BitBet r Us

Let me save a screenshot here. Quick, quick, before you blink and it's gone!

Click me!

So... yeah. It's a Bitcoin betting site that :

• Takes 1%. Beat that, competition.ⁱ
• Also pays 1%, for 30 days, on traffic you refer.ⁱⁱ
• Stakes all accepted bets. It makes perfect sense, we think it's good enough to waste your time reading it, we should have some skin in the game. We do, to the tune of .1 BTC per.
• Users love. I don't even mean like or something copacetic like that, I mean love. Over one hundred BTC bet in the first 24 hours! Top of reddit on launch. Stuff like that.
• Is a public partnership. (A coupla months ago I asked Maticⁱⁱⁱ if he wanted to code this thing. He did.^iv) This is a first in Bitcoin, you've seen public corps that weren't partnerships and partnerships that weren't public but this is all new. Also a gamechanger, I'd venture to say.

You can buy its shares (S.BBET, starts on the 11th), and there's a little more cleverness here : people may bid whatever they want to bid, but share blocks will go out on that date in 0.1% packets at a fixed price, starting with 1000 satoshi (implicit valuation 100 BTC for the entire thing) and going up 3% with each new block, for a total of 300.

So, to play things out a little, taking the Bid side as it stands right now :

100`000 shares @ 0.00050000 BTC
18`177 shares @ 0.00045950 BTC
50`000 shares @ 0.00034190 BTC
50`000 shares @ 0.00021940 BTC

1st block will go out, asking 0.00001000 BTC. Will sell into the 0.00050000 BTC bid, netting 5 BTC and leaving 90k on the book. Next block, asking 0.00001030 BTC will sell into the same block netting the same 5BTC, and leaving 80k. Blocks 3, 4 and so forth up to 10 will meet the same fate. Then block 11 will go out for 0.00001344 BTC, run into the 0.00045950 block, sell for 4.595 BTC and take it down to 8`177 shares. Block 12 will go out for 0.00001384 BTC and sell 8`177 at 0.00045950 BTC and the remainder 1`823 at 0.00034190 BTC, netting a total 4.3806152 BTC.

Just as in the case of MPOE bonds the only stable solution game theory indicates is "buyer bids what he truly believes the item to be worth". This is why BTC needs finance people, incidentally, and why it needs them more than it needs coders, copywriters and in general packagers. To be valuable it needs something to package. It needs more clever ideas before it needs many more clothes, because currently Bitcoin finds itself in the situation of a Valley airhead with a closet full of shoes and no place to go Friday night. (And yes, this is my way of saying that no, you shouldn't be starting yet another "exchange" just because you figure you can code one.)

Also, since we're on this topic : if you have extensive and provable experience in FMCG (which practically means a bunch of contacts that can get you serious wholesaler discounts on consumer goods) and want to partner to make the BTCAmazon I want to hear all about it. No, this does not mean etsy shit, nobody cares about hipster chicks and their dumb timesinks. No, this does not mean fencing some stuff you shoplifted or whatever. If you're the guy that can provide volume at wholesaler prices and want to grow your BTC side I want to hear from you.

1. No, seriously, there is competition ?! [↩]
2. The affiliate system is appallingly simple, you just add ?ref=1yourbitcoinaddress at the end of any link and that's that. No affiliate account, no affiliate manager, no nothing. I'm ready to forever change the affiliate game, are you ready to make money from it ? All the same to me either way, someone certainly will. [↩]
3. I fixed the man's name. Here it is, straight from the bird's mouth :
   

   kakobrekla
   

   A coupla months ago I asked Mat if

   Dunno i dont care really that much, just say if I stop correcting you and we leave it at Mat for short :)
   mircea_popescu Lol sorry! So, Matic. Fixed :D

   kakobrekla Thanks :)
   mircea_popescu But you won't be able to avoid this I don't think, with English speakers. I ended up being "eM" in the US.

   kakobrekla Yeah I had fun traveling around and listening to people speaking out my name. English persons mostly end up with "Matik". Which is wrong.
   mircea_popescu Haha. You Eastern European you.

   kakobrekla It sounds exactly like MA+TITS
   mircea_popescu :D (I know)

   kakobrekla You must know also that "tic" can mean a bird. Or a dick.
   mircea_popescu :p

   kakobrekla Now you know why I sound like tits but mean dick.

   [↩]

4. We worked out a deal whereby he does the tech stuff and I do the finance stuff, and if this fails to blow up you will all be copying us next year, not just because that's what you do but mostly because it's the right thing. [↩]