BitBet, November 2013 Statement

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Operational results

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Received 199ⁱ new propositions, of which accepted 52, rejected 147.
Total bets in worth 1`134.54791011 BTC.ⁱⁱ

Revenue : 30.93604266 BTC, of which :

• bets resolved : 5.49217751 BTCⁱⁱⁱ
• fees from refunds^iv: 0.38720710 BTC
• advertising : 0 BTC^v
• house bets won : 2.99758327^vi
• gracious donations to shareholders : 22.05907478 BTC

Expenditure : 7.79971446 BTC, of which :

• referrals paid : 0.10601706 BTC^vii
• house bets made : 5.21000000 BTC
• carried charge : 2.4836974 BTC

Profit : 23.1363282 BTC, to be distributed as dividends.

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Miscellaneous

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I. We are reducing the minimum required for acquiring advertising slots from the previous 1 BTC set in April to 0.1 BTC.

II. This month is interesting in a very general perspective because it offers a solid data point.

The substance of the matter is that one user sent a late bet, of the sort that ends up in the feared "generous donations" rubric. This is a recurring problem, albeit in general users are more inclined to take responsibility. This particular user had a lot of trouble coming to terms with reality however, and instead spent his time creating multiple bitcointalk threads, plus lots of reddit and twitter spam. To quote a relevant tidbit,

i've spent a lot of time spamming reddit and the forums telling people about bitbet scammers so i've already done damage to their brand, which they deserve for being theives

While the forum voting function collecting the anonymous opinions of uninvolved third parties came out 70 - 29 (out of 99 votes cast) in favour of his nonsensical demands, expectations and misrepresentations of fact and while the various other social media venues showed very similar consensus, BitBet nevertheless saw significant BTC inflows : more than triple the volume of last month, making November the best month in its history.

There are two possible constructions that may perhaps explain this seemingly anomalous result. One is that the aggitation exposed BitBet to people who having never afore heard of it, took the time to consider its workings, found them sensible and began using it. The other is that the aggitation proved to users already more or less familiar with BitBet that the management is firmly and unwaveringly decided to apply contracts exactly^viii, which in turn encouraged them to take larger positions than they would have otherwise entered. It may be said this latter theory is weak, seeing how BitBet quite famously broke the Josh Zerlan betting con^ix and so if anything would assure people that, rather than this, would have been it. Further it may be said that the two considerations are purely coincidental, and the evolution of BitBet incoming bets has exactly nothing to do with the aggitation of forums and other social media sites.

In either event, the moral I see in this adventure is that entrepreneurs are well advised to disregard the "wisdom" of crowds - they seem to go a lot on gut feeling and apparently guts are mostly full of shit. At the very most "public opinion" as represented on the Internet is completely unrelated to reality, and clearly there exists a distance - perhaps a quite large distance - between what a brand actually is and what Interneteers think, or claim to think on the topic. Perhaps all the money spent to "influence" social media users, and to "measure" web engagement and so on and so forth could be better applied elsewhere. Just a thought.

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1. Roughly double last month's. I guess more and more people are noticing BitBet is by far the best gamble in town. Not a very high success rate, but that'll come in time no doubt. [↩]
2. By far Bitbet's best month, above triple the previous month.

   Graphs :

   [↩]

3. 549.21755657 BTC total pool resolved this month. [↩]
4. Bets that arrive before a bet is closed but after the event actually took place are refunded minus a 1% fee. Thus this month a total of 38.72071 BTC represents bets sent after the fact, which could have easily ended up in the gracious donations rubric. [↩]
5. I wonder if anyone realises that a) BitBet actually gets a lot of traffic and b) advertising on BitBet is both easy and well structured. [↩]
6. 4.79000000 BTC worth of house bets were resolved in the current month. [↩]
7. More than double last month's. Keep it coming! [↩]
8. 
   

   With any MP backed venture, you can expect to get exactly what they say you will get, no more, no less. While the outcome is arguably unfair, it is exactly what you would expect them do.

   MPEX/BBET did exactly what they said they would do and did not back down even with mounting pressure from people using their emotions as an argument, which is very admirable to their shareholders.

   [↩]

9. At a time Josh Zerlan aka Inaba was still representing BFL, which had still not delivered anything on their year-old pre-orders, the Vleisides crew came up with the following confidence game : enter bets on various sites on the side of "BFL will deliver", on the understanding that should BFL fail to deliver the site will push the bet (ie, declare it a draw) and refund it. This arrangement would in effect create fake credibility to shore up the badly tattered reputation of BFL for very little cost.

   As brilliant as it may have seemed, the plan didn't work out too well for either BFL or scummy bet sites, because BitBet appeared just around that time and BFL found itself compelled by public outcry to take a significant position on its own delivery. Subsequnetly they failed to deliver and I failed to give in to their bullshit, and thus BitBet emerged the market leader in its space after barely three months in existence. [↩]