Topic: 50/50 Bitcoin Raffle - tickets are 0.01 BTC - (50% to winner / 50% to charity) - page 2. (Read 2561 times)

Your sendto address is a hyperlink that jumps you to the blockchain.info  This makes it inconvenient for us copy&paste people.  Not a big deal.  Hurry up everyone, I've got that 35th ticket already spent

Only 67 66 65 tickets left at 0.10 BTC each!

Our next drawing will have an even lower ticket price    

Sorry.  I figured 0.10 was low enough for most people, but I guess if you're brand new to Bitcoin even that much seems like a lot. 

I could lower the price and give people who already bought tickets 10x the number they originally bought, but I'd rather not change the rules after I've already sold tickets.  It just doesn't seem honest. 

I'll consider lowering the price for the next raffle if enough people ask for it. 

Perhaps you could team up with other people to pool your money...?  I don't have any built-in support for automatic ticket pools yet, but that wouldn't stop people from doing it on their own.

It costs too much!
0.01 would work...

Thanks.  There is a warning about that on the site. 

Oh, and you should have a warning about shared wallets. Not every Bitcoin tx can be returned to the sender!

THANKS! I really appreciate it.

Ya, it would be nice to have BitLotto draws more often. One day we will, when it's bigger. For now, I think one a month is just enough to make the pot big enough to encourage more players. Slow and steady...

I did see RaffleBit and CoinRaffle, but they didn't do what I had in mind.  Yours definitely does, except for only happening once a month with very large prizes.  Either way, I'm just excited more people are using Bitcoin.

By the way... I put a link to your lotto on my front page.

I don't know if I believe you! I'm just surprised you didn't see what already existed for Bitcoin lotteries or hear about BitLotto?

Anyways...
I use tx hash. If the payment is for multiple tickets I just do txhash1 txhash2 adding numbers at the end and hashing it.  Once the lottery numbers come out I create a "mixer hash" with them and block data, and this is applied to every hash created. The results are sorted you have the winner.

Wow.  I honestly don't know what to say.  I just thought about this yesterday and decided to implement it. 

I'd be happy to put a link to your lotto site and mention the considerably higher payouts.

My idea was to have raffles as often as every day if possible, but obviously it needs to be more popular first. 

Thanks for the tip on from addresses.  Perhaps using the transaction hash would make more sense?  Is that what you use?

I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Looks VERY similar to BitLotto. I guess your tickets are cheaper and the jackpot smaller. I do have the "Pirate Pool" that takes 0.1 BTC or above payments.

For the bitcoin address in the hash you should also consider that sometimes there is multiple from addresses.

Hello Fellow Bitcoin Addicts,

I've been using Bitcoin for a little over two years, almost exclusively for personal purchases.  

I've decided to do a side project for fun to help promote Bitcoin at http://bitcoinraffle.co/.  The idea is to give others a chance to easily get their hands on some Bitcoin without having to install any malware, fill out endless surveys, or max out their GPU trying to mine their own coins.    

The first raffle will be for at least 10 BTC.  I say at least 10 BTC, because the drawing will be held at midnight (UTC) on the day the prize pool reaches 10 BTC.  Tickets are 0.10 BTC each, so 100 tickets need to be sold to meet the minimum prize pool. All transactions posted before midnight (UTC) on that day will be counted in the drawing, so the prize could likely be more than 10 BTC.  I'm keeping the ticket price low so it's easier for people new to Bitcoin to participate.

I will only keeping 0.5% of the take to help with overhead, so they payout will be 99.5% of whatever is collected.  So on a 10 BTC prize pool, I will make a whopping 0.05 BTC.  So you can see I'm not in this for the money, I'm doing it for fun and to help promote Bitcoin.  

I've taken some steps to ensure the system is cheat-proof.  Each ticket is made up of the following data elements:

Daily3 mid-day numbers from MichiganLottery.com from the day the prize pool minimum is met
Bitcoin address that sent the payment
number 0001 thru number of tickets you purchased (if you sent 3x the ticket price, your tickets would be: 0001, 0002, 0003)
The first Bitcoin block number with a timestamp after midnight on the day the prize pool minimum is met

SHA256 hashes are calculated for the data string (made up of the four elements listed above) for each ticket sold, then sorted (0-9,A-Z). The winner is the ticket at the top of the list.

The transactions/tickets can easily be viewed using the Bitcion Block Explorer at http://blockexplorer.com/address/1Hxjf7yzS8C5obUBcVKxFNSFVCeaVhmTeA

Still, I know this will require some level of trust.  That's another reason why I'm keeping the ticket price and prize fairly small right now.  I want people to see that it will actually work and they are not being lied to.  

I think it will be fun.  I hope some of you will try it out!

http://bitcoinraffle.co/