Physical Bitcoin Design Finalists - Cast Your Vote Now! - Ends 10th September 14

[MegaTech]

I vote for Design Six by iawgoM

[1713896848]

1713896848

[1713896848]

1713896848

[iluvbitcoins]

Design 6

[blablaace]

i vote for design Six by iawgoM 

[CryptoCarmen]

I vote for design 6
Miss. IawgoM had way best design.

[ljudotina]

iawgoM - #6

[bitbunnny]

I'd like to vote for design 6 by iawgoM.

[Daniel91]

I vote for iawgoM, no. 6.

[Joca97]

 I Vote for design 6 by iawgoM.

[GaXy®]

I vote for design 10 by elianite

[elianite]

I smell something wrong here. Just because I posted on 3 relevant language pages, you go back on all of this? I dont think thats valid.
You have edited your old post heres the original.

[Darth0ne]

are you really that upset that you have to compete?
maybe everyone should drop out so you can win?

they already explained that they decided to stay in the contest.. and why not? they havn't broken any rules that i've seen posted,
it seems all the top voted accounts "asked" or "suggested" others voted for them somewhere or other.

a lot of us like the coin design #15, to me there is no doubt that the lion's head would look best as a gold coin when compared to the others,

it seems to fit well in theme with the silver litecoins Coinographic made:



Golden Lion (BTC)
&
Silver Bull (LTC)       

Someone needs to learn about SSL enabled proxies and VPN tunnels before running scam shows like this one.

kinda looks like that is what happend here, you all know BTC-graphicsdesign is from switzerland because she said so,
so if you wanted to frame her, and buy votes at the same time, what better way than to adopt a swiss IP?
even a child would have more sense than to use their own IP for such nonsense.

the rules were stated clearly at the beginning of the contest,

To Vote for your favourite design please follow the rules below;

1)   Please post a message on this forum with the name of the designer and design number  you are voting for.  Feel free to post any comments you may have for suggested improvements to the design, these comments may be taken into consideration when we work on the final design from the winning concept.
2)   Any vote from an account created after 31st August 2014 will not be counted. This is done to prevent cheating, we hope you understand.
3)   Any vote from an account that has not had any posting activity after 1st July 2014 will not be counted.  This is done to prevent cheating, we hope you understand.

anyone care to make a tally of votes so far?

wow, what happened here?

it's a shame you guys caused BTC-graphicsdesign to resign.. i really like her coin design #15 and think it should win; the lion's head would look great on a gold coin.

lol.. who wanted to paint a gold-coin black?

Thank you for your kind words. I drew back my resignation after I saw the 3 posts of elianite farming for votes. So I thought: ok, elianite and iawgoM are both farming for votes and have their friends voting for them. I then figured to make this competition more exciting I will stay in the vote - I haven't really counted all the votes for myself, elianite and iawgoM. So I have no idea who is in the lead. If I win good for me, if not bad luck - no hard feelings. This is the way it will be.

As a final word I would like to wish elianite and iawgoM good luck - regardless of all the accusations and things that went wrong - may the best design win.

[elianite]

10:30pm GMT is now passed. Looks like voting is done.

iawgoM with #10 is the winner, with  #15, #10 (myself), #16, and #4 coming in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively (if i counted wrong, do let me know)

This was a crazy contest all through, and while I would have liked to win, I recognize #10 as the winner, not having any real evidence of him being dishonest or unsportsmanlike.

If any other coinmaker (or coinograhic himself) would like to use my design or my idea of 3 hologram windows, please let me know; I would love to see it come to life!

I look forward to this `5` themed coin coming out, and depending on the final price, will consider buying one as I will hopefully be able to do so by the time it goes for sale.

Thanks for the contest Coinographic, it was messy, but I thank you for the opportunity and am excited to win the secondary prize

[Coinographic]

Please give us some time to tally to votes and consider possible disqualifications.  We will make an announcement within 48 hours as to the winner of the contest – Thank you

[campycoin]

are you really that upset that you have to compete?
maybe everyone should drop out so you can win?

they already explained that they decided to stay in the contest.. and why not? they havn't broken any rules that i've seen posted,
it seems all the top voted accounts "asked" or "suggested" others voted for them somewhere or other.

a lot of us like the coin design #15, to me there is no doubt that the lion's head would look best as a gold coin when compared to the others,

the rules were stated clearly at the beginning of the contest,

lol.. who wanted to paint a gold-coin black?

Only thing is... as I like BTC-graphicsdesign design 15 a lot too... is the image purchased for resale?  It is the identical image as the YouTube Video shows. I thought this is why she backed out but now she's back so we will see.  I hope she purchased rights if she wins.  She ended her last post with,

As a final word I would like to wish elianite and iawgoM good luck - regardless of all the accusations and things that went wrong - may the best design win.

I certainly do not have the same feelings. I never once posted in another forum or another site asking people to come vote for me or look at the designs. In my opinion what Coinographic should have done is had only those who submitted designs vote. Then we would have seen if iawgoM was best and his Croatian Cronies and vote farming would have done no good. Really a shame what happened. 

Darth0ne- You made a good point about the rules, as they were posted ahead of time and included a mandatory box.  So, iawgoM should have 0% chance of winning

Same with the coin designed by boksnop who designed this coin which is very nice....  but also didn't follow rules.
 


When I questioned how this coin is 0.9999 solid gold as stated on the rules, he said,

I also saw many people claiming that the edge of my coin was silver and the "engraved lines" were just gold engraved into the black surface.  I guess no one thought to maybe ask what my intentions were but instead just make assumptions based on whatever they thought.  My design was to be a solid gold coin, with the edge dipped in white gold.  The black would have been a high gloss paint maybe, but I figured this would be something we would work out if my design was chosen.  But there would have certainly been 2oz of .9999 gold in the coin.

Frankly, I thought the 5 finalists that were chosen were fine with the exception of MrBau being absent. 

Please note, that I'm sure you were speaking about me when you said, "But of course I was part of that group and the majority of you who weren't threw a fit because it was "an epic fail" and "I'll never buy coins from you!" and whatever else."

Let me just explain myself again. I am not a poor sport. I am not a cry-baby. If I lose a competition then I lose. That is the way life goes. But when rules are broken and those designers are picked to be in the final 5, and further... begin to boast and brag about their selection, it is simply wrong. iwagoM could have apologized for his box error rather than say that a box means nothing and he could make a box in 3 minutes better than all of ours.  And Mr. "Solid Gold with white gold edges and paint" didn't seem to understand "SOLID GOLD"

My wife and I designed our coin and we made the box design and coin design below from scratch.



It was not an easy design because of the fact that this coin needed to be "SOLID 0.9999 GOLD" so I admit that when I saw the final 5 and a few were outside of the rules, this is not losing "fair & square."  I did not have an opportunity to use other colors or engraved lines or white gold dip because I was following rules. So, anyway that's my story. I never asked for a vote, I never PM'd anyone trying to cut a side deal or boasted of my design. I went outside the box because I wanted to make something unique and something that was of significant value. Coinographic picked 5 round designs and this was upsetting. That isn't much of a choice. We see gold coins like those everyday and I wanted to contribute something different since this coin is different. 2 oz. SOLID 0.9999 GOLD and loaded with 5 BTC.  That is a $7000+ coin.  So, please don't say that we were crying foul for no reason. There are rules so we play within the lines. Imagine a baseball team is only allowed 2 strikes tomorrow while the other team gets 3. This is not a legit game and one team has a clear advantage and those who went outside the rules should have been disqualified imo.

Thanks for those who liked our design. We wanted it to be different...  Congrats to the winner... and I hope that the winner did not farm votes or make a design outside of the rules or Karma will be coming. Not today or tomorrow... but in a "bit."

[Saigonsmokes]

Unfortunately to me, you did not design a coin rather you designed what appears to be 'bullion'.

As a collector of physical gold and silver coins for many years I would not put your design in the category of a 'coin'

[campycoin]

Unfortunately to me, you did not design a coin rather you designed what appears to be 'bullion'.

As a collector of physical gold and silver coins for many years I would not put your design in the category of a 'coin'

I collect as well and would normally agree with you but take a look at the competition...

THE COMPETITION
This competition offers a huge bounty of 6 Bitcoins and 2 ounces of fine gold for a physical Bitcoin design.  As with our other coins, it’s extremely important to us that the design of our coins come right from within the heart of the communities that drive them.

If you are interested in claiming this bounty, simply post your design right here on this forum post.  Please be sure to clearly watermark any designs that you post with your copyright.  To give you some specifications of exactly what we are looking for...

Firstly the coin will be a limited edition of just 100 coins, minted in 2 ounces of .9999 solid gold.  The diameter of the coin will be 41mm.  The BTC value of the coin will be 5 Bitcoins.  You will need to leave space on the back of the coin for a 33mm hologram.  The front coin should have a space for the limited edition number of the coin to be hand engraved.

You should design all aspects of the coin from the coin itself to the hologram and the packaging it will be supplied in. 

We are looking for people to be as creative as possible.  It is our intention to create the most luxurious & exquisite physical Bitcoin ever minted. We believe with the help of the community here we can do that!

Then shortly after there is a reply from someone asking about the size and they say,

I know you didnt mean this, but i actually think a square coin would look cool. Definitely uncommon...

and coinographic replies...

Great idea! why not? These are the kind of ideas we are looking for.  Cant wait to see some submissions start coming in...

I also have a few coins and so I started to think that there are a ton of circular gold coins. They are everywhere. So, I decided to go outside the box and to make a unique collectors piece that would be solid gold and 2oz. and so I appreciate you saying a coin is round...  which I know... but they said they were looking for submissions to be "AS CREATIVE AS POSSIBLE"

So, I was creative and stayed within the rules.  That is all I am saying. An item like I designed would be more interesting, unique and creative than coin 6 by iwagoW that is a coin with a 5 on it.

[campycoin]

Unfortunately to me, you did not design a coin rather you designed what appears to be 'bullion'.

As a collector of physical gold and silver coins for many years I would not put your design in the category of a 'coin'

One more question to a gold and silver collector...

This contest was to design a 41mm 2oz. 0.9999 Solid Gold Coin.

Can you tell me how thick that would be?

[bonksnp2]

Oh for the love of.....

HERE.

https://i.imgur.com/7mVmCRx.png

campycoin, I'm actually glad someone made a square coin.  Honestly.  I started to do the same myself but thought it would be safer to make a square hologram on the back instead.  I appreciated the square coin design but frankly I think the actual design on the coin was a bit plain.  I'm not trying to attack you, I'm just giving my opinion.  I think if there would have been more detail or more design to it, it would have been a much more serious contender.  I also think (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that it was supposed to look more like a hunk of gold (bullion) instead of a more flat coin....if that makes sense.  Again, I'm not a coin collector or deal with anything in gold, but with your design, I'm guessing 2 oz of gold would be either really small, or much thinner than you had envisioned.

Anyways, I'll not argue with your points about my design being outside of the rules, but I'll just again say that I did PM coinographic asking about making the outside white gold before making the design that way.  Had he either not responded or said no, the black and white gold rim would not have made it into my submission.  I'm not a coin collector so if I'm being honest I sort of just assumed that 2oz of gold needed to be somewhere in the coin.  I guess I didn't fully understand that there was to be only gold and nothing to accent it, so I should have asked that as well before making a design.

I know most all of us worked very hard on our designs.  I think everyone took this very seriously and that the first prize might have been the reason it turned out the way it did.  I'm sure Coinographic has learned a few things from this as well, so however this turns out, I hope we can all eventually get back to what brought us here in the first place which is our passion for crypto. 

[Coinographic]

It is with great regret that we have to disqualify designers BTC-Graphicdesigns, iawgoM and elianite on a number of grounds. These are as follows:

BTC-Graphicdesigns:

•   The use of a Shutterstock image within the design means we must exclude her design as a whole. Shutterstock’s terms [http://www.shutterstock.com/licensing.mhtml] clearly detail that any images purchased are “not for resale, download or distribution, or any other commercial use”. Therefore - under strict copyright law - the coin design cannot be produced commercially by Coinographic.

•   BTC-Graphicdesigns received a very large amount of invalid votes (16 in total), highlighting the possibility of voting enticement. Additionally, various evidence has been put forward by members of the community also highlighting this. While there is no hard evidence to prove that BTC-Graphicdesigns has enticed votes, the abnormal amount of votes received - coupled with a sizable amount of these being invalid - allows us to, beyond a reasonable doubt, assume voting enticement was taking place on this entrants design.

•   BTC-Graphicdesigns attempted to reach an agreement with the other two vote leaders in the contest (iawgoM & elianite).  The agreement was completely outside the bounds of competition.  The purpose of this agreement was to try and manipulate the end result of who received the winning prize.  While the three people concerned may not have realized what they were doing (as they CC’d me in on the attempted agreement) we regard any attempt to try and manipulate the intended end result of the contest as an attempt at cheating and must disqualify the entrants involved.  In the interest of being transparent we have decided to publish the attempted agreement in full on this thread.


iawgoM:

•   iawgoM attempted to reach an agreement with the other two vote leaders in the contest (BTC-Graphicdesigns & elianite).  The agreement was completely outside the bounds of competition.  The purpose of this agreement was to try and manipulate the end result of who received the winning prize.  While the three people concerned may not have realized what they were doing (as they CC’d me in on the attempted agreement) we regard any attempt to try and manipulate the intended end result of the contest as an attempt at cheating must disqualify the entrants involved.  In the interest of being transparent we have decided to publish the attempted agreement in full on this thread.

•   While the votes iawgoM received where within the bounds of our rules and from active accounts, we noticed an irregular pattern in the votes he received (13 in a row on the final day of voting).  This is not the reason we have disqualified iawgoM but we feel it raises a suspicion of possible voting enticement.



elianite:

•   elianite attempted to reach an agreement with the other two vote leaders in the contest (BTC-Graphicdesigns & iawgoM).  The agreement was completely outside the bounds of competition.  The purpose of this agreement was to try and manipulate the end result of who received the winning prize.  While the three people concerned may not have realized what they were doing (as they CC’d me in on the attempted agreement) we regard any attempt to try and manipulate the intended end result of the contest as an attempt at cheating must disqualify the entrants involved.  In the interest of being transparent we have decided to publish the attempted agreement in full on this thread.


It’s a real shame that these three contestants felt the need to reach out of the bounds of the contest to try and manipulate the end result.  We feel there was a chance that any one of these three designs could have won the contest in a completely fair way.


The details of the attempted agreement are below;

Hello Coinographic and fellow leading contestants;
It’s been a tough competition, and the 3 of us are vying for the #1 spot as best as we can. Let’s face it; it's stressful and hard on all of us, and when the contest does close and a winner is picked, there is no doubt going to be some very hard feelings and accusations of various cheating, friends, shadow accounts, bribery, plagiarism, and more.

I would like to propose a gentlemen’s (and ladies) compromise.
Currently, the structure of the contest is that the one with the most votes gets coin #001 (1oz gold + 5BTC), with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place getting a prize of 0.25BTC each.

My proposition is that we all agree a change to the rules as follows:
Nobody is awarded coin #001, but it is instead sold at auction by Coinographic. The proceeds of this auction could be evenly distributed between us 3 contestants, with the 4th and 5th place winners still getting their 0.25btc. I suggest that the 3 of us agree to forfeit the 0.25BTC secondary prize in exchange for getting 1/3rd of the auction price of the coin, which also saves Coinographic himself 0.50BTC in prize money for the trouble.

Choosing the final design would fall to Coinographic, who might want to combine elements of our coins or freely choose one above the others. All our designs are great, and are supported nearly equally by the community. Perhaps we can even agree to all work together in a design group, but that’s probably asking too much.

The auction sale would be calculated as:
Final sale price by highest bid = (Intrinsic Value + Seller Premium + Numismatic Value)
Intrinsic Value – The value of the gold and btc; currently 10.2BTC / $5000US / 3800e
Seller Premium – The amount Coinographic would usually sell these coins for in order to make a profit
Numismatic Value – The extra value for being #001, and having an interesting history from the contest and this compromise.

With these factors, I expect the final price to be absolutely no less than 15BTC, and most likely between 18-20BTC with a possibility of going even higher. This would leave each of us with 5-7BTC in our wallets. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Competition at this point is even, nasty, questionable, and unpredictable. Any of us can win, and the end result won’t be pretty.

Benefits:
- All the 3 of us who have shown a nearly equal vote count get the most gain for the least risk, instead of gambling on beating the other two and being “winner takes all”
- This coin would likely fetch a high premium, because the contest and compromise give a very interesting history.
- We all retain our dignity with the community, and avoid accusations of cheating, favoritism, and more whether they are based on fact or not
- Coinographic saves 0.50btc in prize payouts, and does not face the reputation damage that might come if the whole contest was seen as illegitimate and a failure.
- Nobody loses; 4th and 5th place will be rewarded normally. we are depriving nobody except the unknown winner.

This way we all win, and I believe it is in each of our best interest. I think anyone involved in the contest would agree that this is the best possible conclusion at this point.

Let’s get a discussion going. Since there is little time left, I would like to say that we should all agree to this compromise within a few hours. If an agreement has not been reached within 24 hours (Monday September 8th; 22 BST (UK), 23 CEST (Switzerland & Croatia), and 5PM EST (Toronto, Canada) ) then I assume all bets are off and the competition will enter the final stage of voting. I think we’d all prefer that not happen, but if it does I am prepared

Let’s work together on this please 'reply to all' with your thoughts.

ok guys, I agree with elianite. I would do it the same way elianite proposes. iawgoM and coinographic its your call now.
I also have to agree with elianite that when this competition closes their will be a lot of drama, a lot of accousations against elianite, iawgoM, coinographic and myself. That what elianite proposes is the best way and will allow coinographic to keep his good reputation and also us designer will remain trustworthy in this community.
I think this desicion is the fairest and would also show the community what good sportsmanship we have between each other.
Excuse my english, I am not a native speaker.

Hi all,

here's my point of view. I must say that I completely agree that at this stage things are pretty messy, and they would probably be even worse when official voting time ends - no matter the final score. I do like an idea about some kind of compromise, but let's see some of the facts:

1. How did we get our votes?
We obviously all got fans, friends, supporters - I guess things are pretty much tied around here, so we can ignore this part, right?

2. Our "sins"
iawgoM - accusations of stealing ideas: using number 5 (doh?! I'll just ignore this one because it's mega BS), and copying Mr. BAU's idea of BTC symbols forming the number 5 - I admit it does look similar, maybe he even inspired me (not saying that he did), but it's not my fault that I have similar concept but done better than him and his gears which are nice, but maybe too complex with not so obvious hidden meaning...
elianite - didn't make his own photoshop design ("only" the hand-drawn idea). How do you plan to make final design in case your design is the chosen one? Hire someone to do it for you again? I'd like to hear from Coinographic opinion about this - this is not flaming, but we should all be aware how our "contractor" feels about this.
BTC-Graphicdesigns - using that lion head, without real confirmation that this really is your original photo. If it is from the Internet, it would be completely OK if you said "I bought that picture and I have a licence to use it, which I will forward to Coinographic in order to avoid any copyright issues." If this indeed is your photo, please send it to us and accept my apology for this accusation which I didn't think of myself, but people on the thread.

3. Current standings
I keep track of all votes, and to be honest, right now only elianite and me are in the real race. In case you haven't noticed, BTC-Graphicdesigns has almost half of invalid votes (new accounts or not active after July 1st). Both elianite and me have a few of those, but with number of valid votes we are quite ahead.
I admit, it is also very stressful for me, and the fact that one last-second vote can change everything for any of us and make the difference between winning it all or losing it all, is both exciting and risky for all of us. I'm also prepared for the "final run", but again, this is a lottery because you never know... I believe that if BTC-Graphicdesigns had some "big guns" (valid members), she would have already used them, so the real race is between elianite and me. Maybe I'm wrong and things could dramatically change in next two days, but I doubt it.

4. Final design
It would be cool if Coinographic would tell us which design they prefer and if they want to combine elements of different coins. My question here is: who would work with Coinographic on making the finished product? It could take some time until the wanted result is made. I'm volunteering for this, because in my (unhumble, yes) opinion, I'm most experienced with Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

5. How to split the reward?
With all of the above said, I'd like you to propose a different and more realistic percentages of splitting the reward. I don't want to remove BTC-Graphicdesigns from this gentlemen's agreement because of large number of invalid votes, but I think she should have smaller part than 33%. Also, what price should we put on the work on the final design? Of course, person who does this should be compensated as it's not fair that ony guy does all the work, but others get paid equally, right?

I tried to be as realistic as possible here. I hope we can all keep our heads calm and find a satisfying compromise.

Now I guess we should wait for Coinographic's response? Would love to hear what those guys have to say.

Br,
iawgoM

We have prepared a spread sheet detailing all of the votes and the reasons why any discounted votes have been discounted.  You can view the spread sheet here – http://www.coinographic.com/VOTES.xlsx



Without further ado I am pleased to announce the winners as follows;

1st Place – Mr.BAU with design 16

2nd Place – bonksnp2 with design 4

3rd Place – bit0 with design 8

4th Place – campycoin with design 9

5th Place (split) – S4VV4S, Litecoincollector, Chemist-for-hire, Worldtreasurefinders, Cranky4u



We offer our congratulations to Mr.BAU and we very much look forward to working with him to create the final design.  Our congratulations also go to all the runners up in the contest!

@Mr.BAU – can you please pm us all your contact information so we can get in touch with you to start work?

To preempt the inevitable drama, we want to make some statements about the winning design concept;

1. The finished completed design will be in solid gold
2. The finished completed design will include an original box design

In a final note we want to say that our decision is final. We have spent a lot of time reviewing the votes to ensure we are being as fair as possible. No amount of complaining or protest about the final results will change our position.  


A big thank you to everyone that submitted a design! We appreciate your support.


If all the runners up can please forward us their BTC address by the close of business on Monday 15th September, we will pay the runners up bounties.

Thank you

[iawgoM]

There, congrats Mr. BAU! When this contest started I actually said to someone "this is my only competitor" - believe that or not

@Coinographic - great decision. Yes, I'm sorry to be disqualified, but you're right - that attempt of agreement is supposed to be punished. I'm only sorry that elianite ever sent us that PM...Lesson learned.

@crybabies, trolls, flamers - rejoice, rejoice, starting now!