Get a BFL Single without the long wait! (Falling Price Auction - No Min)

[DeathAndTaxes]

The Price clock:


I am having a falling price auction on a BFL Single.

The item: One BFL Single.

I am near the top of the list for delivery:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77796.0

I can't guarantee when it will be delivered but it should be "soon".  I have confirmation from two indirect sources that it should most likely ship next week, however I can't be held responsible if shipment is delayed.  The risk is what makes it fun! Tomorrow morning I will ask BFL to not ship the my single to me and instead ship it directly to the winner.  Winner will not receive the Single until payment is made in full.  On the off chance BFL has already shipped it to me or they won't allow me to change the delivery address I will ship it directly to the winner unopened once it arrives.

Domestic shipping is included in bidding price.  International bidders will need to pay BFL (or me) the difference between domestic and international shipping.  

The Rules.
1) The price starts at 200 BTC @ 00:00:00 05/25/2012 UTC Time.

2) The price will decline by 10,000 satoshis (0.0001 BTC) every second.
After 00:00:00 05/26/2012 UTC the price velocity will be increased to 30,000 satoshis (0.0003 BTC/s)
See post #14

3) The current price can be computed at follows.  Official Current Price = 200 BTC - (# of seconds since 00:00:00 5/25/2012 UTC)*(0.0001 BTC)
After 00:00:00 05/26/2012 UTC Official Current Price = 191.36 BTC - (# of seconds since 00:00:00 5/26/2012 UTC)*(0.0003 BTC)
See post #14

4) The price clock below is provided for convenience.  If the price clock is different than the official price (due to error, computer failure, denial of service attack or other reason) then the official current price as calculated above remains in effect.

5) The falling price auction continues until someone posts "BUY" in this thread with the current price.  Posting "BUY" is a formal commitment to buy the single at the current price and buyer agrees to prompt payment.

6) There is a hidden reserve price.  If price falls below hidden reserve price with no bids then the auction is void (ends with no winner).   A hash of the hidden reserve price will be provided in post #2.  I will close the auction and reveal the hidden price (which can be confirmed by the hash).  On edit: based on recommendation I have decided to remove the reserve.  Auction continues until there is either a BUY or price hits 0 satoshis.  

7) Payment is required immediately.  If you have good rep, don't have the funds, and still want to bid you MUST contact me via PM BEFORE bidding to get approval.  I am willing to accept payment delayed by a few days (waiting for Dwolla to clear, etc) but only with prior approval.  In the PM indicate how much you have available for immediate payment, how you intend to collect balance, and estimated time frame.

8 ) Winner agrees to pay interest of 0.5% per day on delayed payment (only w/ prior approval see #7).

9) Anyone making a BUY post without ability to immediately pay (or securing approval for delayed payment) agrees in advance to pay a forfeit fee of 10 BTC for disrupting the auction.  Failure to pay will be considered a scam.

10) Payment is in Bitcoins only.  

Unless you have extensive trading history you should have coins in hand before bidding.  Maybe our resident lenders in the lending forum would be willing to offer financing for a short term loan?

Let the prices fall.  How long can it go?


The Price clock:


Edit May 24 - Removed reserve

[DeathAndTaxes]

Reserved for clarifications, updates, and notes.

Always click refresh to get latest price from the price clock.


The SHA-256 hash for the minimum reserve price is:
8c6b052a3c41a62d9f5dff67fa89555609e74cd33f5d2781f589d37926c6a90d

The reserve has been removed but here is what the secret message said.

The minimum price is 150 BTC.  If the prices goes below this well you all lose you cheap bastards.  Some entropy here: kdh4h2derkjcnhkdjsckjdhkjhse3283j34km,djklsh

[Serge]

interesting auction, good luck!

[DeathAndTaxes]

For those wondering the price falls by 0.36 BTC per hour or 8.64 BTC per day.

Unless someone is very generous my net worth will be reduced by almost 4 BTC by the time I wake up.

Oh BTW can some one quote the original post as a record.

[Serge]

The Price clock:


I am having a falling price auction on a BFL Single.

The item: One BFL Single.

I am near the top of the list for delivery:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77796.0

I can't guarantee when it will be delivered but it should be "soon".  I have confirmation from two indirect sources that it should most likely ship next week, however I can't be held responsible if shipment is delayed.  The risk is what makes it fun! Tomorrow morning I will ask BFL to not ship the my single to me and instead ship it directly to the winner.  Winner will not receive the Single until payment is made in full.  On the off chance BFL has already shipped it to me or they won't allow me to change the delivery address I will ship it directly to the winner unopened once it arrives.

Domestic shipping is included in bidding price.  International bidders will need to pay BFL (or me) the difference between domestic and international shipping.  

The Rules.
1) The price starts at 200 BTC @ 00:00:00 05/25/2012 UTC Time.

2) The price will decline by 10,000 satoshis (0.0001 BTC) every second.

3) The current price can be computed at follows.  Official Current Price = 200 BTC - (# of seconds since 00:00:00 5/25/2012 UTC)*(0.0001 BTC)

4) The price clock below is provided for convenience.  If the price clock is different than the official price by the calculation above the official price remains in effect.

5) The falling price auction continues until someone posts "BUY" in this thread with the current price.  Posting "BUY" is a formal commitment to buy the single at the current price and buyer agrees to prompt payment.

6) There is a hidden reserve price.  If price falls below hidden reserve price with no bids then the auction is void (ends with no winner).   A hash of the hidden reserve price will be provided in post #2.  I will close the auction and reveal the hidden price (which can be confirmed by the hash).

7) Payment is required immediately.  If you have good rep, don't have the funds, and want to bid you MUST contact me via PM BEFORE bidding to get approval.  I am willing to accept payment delayed by a few days (waiting for Dwolla to clear, etc) but only with prior approval.  In the PM indicate how much you have available for immediate payment, how you intend to collect balance, and estimated time frame.

8 ) Winner agrees to pay interest of 0.5% per day on delayed payment (only w/ prior approval see #7).

9) Anyone making a BUY post without ability to immediately pay (or securing approval for delayed payment) agrees in advance to pay a forfeit fee of 10 BTC for disrupting the auction.  Failure to pay will be considered a scam.

10) Payment is in Bitcoins only.  

Unless you have extensive trading history you should have coins in hand before bidding.  Maybe our resident lenders in the lending forum would be willing to offer financing for a short term loan?

Let the prices fall.  How long can it go?


The Price clock:

Reserved for clarifications, updates, and notes.

Always click refresh to get latest price from the price clock.

The SHA-256 hash for the minimum reserve price is:
8c6b052a3c41a62d9f5dff67fa89555609e74cd33f5d2781f589d37926c6a90d

[bombo999]

The Price clock:


I am having a falling price auction on a BFL Single.

The item: One BFL Single.

I am near the top of the list for delivery:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77796.0

I can't guarantee when it will be delivered but it should be "soon".  I have confirmation from two indirect sources that it should most likely ship next week, however I can't be held responsible if shipment is delayed.  The risk is what makes it fun! Tomorrow morning I will ask BFL to not ship the my single to me and instead ship it directly to the winner.  Winner will not receive the Single until payment is made in full.  On the off chance BFL has already shipped it to me or they won't allow me to change the delivery address I will ship it directly to the winner unopened once it arrives.

Domestic shipping is included in bidding price.  International bidders will need to pay BFL (or me) the difference between domestic and international shipping.  

The Rules.
1) The price starts at 200 BTC @ 00:00:00 05/25/2012 UTC Time.

2) The price will decline by 10,000 satoshis (0.0001 BTC) every second.

3) The current price can be computed at follows.  Official Current Price = 200 BTC - (# of seconds since 00:00:00 5/25/2012 UTC)*(0.0001 BTC)

4) The price clock below is provided for convenience.  If the price clock is different than the official price by the calculation above the official price remains in effect.

5) The falling price auction continues until someone posts "BUY" in this thread with the current price.  Posting "BUY" is a formal commitment to buy the single at the current price and buyer agrees to prompt payment.

6) There is a hidden reserve price.  If price falls below hidden reserve price with no bids then the auction is void (ends with no winner).   A hash of the hidden reserve price will be provided in post #2.  I will close the auction and reveal the hidden price (which can be confirmed by the hash).

7) Payment is required immediately.  If you have good rep, don't have the funds, and want to bid you MUST contact me via PM BEFORE bidding to get approval.  I am willing to accept payment delayed by a few days (waiting for Dwolla to clear, etc) but only with prior approval.  In the PM indicate how much you have available for immediate payment, how you intend to collect balance, and estimated time frame.

8 ) Winner agrees to pay interest of 0.5% per day on delayed payment (only w/ prior approval see #7).

9) Anyone making a BUY post without ability to immediately pay (or securing approval for delayed payment) agrees in advance to pay a forfeit fee of 10 BTC for disrupting the auction.  Failure to pay will be considered a scam.

10) Payment is in Bitcoins only.  

Unless you have extensive trading history you should have coins in hand before bidding.  Maybe our resident lenders in the lending forum would be willing to offer financing for a short term loan?

Let the prices fall.  How long can it go?


The Price clock:

no

[DeathAndTaxes]

Removed reserve price.  How low can it go?

[Epoch]

The Fair Market Value of this auction is about 148 BTC. This will fluctuate, of course, with fluctuations in the BTC/USD exchange rate.

Justification:

Single with shipping: $633 (@$5.14/BTC is 123 BTC)
Value of 50 days saved: 25 BTC (difficulty 1591075, 800Mhps nominal: expected PPS earnings 25 BTC)
Total value: 123 + 25 = 148 BTC

Note that I've ignored electricity costs, which would be ~5-10% of the mining profit in the case of a Single. That's about 1-2 BTC which should be deducted.

Actually any Singles ordered today are likely to ship BEFORE 50 days if we extrapolate the shipping delays over the past few months. 40 days may be a more realistic expectation.

So IMHO a reasonable amount is 145 BTC. For amounts above that, any potential purchaser may be better off ordering from BFL directly.

Very interesting auction, D&T. I'm not interested in bidding on this myself, but I sincerely wish you the best of luck. I'm glad to see someone actually willing to sell their Single at a reasonable profit and not 2x or 3x its value as some others have attempted.

And congratulations on your winning bet with Inaba; it was fun watching it go down to the wire. I was expecting a clean win from you due to BFL's shipping delays, but it seems they've been taming their backlog quicker than expected.

[dinox]

If BFL scams you or it gets lost in shipping, you refund the buyer full amount, right?

[rjk]

If BFL scams you or it gets lost in shipping, you refund the buyer full amount, right?

Right, so after hundreds of successful deliveries, they decide to scam the guy with the bet. Sure.

[Epoch]

If BFL scams you or it gets lost in shipping, you refund the buyer full amount, right?

Dang, dinox has used the word 'BUY'! Congratulations to the lucky winner!

Oops, he forgot to quote the current price.  

Got away on a technicality!  

[DeathAndTaxes]

If BFL scams you or it gets lost in shipping, you refund the buyer full amount, right?

Yes and No.

If there is no shipment due to a scam I will refund the price.
If the product is lost, damaged, or stolen in the mail that is an issue between the winner and the shipper (no different than if the winner bought one directly). 

[DeathAndTaxes]

Advance notice: I will be modifying the auction.  

Since nobody has ever done one of these before I decided on price velocity of 0.001 BTC per second which is too slow.  I didn't want it too fast but I think it is moving too slow.  I am going to triple the price velocity to 0.003 BTC per second (~ 1 BTC per hour).  That should be fast enough to result in meaningful price changes while still giving people adequate chance to jump in.

It will be a seamless change.
At 05/26/2012 00:00:00 UTC  the price clock will be 191.36 (200 - 60*60*24*0.0001).  I have a modified the counter to switch to a -0.0003 BTC/s velocity after 05/26/2012 00:00:00.

Official price can then be calculated from that point as:
Official Current Price = 191.36 BTC - (# of sec since 05/26/2012 00:00:00 UTC)*(0.0003)

[wogaut]

I'm interested to see in how low this goes 

Watching closely...

[dinox]

If BFL scams you or it gets lost in shipping, you refund the buyer full amount, right?

Dang, dinox has used the word 'BUY'! Congratulations to the lucky winner!

Oops, he forgot to quote the current price.  

Got away on a technicality!  

...someone posts "BUY" in this thread with the current price.

 

[FreeMoney]

This is pretty cool. A site like this would be fun. Let anyone post an item, starting price and velocity. I think high starting prices and relatively fast drops are best. Gives people time to see it but also has some intensity to it.

[SaltySpitoon]

So what happens if I say the B word that means I would like to stop the auction and claim the BFL for the amount at the current time, but for the current price, I say 1 BTC when it is actually in the 190s?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Yeah once it switches to -0.003 BTC/s it is going to go from bad deal to fair deal to oh shit I can't believe I didn't bid deal in the span of a weekend. 

Wait for the best price but don't wait too long. Happy bidding everyone.    I will be back around 00:00:00 UTC to make sure my modified code doesn't do anything stupid.  In case the price clock says something awesome like BTC remember rule #4.

[DeathAndTaxes]

So what happens if I say the B word that means I would like to stop the auction and claim the BFL for the amount at the current time, but for the current price, I say 1 BTC when it is actually in the 190s?

It is void.  You must bid equal to the current price to be valid.  That is why I have you confirm the price to avoid any confusion.  Hopefully someone else will point that out if I am away.

[Garr255]

Great idea