Bets of Bitcoin - Bitcoin betting on real world events

[coinjedi]

Great site. My bet doesn't work as expected though. I want to create a bet with event date August 1st and betting deadline June 15th. Why doesn't it let me do that? I get some disappearing change-month-buttons on the deadline when I pick the event date so the earliest deadline I can define is July 4th. Huh? If there is any rule, why not allow me to pick any date but show an error explaining what's wrong for dates that are off limit?

We strongly discourage very long wait times between bet deadline and event date. To enforce this interface does not allow anything more than 4 weeks. If you need more for a particular reason let us know in email or put a note in the item description and we will fix it for you before approval.

[1714078794]

1714078794

[Stephen Gornick]

We strongly discourage very long wait times between bet deadline and event date.

What would be useful is the ability to transfer a bet to another BetsOfBitco.in account.  (Well, useful as an alternate approach to having  a market system like what Intrade offers).   That way I might trade with another bettor at a discount in order to cash out early without having to wait for the bet to formally be closed and paid out.  If BetsOfBitco.in needed to assess a transaction fee for that, that would seem fair too.

[coinjedi]

We strongly discourage very long wait times between bet deadline and event date.

What would be useful is the ability to transfer a bet to another BetsOfBitco.in account.  (Well, useful as an alternate approach to having  a market system like what Intrade offers).   That way I might trade with another bettor at a discount in order to cash out early without having to wait for the bet to formally be closed and paid out.  If BetsOfBitco.in needed to assess a transaction fee for that, that would seem fair too.

I am thinking of various market systems but unfortunately I am extremely short on time for coding. Hopefully in the future.

[giszmo]

Great site. My bet doesn't work as expected though. I want to create a bet with event date August 1st and betting deadline June 15th. Why doesn't it let me do that? I get some disappearing change-month-buttons on the deadline when I pick the event date so the earliest deadline I can define is July 4th. Huh? If there is any rule, why not allow me to pick any date but show an error explaining what's wrong for dates that are off limit?

We strongly discourage very long wait times between bet deadline and event date. To enforce this interface does not allow anything more than 4 weeks. If you need more for a particular reason let us know in email or put a note in the item description and we will fix it for you before approval.

Ok, of course you may put rules in place as you please but this one doesn't seam appropriate and the interface appeared to be just broken instead of telling me what's going on.

I don't want people to bet on something that they know the outcome and I don't want the chance for the event to be too low, so how should I do an earthquake bet?

I want to bet on a future event and the earthquake has to occur after the betting deadline and before the event date. So why again would you want this time span to be short? You have bets that end in 2015 and I don't want to trap my money until 2015 which is why I would never bet on these but 2 months of wait for an earthquake is nothing compared to that.

Thinking about timing, I guess what I would enforce is a long betting window. If the event date is after tomorrow I can put a deadline of tomorrow. How many betters do such bets get on average? Sure you get your submission fee but is it worth to approve a bet that nobody sees in time to bet on it?

[giszmo]

ah! the site could be more fun.

Why the artificial limit of betting 0.1?
Now most bets have really low numbers which makes it hard to bet. I understand that you don't want to have micro-bets but for now I guess they would help a lot. Let me give an example:

There is 0.2 in bets pro Facebook climbing above 35$ and 1.5 against. The betters put chances at 2/(15+2)=12%.
If I say chances are higher, I might want to put my money with the statement but doing so would man I see facebooks chances at 3/(15+3)=17%. Sorry I don't feel that confident but I would chip in 0.05 for the chance of getting 0.3BTC=1.5$.

This would again attract the pessimists which would make me more confident to put in more … and in the end, we all pay more

With all the bets starting at 0.1BTC this is even worse as going with the inital better would mean shifting chances by 100%. While I see no problem in smaller bets, I guess the essential part is that the submitter should bet at least 10x the limit for subsequent bets. With 0.1BTC as is that would be 1BTC for the initial submitter or as I would prefer it, 0.01 for subsequent betters.

Feature request: Print the balance in % as in my example

[FreeMoney]

ah! the site could be more fun.

Why the artificial limit of betting 0.1?
Now most bets have really low numbers which makes it hard to bet. I understand that you don't want to have micro-bets but for now I guess they would help a lot. Let me give an example:

There is 0.2 in bets pro Facebook climbing above 35$ and 1.5 against. The betters put chances at 2/(15+2)=12%.
If I say chances are higher, I might want to put my money with the statement but doing so would man I see facebooks chances at 3/(15+3)=17%. Sorry I don't feel that confident but I would chip in 0.05 for the chance of getting 0.3BTC=1.5$.

This would again attract the pessimists which would make me more confident to put in more … and in the end, we all pay more

With all the bets starting at 0.1BTC this is even worse as going with the inital better would mean shifting chances by 100%. While I see no problem in smaller bets, I guess the essential part is that the submitter should bet at least 10x the limit for subsequent bets. With 0.1BTC as is that would be 1BTC for the initial submitter or as I would prefer it, 0.01 for subsequent betters.

Feature request: Print the balance in % as in my example

I think you are supposed (as in that's the good strategy) to bet on both sides in the proportion that represents your guess at the odds.

[giszmo]

ah! the site could be more fun.

Why the artificial limit of betting 0.1?
Now most bets have really low numbers which makes it hard to bet. I understand that you don't want to have micro-bets but for now I guess they would help a lot. Let me give an example:

There is 0.2 in bets pro Facebook climbing above 35$ and 1.5 against. The betters put chances at 2/(15+2)=12%.
If I say chances are higher, I might want to put my money with the statement but doing so would man I see facebooks chances at 3/(15+3)=17%. Sorry I don't feel that confident but I would chip in 0.05 for the chance of getting 0.3BTC=1.5$.

This would again attract the pessimists which would make me more confident to put in more … and in the end, we all pay more

With all the bets starting at 0.1BTC this is even worse as going with the inital better would mean shifting chances by 100%. While I see no problem in smaller bets, I guess the essential part is that the submitter should bet at least 10x the limit for subsequent bets. With 0.1BTC as is that would be 1BTC for the initial submitter or as I would prefer it, 0.01 for subsequent betters.

Feature request: Print the balance in % as in my example

I think you are supposed (as in that's the good strategy) to bet on both sides in the proportion that represents your guess at the odds.

If the odds in my head are x% and the others show me y%, the winning strategy is to bet according to that and not put money on the loosing side. If 99% say YES and I see a 10% chance for NO, why should I add to YES 10 times the amount that I put to NO when YES already is at 100x NO and thus 10x over rated? That makes no sense.

[FreeMoney]

If you knew you could get the last bet in I guess it is ok to leave yourself unbalance and take care of it later.

But say you come across it with evenly balanced bets (50%) and you think Side A is 80% to win so you load up on Side A. Now someone else comes along and thinks side A is even more than 80% likely and they bet and now there is so much on A that you prefer B at these odds. You can't unbet A but you can bet on B now.

If you want to make sure you don't end up taking a wager you don't want no matter what happens then you need to bet both sides up front.

[giszmo]

If you knew you could get the last bet in I guess it is ok to leave yourself unbalance and take care of it later.

But say you come across it with evenly balanced bets (50%) and you think Side A is 80% to win so you load up on Side A. Now someone else comes along and thinks side A is even more than 80% likely and they bet and now there is so much on A that you prefer B at these odds. You can't unbet A but you can bet on B now.

If you want to make sure you don't end up taking a wager you don't want no matter what happens then you need to bet both sides up front.

I wanna see you on a roulette table betting equal amounts on both red and black. Is this the kind of strategy advise people get at sealswithclubs, too? If all did that, nobody would win except the site owner even if everybody guessed exactly right the likeliness of every event. ... I guess you are just trolling given you are quite a bit into this whole gambling thing.

[Stephen Gornick]

Well, this bet can get closed out.

"There will be more than 50,000 Bitcoin transactions in one day in 2012"
 -  http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

59,786.  That bet wasn't even open for two months.

 - http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

[FreeMoney]

If you knew you could get the last bet in I guess it is ok to leave yourself unbalance and take care of it later.

But say you come across it with evenly balanced bets (50%) and you think Side A is 80% to win so you load up on Side A. Now someone else comes along and thinks side A is even more than 80% likely and they bet and now there is so much on A that you prefer B at these odds. You can't unbet A but you can bet on B now.

If you want to make sure you don't end up taking a wager you don't want no matter what happens then you need to bet both sides up front.

I wanna see you on a roulette table betting equal amounts on both red and black. Is this the kind of strategy advise people get at sealswithclubs, too? If all did that, nobody would win except the site owner even if everybody guessed exactly right the likeliness of every event. ... I guess you are just trolling given you are quite a bit into this whole gambling thing.

I'm 100% serious. But I'm not saying it is always the best way.

Imaging you know that Side A is 80% to happen and there is little or no action yet and you don't know how much will end up sitting on each side and you have to make your bet(s) right now (going away on safari for a month).

Do you just bet on Side A hoping there won't be more than 80% of the money sitting on side A at the end?

I put down 80% of my bet on Side A and 20% on Side B. That way the worst case scenario for me is break even, that would be when other's bets sit 80/20. If there is more on either side I make some (theoretical) profit.

Now if you know the result 100%, no uncertainty, at all then you put the money down all on one side (same theory as before it just happens to be 100/0 this time).

[giszmo]

If you knew you could get the last bet in I guess it is ok to leave yourself unbalance and take care of it later.

But say you come across it with evenly balanced bets (50%) and you think Side A is 80% to win so you load up on Side A. Now someone else comes along and thinks side A is even more than 80% likely and they bet and now there is so much on A that you prefer B at these odds. You can't unbet A but you can bet on B now.

If you want to make sure you don't end up taking a wager you don't want no matter what happens then you need to bet both sides up front.

I wanna see you on a roulette table betting equal amounts on both red and black. Is this the kind of strategy advise people get at sealswithclubs, too? If all did that, nobody would win except the site owner even if everybody guessed exactly right the likeliness of every event. ... I guess you are just trolling given you are quite a bit into this whole gambling thing.

I'm 100% serious. But I'm not saying it is always the best way.

Imaging you know that Side A is 80% to happen and there is little or no action yet and you don't know how much will end up sitting on each side and you have to make your bet(s) right now (going away on safari for a month).

Do you just bet on Side A hoping there won't be more than 80% of the money sitting on side A at the end?

I put down 80% of my bet on Side A and 20% on Side B. That way the worst case scenario for me is break even, that would be when other's bets sit 80/20. If there is more on either side I make some (theoretical) profit.

Now if you know the result 100%, no uncertainty, at all then you put the money down all on one side (same theory as before it just happens to be 100/0 this time).

ok, the safari argument is a good one. still i don't bother betting when is see the others reflecting the odds exactly as I see it as my chances of winning are just too low. when the others "have no clue" i want to profit from that.

[FreeMoney]

If you knew you could get the last bet in I guess it is ok to leave yourself unbalance and take care of it later.

But say you come across it with evenly balanced bets (50%) and you think Side A is 80% to win so you load up on Side A. Now someone else comes along and thinks side A is even more than 80% likely and they bet and now there is so much on A that you prefer B at these odds. You can't unbet A but you can bet on B now.

If you want to make sure you don't end up taking a wager you don't want no matter what happens then you need to bet both sides up front.

I wanna see you on a roulette table betting equal amounts on both red and black. Is this the kind of strategy advise people get at sealswithclubs, too? If all did that, nobody would win except the site owner even if everybody guessed exactly right the likeliness of every event. ... I guess you are just trolling given you are quite a bit into this whole gambling thing.

I'm 100% serious. But I'm not saying it is always the best way.

Imaging you know that Side A is 80% to happen and there is little or no action yet and you don't know how much will end up sitting on each side and you have to make your bet(s) right now (going away on safari for a month).

Do you just bet on Side A hoping there won't be more than 80% of the money sitting on side A at the end?

I put down 80% of my bet on Side A and 20% on Side B. That way the worst case scenario for me is break even, that would be when other's bets sit 80/20. If there is more on either side I make some (theoretical) profit.

Now if you know the result 100%, no uncertainty, at all then you put the money down all on one side (same theory as before it just happens to be 100/0 this time).

ok, the safari argument is a good one. still i don't bother betting when is see the others reflecting the odds exactly as I see it as my chances of winning are just too low. when the others "have no clue" i want to profit from that.

Sure, but all it takes is one person with a clue and a lot of money to come in between the last time you check and the end of the betting period to leave you with a bet that you don't want. On top of that, even if you do check in time you have to have more money available to commit.

[Sukrim]

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=423 finished, "False"
Proof:
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html

[localhost]

Well, this bet can get closed out.

"There will be more than 50,000 Bitcoin transactions in one day in 2012"
 -  http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

59,786.  That bet wasn't even open for two months.

 - http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

Any reason why this bet is still open ?

[giszmo]

coinjedi I asked you in a private message without reply so far but I'm interested in a wider feedback anyway:

Would you mind me betting on you getting killed before Christmas 2012?

I have friends in Iran and for me every bet on them getting attacked feels just as sick. As you review every bet anyway, I would ask you to change your policy to not allow betting on events that involve a high probability of people getting killed.

I know that the betting volumes - or the market cap of bitcoin for that matter - are no incentive to start a war but I'm sure you would not feel comfortable if people bet only 0.1BTC on your death.

[btcash]

So if I bet 1 BTC on true and one other user bets 100 BTC on false I will win 95 BTC (in case of true)
That doesn't seem fair.

[rjk]

So if I bet 1 BTC on true and one other user bets 100 BTC on false I will win 95 BTC (in case of true)
That doesn't seem fair.

That's how wagers work, and he needs a cut to keep the service running. Can't do it all for free.

[coinjedi]

Well, this bet can get closed out.

"There will be more than 50,000 Bitcoin transactions in one day in 2012"
 -  http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

59,786.  That bet wasn't even open for two months.

 - http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

Any reason why this bet is still open ?

Closed the bet. Thanks.

[coinjedi]

coinjedi I asked you in a private message without reply so far but I'm interested in a wider feedback anyway:

Would you mind me betting on you getting killed before Christmas 2012?

I have friends in Iran and for me every bet on them getting attacked feels just as sick. As you review every bet anyway, I would ask you to change your policy to not allow betting on events that involve a high probability of people getting killed.

I know that the betting volumes - or the market cap of bitcoin for that matter - are no incentive to start a war but I'm sure you would not feel comfortable if people bet only 0.1BTC on your death.

I am sorry that I could not get back to your PM. This issue is rightfully a controversial topic not only for us but for various prediction markets as well. We have been criticized both for turning into an assassination market and for performing unnecessary censorship. Current unwritten rule is to decline bets on explicit deaths like "X will die before the end of year" or "There will be a terrorist attack with X casualties", but allow statements on wars between countries. There are several reasons we allow these bets:

• Technically (though I should admit unlikely) they don't necessarily involve deaths (attacks to unmanned facilities or drones would count)
• It is much more unlikely that this will create incentive for the responsible people because war decisions are usually taken by more than one person, whereas assassinations might be single person initiatives.
• We get less complaints and more submissions in this category
• These seem to be accepted in popular prediction markets
• Facilitating a bet is essentially neutral. It does create as much possible economic incentive for peace as for war
• We might learn about the crowd wisdom on the issue, which might be a valuable information