bet is equal to or smaller than the network transaction fee, we will simply ignore it.

-As the odds are determined by a mathematical function, if it happens that users can predict accuratly then odds given will reflect that and might seem unfair. 
+As the odds are determined by a mathematical function, if it happens that users can predict accurately then odds given will reflect that and might seem unfair. 

-On the contrario, if for some reason users happens to be really bad and loose most the time then we will probably have outstanding odds like 1:3. Of course it seems unrealistic that people can predict worse than random. 
+On the contrary, if for some reason users happens to be really bad and loose most the time then we will probably have outstanding odds like 1:3. Of course it seems unrealistic that people can predict worse than random. 

[puffpuffpass]

I fucked up and sent less than .02, forgetting completely about the min bet. Do you send it back or what? ..

[puffpuffpass]

Wow! That was like a bad beat in poker. If my trade registered on your system 3 seconds later, I would have won. It's so retarded, I know BTC prices are going up but this short term 3-hour windows bullshit is impossible to trade on.

Good luck, I'm not playing anymore, fuck that. The margin of error is too big on short term trading. Reminds me of currency trading, you get a margin call and then right after you get wiped out, it goes your direction no problem. It's not that I make sensible trades, but more that the system is designed to profit off my losses. Dumb thing to waste my time on.

[dooglus]

Wow! That was like a bad beat in poker. If my trade registered on your system 3 seconds later, I would have won. It's so retarded, I know BTC prices are going up but this short term 3-hour windows bullshit is impossible to trade on.

Good luck, I'm not playing anymore, fuck that. The margin of error is too big on short term trading. Reminds me of currency trading, you get a margin call and then right after you get wiped out, it goes your direction no problem. It's not that I make sensible trades, but more that the system is designed to profit off my losses. Dumb thing to waste my time on.

I think what he's trying to say is that he would like you to offer longer term bets than just the 3 hour ones.

[puffpuffpass]

Wow! That was like a bad beat in poker. If my trade registered on your system 3 seconds later, I would have won. It's so retarded, I know BTC prices are going up but this short term 3-hour windows bullshit is impossible to trade on.

Good luck, I'm not playing anymore, fuck that. The margin of error is too big on short term trading. Reminds me of currency trading, you get a margin call and then right after you get wiped out, it goes your direction no problem. It's not that I make sensible trades, but more that the system is designed to profit off my losses. Dumb thing to waste my time on.

I think what he's trying to say is that he would like you to offer longer term bets than just the 3 hour ones.

I don't have to "try" to say anything. I said exactly what I meant to say.

[dooglus]

I don't have to "try" to say anything. I said exactly what I meant to say.

OK.  I found your message hard to understand.  Most of it seemed to be anger that you lost your gamble with a little paranoia/magical thinking thrown in.

The bit where you said "It's not that I make sensible trades" struck me as the exact opposite of what you intended, but I guess not.

[DarkEmi]

only problem I see with your system is that there may be a delay in receiving the bitcoins and by that time, the dynamics of the market have changed from the moment the users decides to bet, and that is an annoyance for me personally.

Hello,

Yes there is.

I dont see any way to go around it. Maybe there is, but there is no way to know the exact time you decide to bet, except with when the bets was propagated on the network.

Edit: Actually since we are using blockchain.info as "trustee" to estimate the betting time, if you bet FROM a blockchain.info wallet the bet is actually real time, ie there is no delay between the time you send and the time the timestamp is registered on blockchain.info.

Maybe we whould advertise bets from blockchain.info wallets as being real time !!!

[DarkEmi]

only problem I see with your system is that there may be a delay in receiving the bitcoins and by that time, the dynamics of the market have changed from the moment the users decides to bet, and that is an annoyance for me personally.

The delay is part of the game. That said, I would prefer one hour delay than 3 hours.

We plan to implement a lot more time period during the next release in a few weeks. 15 mins will probably be a total crapshot or exploitable by the right people but we will try it anyway. We plan to release the "beta v2" with 15 mins / 3 hours / 12 housr / 1 day / 1 week.

[DarkEmi]

I think, this is a really unique idea. Is there also such an site for LTC?

Yes, we plan to make a LTC release ))

Thats not top priority for us tho, but definitly once we are kinda satisfied with everything we propose for bitcoins and there is no remaining bugs etc, we will propose the same for LTC

[DarkEmi]

How does the maximum bet work?  Can I send multiple 1 BTC payments in a single transaction to exceed the maximum?  Or do I have to make multiple transactions from different addresses?

Yes you can. We have anyway no way to verify thats it is the same person so it is possible.

And we are totally fine with it, you can do that if you want. You can even bet 10 btc from the same address if thats your choice.

Our protection works by lowering odds if necessary. If there is a dangerous amount of coin for us then after a few 1 btc bets you'll probably see the odds getting offered going down.

[DarkEmi]

If you suspect that two bets are from the same person, will you cancel the bets?

We will NEVER cancel a bet. If the bet is "invalid" it is denied, else every bets will be honored. Even if that cost us money.

Our odds system is supposed to be our protection against "spam" bets.
If you bet 10 btc on a short succession you'll get very bad odds on the last ones.

Feel free to play exactly as you like.

Of course we plan to accept huge bets and volume at a latter point, just not now as we are proof testing our idea.

[DarkEmi]

It seems that your game is open to exploitation.  If I'm planning to sell 100k BTC soon, and know that the price will drop at least a little as a result, I can profit very nicely from your site by betting that the price will go down.  I can even tell everyone I know and have them all place multiple 1 BTC bets with you.  What do you do in such a situation?

Well, the first thing I can tell you is that we will do "nothing" and honor everything.
Yes, you can game us. We even encourage you to try as we are trying to know the bottlenecks of our system.

We will never have a human decision as it is not fair. All decision are taken automatically, with fairest neutral sources (datas from mtgox and timestamp from blockchain). It is the only way to be fair.

As monitor such "abuse" case is pretty impossible, the only solution I see we have is not to make it worth your while. Either by odds or because the amounts are not strong enough.

In your example, betting 1 bitcoin is clearly meaningless compared to dropping 100k btc. I doubt you will care to bet in such a situation.

Thats why we probably will never able to accept 500 bitcoins bets or such, especially on a short time frame.

[DarkEmi]

By the way, I ran a spellcheck on your FAQ page for you:

Thanks !

To be honest it was written very fast and I did not proof read it afterwards, and we are now working 200% of our time on all the issues and new features. I ll definitly get it another look asap.

As well sorry for missing the topics, I have two topics on bitcointalk and I have "F5" them for like 2 days and nothing happened so I kinda forgot about them )))