The mysterious bitcoin flower opens once a day and reveals a free bitcoin

[maxmint]

A free bitcoin every day, thanks to the mysterious bitcoin flower!

Check out the bitcoin flower at http://www.bitcoinflower.com/. It opens once a day for 15 minutes and reveals a shiny bitcoin. Nobody knows when it opens (it's random) but if you're the first to see it you get a whole shiny bitcoin.

I just created this site and welcome your comments and suggestions.
Also, if you win a bitcoin I would be happy to read your comment here.

Have fun!

[jackjack]

It seems nice but why?
And you noticed that you paid a fee when you sent 1BTC to the first winner? http://blockexplorer.com/tx/0a95b89dd864b4a954f27b6d8e9a22bb85adeca9cd0d5594a9564d85c9a39b91

[aq]

Great idea!

Two suggestions:
1) You state that the flower will open once a day. So a visitor seeing that it was already open on a certain day wont come back again on the very same day. But if you technically open the flower once every 24 hours (not related to calender days), that could result in 2 openings on a single calendar day, depending on the timezone. As a result you could state that the flower opens "at least" once a day, and so every visitor will come back, even if the flower was already open on the very same day.
2) And you will have to add some time to the winners list, because depending on the timezone, it could be that the stated day hasn't even started yet for the visitor.

As I wrote before great idea, and nice graphics. Now if you add some web banners, the site will probably pay for itself

[maxmint]

Both very good suggestions – thanks for taking the time to share! I sure will implement this.

Great idea!

Two suggestions:
1) You state that the flower will open once a day. So a visitor seeing that it was already open on a certain day wont come back again on the very same day. But if you technically open the flower once every 24 hours (not related to calender days), that could result in 2 openings on a single calendar day, depending on the timezone. As a result you could state that the flower opens "at least" once a day, and so every visitor will come back, even if the flower was already open on the very same day.
2) And you will have to add some time to the winners list, because depending on the timezone, it could be that the stated day hasn't even started yet for the visitor.

As I wrote before great idea, and nice graphics. Now if you add some web banners, the site will probably pay for itself

[indicasteve]

Cool site...and a great idea to put a banner or something there to help pay for the btc prize!

* indicasteve goes back to his keyboard and writes a bot that scrapes the page every 5 seconds to alert him when closed.png changes to open.png

[Xephan]

Interesting idea... time to write a bot script to check every 2 minutes with autoclick to beat indicasteve to it...

[maxmint]

Yeah, someone will obviously come up with a bot but I have some (top secret) counteractive measures up my sleeves
Right now the winner has to solve a captcha so there's no way to automatically claim the bitcoin, this must be done by a human.

[Xephan]

Yeah, someone will obviously come up with a bot but I have some (top secret) counteractive measures up my sleeves
Right now the winner has to solve a captcha so there's no way to automatically claim the bitcoin, this must be done by a human.

That's good. Obviously wasn't serious about botting your site and neither is indicasteve (I think!), just wanted to highlight the possible abuse you might get

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Cool site...and a great idea to put a banner or something there to help pay for the btc prize!

* indicasteve goes back to his keyboard and writes a bot that scrapes the page every 5 seconds to alert him when closed.png changes to open.png

+1(?)

I'm not that code savvy, indicasteve, but are you saying that a code can be written to open up the flower at will, thus being the first to see it and then be able to claim the Bitcoin? If this is an issue, is there a wraparound that would make this idea work? While waiting for the answer(s), I'm going to pen, then post here, why I feel this is an excellent idea.




The thought(s) I have will be my own, but I'm pretty sure it'll be in line with what Seth wrote in his book (of which I just found by accident while hunting an image to go with this post). If you don't know who Seth Godin (I'm an avid fan), then here are two excellent videos to get you up to speed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBIVlM435Zg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQGYr9bnktw&feature=relmfu

Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.

Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. ~Seth Godin

[Gavin Andresen]

Interesting idea... time to write a bot script to check every 2 minutes with autoclick to beat indicasteve to it...

Really?  You do realize that will just start an arms race with maxmint; he or she will write code to detect and ban bots, somebody will deploy bots via multiple IP addresses to workaround, maxmint will be forced to add a CAPTCHA, etc...

maxmint: it can be kind of fun to try to scam the scammers.  If you detect them, just never let them win (but don't tell them you're not letting them win).

However, they'll eventually figure out you're doing that.  The only way to win the arms race is to make it more expensive for the scammers to win than the reward.  If I recall correctly, getting around one-per-IP-address and CAPTCHA restrictions costs a scammer a few US pennies.  If you're giving away 1BTC worth $10, then you'll have to make sure the scammers will have to solve several thousand captchas to win.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Interesting idea... time to write a bot script to check every 2 minutes with autoclick to beat indicasteve to it...

Really?  You do realize that will just start an arms race with maxmint; he or she will write code to detect and ban bots, somebody will deploy bots via multiple IP addresses to workaround, maxmint will be forced to add a CAPTCHA, etc...

maxmint: it can be kind of fun to try to scam the scammers.  If you detect them, just never let them win (but don't tell them you're not letting them win).

However, they'll eventually figure out you're doing that.  The only way to win the arms race is to make it more expensive for the scammers to win than the reward.  If I recall correctly, getting around one-per-IP-address and CAPTCHA restrictions costs a scammer a few US pennies.  If you're giving away 1BTC worth $10, then you'll have to make sure the scammers will have to solve several thousand captchas to win.

There's always a solution!

[Xephan]

http://static.skynetblogs.be/media/138639/dyn004_original_500_280_pjpeg_2639175_6ddda5fff2a151c12de1400cd8b7bbbd.jpg

Totally off-topic: What show is this?

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Yeah, someone will obviously come up with a bot but I have some (top secret) counteractive measures up my sleeves
Right now the winner has to solve a captcha so there's no way to automatically claim the bitcoin, this must be done by a human.

When I first read the concern, I envisioned the bot only being able to alert the bot-builder (or open on demand) that the flower has opened, then allowing him/him the opportunity to be the first to claim the prize.

I'm still penning that post, outlining how this is an excellent idea.


Here's hoping noone beats me to the flower patch.

[Serge]

heard that CAPTCHA's are not unbeatable 100%

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Totally off-topic: What show is this?

I don't have a clue what show it is. I Googled (the only verb in the English language that must be capitalized to be properly used in an sentence) for images (since a picture's worth a...) using the phrase "There's always a solution!" to express that there's a solution to every challenge. Believe me! I want to stay on topic with this great idea.

[Tx2000]

Totally off-topic: What show is this?

Not a show. It's a movie: Grindouse: Planet Terror.  The other subflick is Death Proof.  Dual feature, if you will.

[BTCrow]

Yeah, someone will obviously come up with a bot but I have some (top secret) counteractive measures up my sleeves
Right now the winner has to solve a captcha so there's no way to automatically claim the bitcoin, this must be done by a human.

http://decaptcher.com/ > 2$ for 1000 solved captcha
IP basis is the best bet for this, 5k  private proxies (mostly botnet proxies) cost about 300-400$ weekly so not worthing buying thoses proxies only to get one bitcoin.

For free proxies you can use lists of softblocked proxies, so you don't allow any proxies IP to open the flower.

You can also use custom script to evade most of bot traffic
ex: block non JS / too old browser / softblocked proxy list etc etc

BTW, this is very awesome and generous to give away a free bitcoin like that and all I can say is thanks for this.

[maxmint]

Serge, you're right. Most of the CAPTCHAs (including the very common reCAPTCHA) nowadays can be solved by machines or manually by people sitting in some low wage country. But it still is a significant obstacle.

heard that CAPTCHA's are not unbeatable 100%

[evolve]

cool idea!

[Michael_S]

Both very good suggestions – thanks for taking the time to share! I sure will implement this.

Great idea!

Two suggestions:
1) [...] if you technically open the flower once every 24 hours (not related to calender days), that could result in 2 openings on a single calendar day [...] As a result you could state that the flower opens "at least" once a day [...]

No, that is not accurate, and a critical mind would be totally right considering this dubious.

If you introduce a random time T between two openings, where T is on average 24 hours, you will have ON AVERAGE 1 opening per day, and ON AVERAGE 365 openings per year etc. BUT: You can (and will!) very well have time periods of more than 24 hours, too, i.e. you will have calendar days (and sometimes even two or more successive calendar days) with no opening at all.

So it is simply not correct to claim "that the flower opens "at least" once a day".

Here is a quick example, when implementing the time T as a random value following a Rayleigh distribution, with an average of T=1.0 days:

Matlab code:

Code:

>> N=1e7; x=randn(1,N); y=randn(1,N); T=sqrt(x.^2+y.^2)/sqrt(pi/2); mu = mean(T),
>> hist(T,50); title(['Histogram: rayleigh distributed random variable T, mean=',num2str(mu)]); xlabel('T')
>> 100*length(T(T<0.90))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.50))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.25))/length(T)
>> 100*length(T(T>1.0))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>1.5))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>2.0))/length(T)

Result:
* In 47.1% / 17.8% / 4.8% of all cases, the time duration T between two openings is shorter than 0.90 / 0.50 / 0.25 days
But also:
* In 45.6% / 17.1% / 4.3% of all cases, the time duration T between two openings is longer than 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.0 days