Topic: [FINISHED] Educational giveaway | guess first Bitcoin Block in 2020 [9.5 mBTC] - page 3. (Read 2659 times)

Well said and not only my money since Royse777 added some BTC to the pool.

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Right now, the outcome is possibly even higher based on my projection, if we expect 144 Blocks per day: 

Latest projection: 609,200 (current block) + (10*144) = 610,640

If blocks are confirming faster from now on, we'll see more blocks mined until 2020 of course.


The trend is clearly pointing towards somewhere around 610,700, assuming that BTC won't drop:




But nobody knows what BTC price is doing. A new dump could happen at any time.

https://diff.cryptothis.com/

I was late on payment for December pre-orders from Bitmain, and my shipment should arrive in 3-5 days, since these orders are shipped based on a first-come-first-serve basis, it means many people have already received their new toys and they are now crunching these blocks in no time. Mind you that Bitmain is not the only company doing so, Whatsminer has a dozen of pre-orders that are supposed to arrive soon as well.

Sadly all of this is probably not going to make you or myself win (both our predictions are a bit far-fetched), I expected the gears to come online a lot sooner which was not the case (i underestimated the time it takes from shipping the gears out till they actually come online).

I now think one of these guys will win

Is it me or are the blocks belting along now?

Requiring participants to have certain number of merits was the best thing you could do and you did it. There should be a requirement, a minimum post count, a minimum activity or minimum merits. I think minimum merits is the best option and I personally cannot find a better solution.

As you said, there are some competitions in "games and round" board. Some owners don't bother themselves to make a rule. Some of them say that using multiple accounts are not allowed, but actually they do nothing to fight multiple accounts. Most of those competitions are due to promotion and advertising purposes and owners don't have any issue with multiple accounts. Because multiple accounts help their thread be more active and this is exactly what they want. But your giveaway is different from them. You are paying the reward with your own money, want to have a fair competition and have to make a rule to avoid cheaters.

I agree, the Merit requirement wasn't the best to support Newbies participating here and for the next time I'll see how I can improve it. I'm in doubt that a general "everyone can participate here" will work. I've seen so many giveaways failing because cheaters destroyed them. It's extremely difficult to spot if users are alts when they have not many posts.
However, I'll try to find a creative way how we can make fairer rules next time.  

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We know  

18,700     LoyceV
!!! Q3 game is life, Quarter 3 prediction game !!!

19,849    LoyceV
Q4 -Quarter 4 speculation thread, where will 2019 end, join the LIST

30645  LoyceV
NEW BAKKT game

With regards to the merit requirements... You should have just made a rule that only accounts created PRIOR to the timedate of the thread creation are eligible to enter (prevents people from spooling up new accounts to try and flood the giveaway).

Sure, someone could already have a massive amounts of alts that they're going to use to just throw in multiple guesses... but considering this was supposed to be an educational giveaway... and it was posted in B&H... limiting via merit would probably preclude a lot of "beginners".

Correct. Except for my hopes for a higher Bitcoin price outrank my hopes for winning this educational giveaway
I'm always bullish.

In general, everyone was allowed and my intention was to get some detailed explanations why users nominated a specified number. (That would help Newbies to understand more about Blocks and Mining)

Yeah, subjectiveness might result in disappointment, users feeling offended when they are denied for enrolling suspected alts while playing innocent especially when we have no reliable proof. For this giveaway, such users didn't apply but I think it's because of the 5 Merit rule.
Hhampuz made a giveaway last year and masses of alts applied. 

Maybe I'll give it a try next year. ^^

Ok 
But we need at least a few participants xD

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But if that's happening, the first Block mined in 2020 will be higher than now. Best for you (and me much more since my prediction is even lower) would be a decreasing Bitcoin price, that miners will leave the network, hashrate will decrease and less blocks produced per 2016 Block interval.

Current projection (every block 10 minutes): 608,000 (current block) + (18*144) = 610,592

Less blocks per day was the scenario on which my prediction was based:
Unfortunately, Bitcoin's price has been dropping for a while now.

Correct. Unless the Bitcoin price keeps dropping, in which case more and more miners will stop wasting electricity, and blocks slow down further.

The moment the price goes up a lot, all miners will continue mining and find blocks faster until the next difficulty adjustment. That's the scenario I'm hoping for

Never thought in that way. You are correct LoyceV.

I guess it's not going to be same for the next 19 days. On every 2016 blocks, we will have adjustment for maintaining the average time of 10 minutes for blocks.
19*138= 2622 blocks, we will see 1/2 adjustment within these days & it's very possible to be higher than the block you calculated.

LoyceV, you have a big chance to win the competition. It might be better to say that you have the biggest chance of winning.
First block of December 13 (at CET) was just mined. The number was 607846.
The difference between first block of December 13 and first block of December 10 was 415. So, in these three days, 138.3 blocks has been mined per day on average.

If blocks are mined at a same rate in next 19 days:
First block of 2020= 607431+(22*138.3)= 610474

This block number will make you win the competition.
So you don't need a 51% attack.

Indeed ^{[for us it's quite low but for lower-ranked members, might be a different story]}.

• Other giveaways aren't aimed at newbies/lower-ranked members (given that you posted on this board, I guess that should've been one of the objectives ^{[to allow users with a lower rank, participate in your giveaway]})

Perhaps this might be the better solution ^{[regardless of it being a bit subjective]}...

It will

Actually, it's the other way around

I'm with LoyceV on this one. A change in rule/s should only apply to succeeding rounds.

I voted No. Changing the rules after the start of the game can only lead to drama if it leads to someone else being the winner.

Yeah, he didn't meet the 5 earned Merit criteria but I'm always open for discussions to avoid unfair rules. He doesn't seem like an abuser so I'll add a poll if we should include him or not.

It won't prevent cheating completely but exclude ~99% of farmed / bought / hacked accounts. We had a time before 1 Merit was required for Jr. Member and for my impression most shitposters shifted to the strategie to farm dozens of those Jr. Members before the new rule was introduced. In addition, there are still masses of untagged Newbies used for bumping services et al. and I don't want to get into trouble when such people get to know about this giveaway. Fixed rules avoid most problems.

Poll added: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/finished-educational-giveaway-guess-first-bitcoin-block-in-2020-95-mbtc-5205895 (Poll will run 7 days until December 18, 2019, 11:59:59 PM)

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Yes, for my German version, I had a different rule for that criteria but finally only 1 or 2 users had a lower Merit count than 5 earned Merit.

Of course, I'm always considering adjustments to accept as many users as possible. It's quite difficult to find a good solution for the users and to prevent cheating. In our local board cheating isn't an issue, we have rarely few translation spammers but as they don't understand German, they don't enter my giveaway and I reviewed possible abusers manually.  
I wasn't sure if that approach would work also for international giveaways and didn't want to take a risk, so I decided to set a criteria of at least 5 earned Merit.
5 earned Merit is still low, similar giveaways have mostly 10 Merit:

(Don't know if only earned Merit or not)

(German version of Q4 prediction: 1 account per user, you need to have at least 10 earned Merit. If you don't have 10 earned Merit, you can participate if you donate at least 0,002 BTC to the prize pool)

But your suggestion "at least Member or above" could also be a fair solution.

I hope so.  

Hehe it seems I missed that! But it's fun to see such topics here Maybe I'll catch another one.

Correct me if I'm wrong ^{[I do not understand the language]}, but I think "no merits requirements" on the other thread might've been the main reason instead:

@1miau
safari88 has been excluded from the list for not fulfilling the rules of the giveaway; 5 earned merits, which I guess can't prevent cheating. Wouldn't it be better if we had him in the list as well. Either way, you can't prevent cheating through requiring 5 earned merit.
Anyway, this is a great learning thread for me. Thank you for the unique giveaway. Otherwise, I wouldn't learn things discussed here.

So I need about a day of blockchain rewind due to a 51% attack to win. Or a large enough drop in Bitcoin price to make 5% of all miners pull the plug. I happily accept defeat over of those 2 scenarios

See Q4 -Quarter 4 speculation thread, where will 2019 end, join the LIST!

I might have been 175% more optimistic than the current price.

It would be nice to have also a similar contest for BTC price on January 1st 2020

True, that is a plus, if the topic was somewhere else, most entries would have been just the prediction which was not the case here.




True, but 2 weeks ago is a different story , the reason is the majority of pre-order for Bitmain new 7nm mining gears including but not limited to T17,T17e and S17 are due to ship in the coming days, if there is no delay, and no major drop in bitcoin price that will force old mining gears like S9 to go offline, end of the month should witness a huge spike in hashrate before difficulty could adjust, thus finding more and more blocks.

again these are all just speculations that might never work