Starting a Bitcoin lottery – your thoughts?

[maxmint]

I know there have been some bitcoin lotteries around already and www.bitlotto.com seens to be a well established site. Nevertheless I would like to start my own, mainly because I love to build sites and educate myself about the bitcoin system.

So I would love to hear what you would consider to be essential for an successful lottery site. What would make a bitcoin lottery site trushworthy?
Thanks, any of your suggestions are highly appreciated!

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[BitLucky]

I am in a similar situation and have just started my own site, bitlucky.org (alpha). Let me know what you think and if you want to work on the project with me

[N.Olmos]

Hi BitLucky,

The following statement from your website is confusing:
"To enter the lottery you must send any amount of Bitcoins you wish to the specified address using the official Bitcoin client (not an eWallet). The more Bitcoins you send, the higher your chance of winning. If you win the lottery the prizepool will be sent back to you using the Bitcoin address that you paid with. No money is taken from the prizepool (100% payout)."

Is the minimum bet .5 BTC?

Your statement implies someone can bet say .51 BTC an improve his chances of winning. If this is true how does this work?

Or, do you mean any amount of Bitcoins as long as it is a multiple of the minimum bet (.5 BTC) and each multiple would count as one ticket allowing players to buy multiple tickets with one transaction?

n.olmos

[The Electric Monk]

You might want to check local laws about running a gambling site.  I'm not sure about where you're from, but here in Canada you can go to jail for running a gambling operation that isn't liscenced.

[BitLucky]

Hi BitLucky,

The following statement from your website is confusing:
"To enter the lottery you must send any amount of Bitcoins you wish to the specified address using the official Bitcoin client (not an eWallet). The more Bitcoins you send, the higher your chance of winning. If you win the lottery the prizepool will be sent back to you using the Bitcoin address that you paid with. No money is taken from the prizepool (100% payout)."

Is the minimum bet .5 BTC?

Your statement implies someone can bet say .51 BTC an improve his chances of winning. If this is true how does this work?

Or, do you mean any amount of Bitcoins as long as it is a multiple of the minimum bet (.5 BTC) and each multiple would count as one ticket allowing players to buy multiple tickets with one transaction?

n.olmos

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying to your question (having problems with my email).

There is no minimum bet amount (well, I suppose 0.0005 BTC realistically). The total prize pool (in Satoshi's) is used as the number of "tickets". A winning ticket is then selected at random. Therefore the more BTC you put in, the more likely you are to scoop the jackpot. The official thread is located here. I will try to explain in a bit better on the website.
Thanks 

[TeaL]

Starting a lottery with a lottery based currency.... Interesting...

[castlegoat]

It is interesting! How do you cover your costs?

[didgydont]

lottery is boring I want bitcoin roulette with and actual spinning wheel and bounceing ball and sound effects. That would be sweet.

[gibson042]

Starting a lottery with a lottery based currency.... Interesting...

On an unrelated note... might I interest anyone in my new alternative blockchain, Ponzicoin?

[BitLucky]

It is interesting! How do you cover your costs?

Domain price ~$5 a year, combined with free web hosting = ~$5 a year costs... 

[BitLucky]

You might want to check local laws about running a gambling site.  I'm not sure about where you're from, but here in Canada you can go to jail for running a gambling operation that isn't liscenced.

I'm from the UK, it is completely legal here 

[predic]

1)present bitcoin lotteries are complicated and many newbies will not understand it. I like idea that bitcoin lottery use numbers from official lottery, it decreases chances for cheating and people will believe you more, for example, you can use Euro Millions lottery or mega millions from USA and you can make the same system of prizes, just people play at your site and not at site of official lottery. I don't like some hashes and complicated system of drawing. I would play only if people make website where players usernames, ticket numbers, bitcoin addresses will be published on website, so we can see who won and who lost. you must have database for that and better website. lottery is for entertainment, I don't like some black&white websites which looks ugly.
2)you can't convince smarter people that they should believe you when you use anonymous currency and your lottery is not registered (maybe even domain name ownership is hidden), it means those who are ready to risk, they will play. the point is that ticket is not so big money but to bring players, you must have good prizes and to have good prizes you must have many players. it means you must advertise your lottery very much, but later about it...
we saw already many excuses on internet about "hacking and disappeared" bitcoins. sorry, I don't believe in hacking, some people simply decide to steal all bitcoins of users of website and the easiest way is to say "site was hacked". and believe me, some sites have a lot of money in bitcoins. you must be longer time on the market that people begin to believe you and if you publish your ID, you can be prosecuted. so, you must stay anonymous. that's problem about trust and anonymity. to do everything legal, you must have big money, state mafia make monopoly on lottery and they will give you license only if you pay big money. it is so even if you register offshore company, the law in Belize demand 250k (state take that money) + 500k deposit (money to secure players) to let you to have company for lottery. it means you must stay anonymous and again people will take a risk that you can disappear with their money. but as I said, one ticket is not so big money, I recommend the same price like official lottery, euromillions cost 2 euro per ticket. I think 2 EUR is 0.2 or 0.3 BTC. you must stay anonymous also if you let Americans to play lottery (if your lottery is not based in USA), USA forbid to all their citizens to play foreign lottery. crazy but true.
3)many people can make this or that website, BUT popular website will be one which has money to advertise itself. so, google had initial investment 100k$, mark zuckerberg possess only 24% of facebook, that's the price of success, you want to succeed, you must find investor (and investor take % of company and they demand registered business). in other case, if you don't have investor or your own money to invest, you will have 10-50 visitors and that's all. ask any company how much they spend for marketing, and internet is even global marketing, you can spend 100k very fast. so, as you see, business is not only making of site and paid hosting, if you want to have users, you will have to advertise, internet marketing you can do and alone, without big money, but you will spend a lot of your time and you will spam internet:) SEO (marketing) is nothing else than spaming, but stupid search engines like Google function on the basis of backlinking, etc. even official medias make thousands of blogs in order to create network, then they sell story about million users and their "network" and on the basis of that they take big money for marketing. but they don't give you quality users, than virtual users who will not come to your website. so, many people pay to medias for nothing, it has sense only to pay to place a banner at national medias websites which are visited by many people, and only at the top. marketing is dirty business and that's so. many of them sell fog.

[Vampiro]

One suggestion: If you are going to follow through with a BTC lottery site, try to find something that you can implement which is unique and appealing to non-BTC users. It makes much more sense to have a target range of anyone interested in online lotteries than BTC users that are interested in online lotteries. It can also increase the interest in BTC in general. You will have to think everything through and plan it all out before making it operational though. The lottery sounds cool and using actual lottery numbers is a great idea. Think about other things you could implement in the website too, other than just the lottery. Personally, I would love a BTC sportsbook that is effectively set up. This is something you have to make sure you are opened to a wide audience for though because if you just open up for me, well you'll be losing money

[castlegoat]

Doesn't sound like a good idea.  Reminds me of the $400 "mining rig" someone was mentioning earlier this weekend.

[btcgame]

A new bitcoin Lottery site is here http://bitcoinlottery.dipconnect.com

[BC-Trader]

Invest in a .COM domain name.

Nothing says "I don't give a S### like a .blah.blah subdomain lotto.

Also there is already dozens of lottery and little gambling games that really don't go anywhere, people just don't throw their money away unless the owner gives them THEIR own money to throw on the site in hopes that those players will come back(trust me they don't)

but nether the less good luck it will probably be  a struggle to break even after domain and hosting fees but were talking about like 5-6 bucks so who cares.

[Troll Toll]

many Bitcoin poker sites exist and a few bitcoin casino sites exist.

I'm still waiting for one that has craps though 

[BansheeXLR]

In my country the people bet in a lotery local, in triples and terminales, per example a person bet 10$ to the number 999 for the Caracas Lotery, all night or diferent hour show in tv the lottery draws, in this draws  can be a number between 000 to 999 the person play to the number 999 win a pot per example for each 1btc win 60btc, maybe this bussisness model can be apply to the bitcoin

[payb.tc]

Invest in a .COM domain name.

Nothing says "I don't give a S### like a .blah.blah subdomain lotto.

Also there is already dozens of lottery and little gambling games that really don't go anywhere, people just don't throw their money away unless the owner gives them THEIR own money to throw on the site in hopes that those players will come back(trust me they don't)

but nether the less good luck it will probably be  a struggle to break even after domain and hosting fees but were talking about like 5-6 bucks so who cares.

is a .com gambling domain more likely to get seized by Mr America or can they take any other types just as easily?

[zer0]

better to become a gambling proxy. buy tickets, bet on horses and other gambling activity in your town, then allow people to get in for a percentage.