[BITLOTTO] Mar 1 draw over $2000 or 50BTC! Tickets now 0.1 BTC for Apr 5

[bitlotto]

Now up to 130 BTC. Usually the first few weeks are the slowest so not too bad!

[Justin00]

excuse my stupid questions but.... Is the address on page 1 still the valid adress to transfer to ?
Do I need to keep a receipt or inform you or something ?

thanks

[bitlotto]

excuse my stupid questions but.... Is the address on page 1 still the valid adress to transfer to ?
Do I need to keep a receipt or inform you or something ?

thanks

Yup that address works. I update the first post every month. You don't need a receipt or do anything else. Just pay. If you win the winnings will go back into your wallet. Just make sure to use Bitcoin running on your computer.

[bitlotto]

I'm working on a BitLotto compatibility list. Is there any glaring ones missing that are popular? Or mistakes?

Bitcoin (of course)
Electrum
Armory
MultiBit

Web Based:
Blockchain.info
Strongcoin
NOT: Mt.Gox, Instawallet, or other online wallets.

Smartphone:
BitcoinSpinner
Bitcoin Wallet by andreas schildbach
NOT: BitPay

[Justin00]

cool thanks i have just entered

Come on lucky number <whatever it is> Papa needs a pair of new shoes !!

excuse my stupid questions but.... Is the address on page 1 still the valid adress to transfer to ?
Do I need to keep a receipt or inform you or something ?

thanks

Yup that address works. I update the first post every month. You don't need a receipt or do anything else. Just pay. If you win the winnings will go back into your wallet. Just make sure to use Bitcoin running on your computer.

[baldrick]

I'm working on a BitLotto compatibility list. Is there any glaring ones missing that are popular? Or mistakes?

Just FYI, BitcoinJ 0.4 works.  It is in fact a little simpler since it doesn't generate a pool of new addresses for change addresses so your coins will be in an address you see in your wallet.

[ineededausername]

Cap the fucking ticket limit, How the fuck can anyone who doesnt own 100 tickets win? "because if you have a ticket you have a chance"
Yeah well i think the guy who BOUGHT the odds is an asshole, Fully understandable that anyone with simmilar capabilities would've done the same, But c'mon he had like a 20% chance to win
Sure "he still could've lost" But let's change the ratio, Say he Continued to buy shitloads of tickets, He could crank up his chance to win as high as 99%!

Lol. It wouldn't have mattered if 400 guys bought at 0.25 each or 1 guy bought at 100btc. The odds for the others is still the same. See the logic yet?

LOL As predicted here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34007.msg835161#msg835161

I am sure he is not the only one with this misconception - just the only one so far to post about it.  It is an easy mistake to make.  I did for a minute before thinking it through and that is why I posted about it.  Emotion versus Math!

I had the same misconception for a minute too.  Amazing how the brain screws you over sometimes

[bitlotto]

I've updated the OP to list software that will work. If anyone notices any missing please PM me! Thanks. I've updated BitLotto.com to show the list. I hope it's more clear in case people aren't sure what an ewallet is.

[bitlotto]

154 BTC now, it's still climbing good and still more than half the time left! Good luck everyone!

[Daily Anarchist]

How exciting will it be when the lotto gets to be tens of thousands of bitcoins big?

I actually never gamble when I think I have negative equity. Poker is the only gambling I do because I'm a winning player. But I will admit that I bought one ticket last month and one this month. Despite having negative equity, the amount the house takes is so small and the tickets are so cheap that it makes for fun Schnitz & Giggles.

Also, I'm optimistic that over time the house will actually end up making all of it's money from other means than skimming, which means the potential for a lottery that offers gamblers positive equity is real. So, I like supporting that effort now in order to work towards that goal tomorrow.

Also, fuck the government! Their lotteries are a total rip off and we need to show them how much better the Bitcoin lotteries are.

Even if you're not into gambling I encourage you to purchase one ticket a month to support this project and help put Bitcoin on the map!

[ShireSilver]

So if someone were to want to buy a ticket for the May 2nd drawing from an affiliate, say Daily Anarchist, they would send bitcoins to the address on the Verify page, right? So in the example they'd send it to 16F2N1GuQ9FhDo5b9eCxhyf9hbizQo6VXQ right?

Just wanting to make sure I did it right.

[bitlotto]

So if someone were to want to buy a ticket for the May 2nd drawing from an affiliate, say Daily Anarchist, they would send bitcoins to the address on the Verify page, right? So in the example they'd send it to 16F2N1GuQ9FhDo5b9eCxhyf9hbizQo6VXQ right?

Just wanting to make sure I did it right.

Yup. Would work. They were going to do the affiliate but decided to hold off. I'm actually not sure if I'll keep it though as there doesn't seem to be much interest.

BUT, since the address was posted, it will remain and tickets bought there will still be good of course.

[Stephen Gornick]

I'm actually not sure if I'll keep it though as there doesn't seem to be much interest.

These things take time to catch on.  Give it at least a couple months perhaps?

Maybe putting the pages for the site in github or some other version control and then signing each rev of this page would be a better archive?]

I created an archive of the BitLotto.com site on GitHub.  For now it is manual (with updates depending on a daily change detection process) though I'll try to automate it at some point.
 - https://github.com/sgornick/bitlotto

[bitlotto]

I created an archive of the BitLotto.com site on GitHub.  For now it is manual (with updates depending on a daily change detection process) though I'll try to automate it at some point.
 - https://github.com/sgornick/bitlotto

Thanks for doing that! It will help provide transparency that I'm not trying to change the rules last minute to change who wins or something. I really appreciate it. Sometimes I try to rephrase or fix things up but when I change something that would change who wins in the future I announce it too.

I'm thinking of re-wording the part about have a block with time after 00Z before the mega millions draw occurs... I'll post it here when its fixed up a bit.

You should also add the "valid" page for monitoring. That's where the affiliates would be added and new addresses posted.

[Stephen Gornick]

You should also add the "valid" page for monitoring. That's where the affiliates would be added and new addresses posted.

Oops, yes, that was an omission in the README.  Fixed.  I'm using wget -r  which pulls every page that has a link to it from the homepage, so /valid.html was in there.

[Otoh]

I too am looking forward to the days of ten's of thousands of coins pots with wider mass appreciation of how good a deal this is compared to fiat lotteries, one way of also helping to attract the high rollers may be to reduce the 1% fee for these, so say on single wagers of 1,000 BTC or more when the lotto closed you would still take your 1% fee but would return 0.5% to those who made the fat cat bets* (for 1,000 coins they effectively pay 5 instead of 10 coins fee that would have been paid if it was by multiple peeps), it still brings a decent return & would help to pump the pot up once these whales spot such incredible odds & has no effect on the overall return to anyone else as that remains at 99% if they were to win

Again we may get emotion versus maths as in 2 tier system favors the big spenders, but as it doesn't harm the other punters - only gives them potentially a fatter 99% pot to bet on, alternatively once the pot overall reached over 1,000 coins then perhaps make the rake 0.75% & over 10,000 then 0.5% for everyone, but I like the idea of some whale trawling if you didn't mind the sacrifice

Something else you could do is to make a printable page that could be given to a copy shop to produce advert cards (flyers) so peeps who supported the lotto & saw how it could seriously fuel Bitcoin adaption could do a bit of leafleting on cars parked outside casinos etc when visiting Las Vegas, Macau or Monaco etc

*edit: or just return them their whole portion of the 1% fee, that would certainly gain some attention - perhaps from the media too, you'd still make your 1% from all the other < 1,000 coin bets but would be offering the high rollers unbeatable odds to play fee free

[Daily Anarchist]

That violates the general rule of thumb: Keep It Simple Stupid.

I don't think you need to pull any accounting tricks out of your hat to make the lotto grow. I would just say that over time after it's gotten really big you could make the payout 99.9% and then 99.99%. But I wouldn't expect that to happen for quite some time. Let's do some math. 

If your initial goal is to get to the point where you can survive off of this lotto, you'd need to bring in 400 BTC per month.

Therefore,

400 BTC = X BTC * 0.01 or X BTC = 40,000 BTC

So, until the lotto gets up to 40,000 BTC per month, you're not likely to make enough money to survive. In order to get to the point where you can make 400 BTC per month and return 99.9% you would need

400 BTC = X BTC * 0.001 or X BTC = 400,000 BTC

It's probably going to be a while before you get to 400,000 BTC prize pools. Granted, by the time you get to 200,000 BTC prize pools the value of BTC will likely be much higher. But you get the point.

Keep up the good work! You'll get there!

Oh yeah, also. Doesn't the Mega Millions lottery happen twice per month? Why don't you do that with yours instead of only once?

[Stephen Gornick]

Oh yeah, also. Doesn't the Mega Millions lottery happen twice per month?

MegaMillions is twice a week:
 - http://www.megamillions.com/numbers/pastdrawings.asp

Previously offered was a weekly BitLotto Jr. but with small jackpots that didn't get much interest.  Having a once-a-month draw at least puts the jackpot in the "that would be a nice amount to win" range.

*edit: or just return them their whole portion of the 1% fee, that would certainly gain some attention - perhaps from the media too, you'd still make your 1% from all the other < 1,000 coin bets but would be offering the high rollers unbeatable odds to play fee free

I don't think a 100% or 99.5% payout is much different from a 99% payout.  But a 99% payout is much different from the 60% payout that MegaMillions offers though.

so peeps who supported the lotto & saw how it could seriously fuel Bitcoin adaption could do a bit of leafleting on cars

I hope that never happens.

What I'm wondering is when someone figures out this opportunity.  There are two reasons a business (in most jurisdictions around the world) currently wouldn't want to sell BitLotto tickets.  One, because there are regulations (in most jurisdictions) about lotteries so selling BitLotto tickets directly is likely prohibited.  Secondly, selling the state-run lotto tickets is something that is more profitable.  Convenience stores might get 8% of the revenue for every MegaMillions ticket sold.  For BitLotto, even if a store was a BitLotto affiliate it would only get 1% of the payout so there is no incentive for a merchant to want to sell BitLotto tickets.

The opportunity though is in selling the bitcoins.  They can be sold at any price.

So let's say the customer has to pay that same 8% over spot to buy bitcoins from the counter (paying cash), but then uses those bitcoins to play the lotto online with everyone to BitLotto's regular Bitcoin address for the draw or through that store or chain's own BitLotto address.  Sold could be paper bitcoins from a stack held in the register of pre-funded paper bitcoins.  Each is printed on regular paper and has a QR code of the private key exposed, similar to these:
 - https://www.bitaddress.org/bitaddress.org-v1.5-SHA1-f2e410251c8741ac65d29a1c6fb8ef6919b6ab8b.html

but to execute this would need some designer skills and formatted in a familiar packaging (paper bitcoins made of the same size that a paper dollar bill uses).

[Update: If this was done right, the merchant's point-of-sale system could spit out a receipt with the paper bitcoin QR code on it.  Or this instead could be a standalone system to print physical bitcoins.  Like this: http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_Bitcoin_POS_system ]

(One caveat ... since the private keys are exposed the merchant would only sell them under the terms that the customer should redeem them to their mobile immediately while at the counter.  Otherwise if they aren't redeemed until the customer gets home, for instance, there gives the incentive for the cashier to double spend the funds before the customer redeems the private key later, or it gives the customer basis to claim that the code "didn't work" after already successfully redeeming the funds first.)

So yes, the payout for the BitLotto player that buys bitcoins at the corner store drops to about 91% (if the store charges 8% when selling bitcoins) but that is a heck of a lot better than 60% from MegaMillions.  And if it takes off, competition between stores might bring that percentage down to more reasonable levels -- like 3% or under even.

[bitlotto]

You bring up some interesting ideas. The only reason we do monthly draws is so the jackpot can get high enough. Perhaps one day if we grow big enough we can do it twice a month, then four or more. I think for now, the best is once a month though.

One of our greatest features is also our main challenge. Since we only take 1%, it leaves very little for other parties who wish to sell or advertise tickets or even BTC for us to use as advertising! Most of our growth is just word of mouth. Bitcoin is still in it's small growing years anyway. I think as we grow we'll have to come up with other games perhaps. Maybe not as good as 99% but something that motivates people to sell tickets and share the profit with BitLotto. As the new games grow the publicity for BitLotto will grow with them. We are thinking about new ideas. We tried the BitLotto Jr thing but was probably a little too soon.

We do have the affiliate program as an experiment and they get 1% of their tickets sales (that's our whole profit for those tickets). One day, as BitLotto grows, other gambling sites could make decent BTC when they start selling lots of tickets.

I'm curious what if there was a special high stakes game every so often? A promotional type thing. Each ticket 10 BTC or more? There wouldn't be near as many tickets but the odds of winning the pot would be pretty decent. Even if only ten people played it would be 1/10 chance of winning 99 BTC.

We could even do a game where multiple people win. Make the multiple winners get 70, 10, 10, 9 percent each or something.

We are thinking of ideas. Anything in particular someone would like to see?

[bitlotto]

And for those who can read Chinese:
http://bitlotto.com/ch.html