Topic: betsofbitco.in shooting its self in the foot with listing fees (Read 1459 times)

dont fix what isnt broken

Betsofbitcoin's bet payout structure is stupid.  They should just copy intrade and let people bet like a normal market.

Yea ok the more i think about it the more i realize that the alternatives are even worse

If you don't think you can recoup it with your cut of fees it probably shouldn't be up there and I think it's understandable that they don't want to wade through a bunch of freerolling listers. Tons of 'choices' that all suck because there is no money on either side to be won is no good.

The listing fee is 0.1 BTC.  That's worth about $1.30 currently.  If the submission earns enough commission the submitter can actually profit.  The break-even is 2.0 BTC in losing bets.

Essentially if a bet statement doesn't yield at least 2.0 BTC in losing bets it probably wasn't well written or of sufficient interest to a wide-enough audience.  i.e., in my opinion, the site is better off without cruft.  Fewer submissions that are of a good quality are better than many submissions of little interest.

Also, this hurdle might help cause bet statement authors to think it through a bit more.  For instance, if a bet is so obvious, few will bet what ends up being the losing side.   So while the bet statement may end up with a ton of bets placed, if there are hardly any losing bets there is hardly any gain for those who bet the correct way.   So with some  "skin" in the game, the bet statement author might develop a bet statement to where the outcome is less likely to be easily predicted.

Should you have a bet statement you'ld like to submit but are holding back because of the 0.1 BTC submission fee, I created a thread for requests / suggestions:
 - http://www.reddit.com/r/BetsOfBitcoin/comments/14guyw/requests_what_bet_statement_would_you_place_a_bet

I love betsofbitco.in its great to have a us alternative to intrade but i really feel one of their decisions in designing the service was very poor indeed.

as a disclaimer im not suggesting that betsofbitco.in shouldn't be compensated for their efforts or even that they should be compensated less, i am only arguing that they are charging in the wrong way or rather in the wrong place.

A listing fee disincentivizes people from contributing new submissions which in turn hampers the diversity of options available to people who want to place bets which in turn reduces the appeal of betsofbitco.in. When i logged on for the first time and saw that i only have like 20 options to chose from that's a huge bummer and almost a deal breaker, i expect that if this barrier preventing people from adding new submissions was removed than there would be a great deal more options available to chose from.

Of course i understand that it cant be free or else users would flood the site with endless garbage so this could be solved by replacing the listing fee with a reasonable minimum initial bet (which betsofbitco.in would charge a commission on even if no one ever bet against him). In this way it would only be in the interest of the submitter to only submit a bet that he sinisterly expected other people to be willing to bet on and he sincerely expected to win.