Topic: Advertise Bitcoin on every single banknote ( and make a new game ? ) - page 4. (Read 17234 times)

Well, the bill would have to be registered by someone in order to assign bitcoins to it, even if it's the sie administrator.

^ But if identifying bill information is entered for the first time how would a site know it is valid?

I believe Phinnaeus was on the right track:

I bet those with QR scanning phones are more likely to have interest in Bitcoin

I like this approach too, but I'd add a site address in addition to QR code. The larger majority of population don't have QR scanning phones. I think this method could work, although the rate of spreading the message would be much slower I'd think than the more interactive game.

I agree with edd about keeping things simple, but actually the game I described is no different in simplicity from a user's perspective. They're still just entering bills into a site. The site does all the rest of the work for calculations.

I also agree a note can't give credit the first time entered, or people will make up serial numbers. I think the key validation is having the second person verify the details of the bill. From the tech standpoint checking the I.P. geo location is the best way to guard against one person pretending to be many others.

As for the illegality of marking bills it's interesting that wheresgeorge.com has set a precedent. The Secret Service themselves commented that as long as the site ceased selling the rubber stamps to mark with they wouldn't look into it too much. If bitcoin created its own game that did nothing different what would justify a new crack down?

It's a gray area, but it's interesting that the current system has no problem using gray area to their own benefit, such as with so-called "voluntary" income taxes and capital gains taxes on legal tender gold/silver coins.

The anonymous features of Bitcoin makes it possible to safely take a political stand. It's just a question of whether the resulting PR would do more harm than any benefits of exposure from actions taken.

I like the idea of a small sticker with a QR Code. Stickers aren't expensive to produce and ship, plus the notes stay clean.

In my opinion this should be crowd-funded, i.e. each person puts a few bitcents on a few bills and hands them out to strangers. The idea is not to get rich, but to metaphorically use fiat money to spread the word about a new kind of money. With crowd-funding there is no need for complicated means of verification via IP/email/whatever, it's first come first served.

Again though, how would you prevent people from making up serial numbers?

The first time a note is entered, it CANNOT give out BTC, or else people will just start making up serial numbers.

"Defacing" bills is against US law but it hasn't really been enforced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_George%3F#Controversy

I'm afraid blatantly encouraging individuals to do this would give the Secret Service a reason to prosecute bitcoiners, even if it's a flimsy one.

I still prefer keeping it very simple.

Person finds bill with URL, visits website, enters serial numbers, possibly wins BTC.
Person learns that even unmarked bills may unlock BTC.
Person visits site often to check bills, investigates the BTC market and becomes immersed in the bitcoin community.
Person becomes an advocate of bitcoin themselves and begins proselytizing and spreading the word with bills marked with the URL.

Contests over how many bills you've marked, how far they've traveled, etc should just be gravy.

No one is forced to write the website on the bill, the website also wont say to do it.
But ... it obvious that it's better to write it on bills to be better sure that the next one will go on it

Writing a web address is enough to render a bill unfit to be reissued? That's a stretch, IMO.

And it's a game to track bills not a movement. Bitcoin is not a currency.

No, that's not how to win at the game. You have best chances by entering the web address on the max number of bills, because they all add to your total - once upon being entered from another location. There is no limit on how many bills you can enter. A VPS across the country, or a friend for that matter, could be used but only once without going into elaborate spoof tactics. For example, there could be a diversity of location bonus. In other words, the object of the game is to put out a very diverse imprint of bills belonging to you. That can be done by marking bills, or it can be done by spoofing. It's probably far easier to do it by marking bills.

Yes, people continue entering the bills. Any person gets credit once when the next person enters the bill.

It's legal grey area:  

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5711/has-anyone-been-charged-with-defacing-money

TLDR:  It's illegal if done with intent to render the bills "unfit to be reissued".

There's probably enough leeway there for the government to construe widespread defacement of bills with adverts for competing currency as illegal.  I wouldn't try to start such a movement, more likely to attract the kind of attention bitcoin doesn't want.

- Enter bill
- Rent VPS across the country
- Enter bill again
- Win $500-$1k.

What am I missing here?

And why is credit given only once?  Wouldn't you want people to continue entering the bills, even after it has been entered once?  The more people exposed, the better, etc.

I think you and I are on completely different paths of ideas.  :p

Yes, gaming the system by I.P. is possible, but I think it's one of those things where it's easier to play correctly. A time delay would help. For anyone with sufficient skill to do so it wouldn't be worth the elaborate effort needed. As for friends entering each other's bills, remember that credit is only given once, then the bill is expected to be entered from another location and credit is given to the last person. But even the limited cheating of friends is the essence of what going viral is about. There could be a location diversity bonus. I'm thinking the max reward issued wouldn't be more than $500-1K.

It's a good idea, but wouldn't work very well.  You can easily have access to IP addresses from all over the world if you know what you are doing.

I wonder if it is possible to filter for only ISP-given IP addresses.  I mean, gather up the IP ranges for all the major ISP's around, and then see if the IP fits the criteria.  If not, throw an error and tell them they must enter their bills from a residential ISP carrier.

Then again, people would start creating IP address circles.  Mailing lists with lists of serial codes, and they just keep circulating them round-robin style.  Of course, that could/would happen with any of the methods talked about so far...

Hmmmm...

Also, 6 wouldn't work, because a person could just keep a log of the serial numbers, then periodically re-enter them to see if they had been entered somewhere else and thus "returned".

EDIT:  An epiphony!  Only pay out for the first bill entered for a second time every 24 hours.  In other words, it wouldn't be normally expected that the same person could find two bills that had already been written on it in the same 24 hour period, so anyone who does would be considered a cheat, and would not be paid out for that bill.  BUT, a person can enter as many first-time bills as they want in any given period of time.  Thus, the incentive to write on fresh bills would likely outweigh the incentive to cheat on existing ones!

You'd still probably have rings of people trying to enter each others bills to game the system, but ultimately, it wouldn't really be worth it for them.  And it would probably be much easier to catch them just running some simple queries on the DB.

This could be big.

I agree the main point should be incentive to have more people mark new bills.

Here is the idea I have for now:

1. Mark on $1 bills (yes, ideally this works anywhere but start with U.S. for simplicity) the following: thebitcoingame.com or unlockmysecret.com

2. A curious person goes to the website and is congratulated on finding a game worth real money. The object of the game is simple: rack up the most miles traveled for their bill as possible. All they need to do is enter info from their bill (e.g. serial number and plate number)

3. The website enters the bill info and geo location of the I.P. address then calculates the distance from last entry if any. This is added to the user's score.

4. On the 1st of every month the top 3 users with the highest mileage score receive Bitcoin prize reward. This can come from donations and site advertising. There is no limit to the number of bills a person can register, but the bill they enter only is worth mileage for them to the next entry, then it transfers to the next user.

5. The site displays a running tally, and possibly other interesting info like where the bill was received etc. to add interest. It could be bigger than wheresgeorge.com. Of course, there is also a simple introduction to what Bitcoin is.

6. There can be a big bonus if a user enters any bill that they entered and later found its way back to them.

To prevent gaming the system: as mentioned earlier each bill has different security features which can be used to verify the user is holding it. The other problem is spoofing I.P. addresses, which is possible, but it's harder to spoof I.P. location over and over. Also, the I.P. might be required to come from Starbucks or McDonalds both of which offer free wi-fi nationwide.

It has a huge virulence

The obvious thing is that by increasing the Bitcoin knowledge it will also increase the Bitcoin value, so it's a win-win!

I have no idea if there's a way to legitimize a bill number.  But even if there is, a cheater could use the same method of legitimizing bill numbers and enter in serials that they don't really have.

I think something along the lines of what you mentioned above is reasonable.

Could also make the reward for the person who originally entered the bill not be valid until 4 weeks out.  Who holds on to the same cash bills for that long?  That would at least avoid giving out half the reward to a cheater.  They could still "cheat" by entering the bill on a different computer and getting the "second" entry of the bill, but I doubt anyone would hold out for 4 weeks to get the reward from initially entering the bill.

Of course, you'd probably get the individuals who keep record of the serial numbers, then head back to the website 4 weeks later to claim their double reward.

Hmmmm... there must be a way to legitimize this.

It'd be fun though.  You could take the idea further and have lotteries, high score lists with rewards for the top, etc.

Is there a way to check that a bill-number is valid and not just a random value?
If not, the solution is "giving the reward" only if someone else will enter the same value on next days ( or after 10 hours / 24 hours /  ... )

If someone enter a bill-number already on the database, the first player that has entered the bill-number will get 0.01 Bitcoin ( just an example ) and X points.
During the next hours he ( the first player ) wont get anymore 0.01 Bitcoin, but he will still get the X points ( every 5 hours  ?)
All others that enter the bill-number ( that it is already on the database of the server ) will get 0.001 Bitcoin and Y points. ( this wont work for 5 hours )

If someone will get K points ( that is the total of all Ys plus Xs points) after a while, then he will get 0.1 Bitcoins. ( just another example )


The main difficulty is to find the good math between time and rewards to first and next players to avoid cheaters.