Here's a mystery the Internet may wish to help elucidating.

BitBet pays referrals, being both the first Bitcoin site to have done so and to date the most consistent referral programme in the entire space. This, of course, means we keep track of things, and keeping track of things means we notice things.

For instance, that we've just paid 6 referral fees in total sum of 0.03067221 BTC (equivalent to bets made of about 3 BTC) to address 1FX22c76vybHJSJdCCjKHDHhcMDhDX87nw.ⁱ That address happens to have some history in Bitcoin. Specifically, it's an old GLBSE address (that has nonetheless last been spent from April 2014).

But wait, there's more! Someone made a sort-of translated into Russian BitBet clone (bitbet.su). It is in no way authorised, nor do I for a moment suppose it's safe to use it as a proxy for BitBet.

If you try to get a betting address from this clone site, it will pass your request along to BitBet, obtain an actual BitBet address and forward it to you (note that this behaviour can change at any time and is not to be relied on). That request from the clone to BitBet passes along a referral. That referral is... 1FX22c76vybHJSJdCCjKHDHhcMDhDX87nw.

So now :

1. Either Theymos, Nefario or some other scammer involved with GLBSE are actually back to using old wallets/addresses ; or else someone is pulling an elaborate prank.
2. Either someone is actually using bitbet.su to place bets on bitbet.us via a completely insecure MITM proxy, or else someone is pulling an elaborate prank.

In either case, some important points :

• If you are concerned about MITM for any reason you can verify that the address you are using is in fact controlled by BitBet, through the following procedure : ask for an address to bet, send a small sum, fractions of Bitcents. Wait for the transaction to get a confirmation. Get on a different connection, and load bitbet.us. If your bet is listed on the site, the address you obtained is actually valid, and it can be safely used for further bets as detailed in the FAQ. If your bet doesn't show up, please let us know.
• If you would like to be involved in Bitcoin, there are better ways than this nonsense. Get in touch, we don't bite.

But all that aside, what the fuck is going on here ?! Anyone got any ideas ?

1. This, by the way, is public info, you can track it with the blockchain explorer of your choice. [↩]