Topic: International Lottery based upon the Genius of Bitcoin (Read 6982 times)

Not a scam , but literally nothing has been set up so far except a webpage with a link to pay them Bitcoin.
If you put any Bitcoin in currently , I'd expect it to disappear , not because its run by scammers , but because they seemingly have no idea what they are doing.

I can confirm that OP is Paul Coleman.
He sent me identity verification.

The problem is , I don't have sufficient trust to make this mean enough. Check this thread for a more reputed person to help you out.

I've been convinced that this is legitimate , but you will need more to make it work :-

A - Flesh out your idea

1- I'd like to point out that the idea that you will reach 500,000$ is insane. The most reputed casinos have had maximum winnings of around 200,000$ in a single bet.
I'd say that the maximum you should aim for your first draw should be 1000$ (which still seems higher than the optimum ~200$ I'd feel best)

2- Discuss along with your team/business partner on how everything is going to work. This does not have to be set in stone forever , but you need to have an idea on your first lottery. How many tickets will you sell ? How much will each ticket cost ?

B -Here is my personal opinion of what changes you should make :-

1- Remove the pay with Bitcoin option. Don't take payment without setting anything up. If one single well reputed scam-buster comes and leaves you a negative trust remark , your forum account and website will permanently lose any credibility.

2- Make your FAQ look more professional.

Is this a joke? => What is the International Bitcoin lottery ?
Is this legal? => Take down this section. It makes your company seem illegitimate. You can hire proper lawyers later.
Is this another Mt Gox? => How can I trust you ? / Can I trust you with my Bitcoin ? (Explain on how you have measures to protect peoples' Bitcoin.)

K. How often is there a draw?
When is the first draw?
What's the Jackpot?
What happens if I win?

Change all three of these together into a separate tab or page of your website.
That page should be called "Game Information" and should have all the information about the workings along with including the amount currently invested in tickets and previous draws.
You will need a house edge of 0.5-10% , which will be used for maintainence and for your charitable contributions too.
50% to one winner and 5% to 10 others sounds like 0 house edge. ( 50% to one and 5% to 9 others would be good)

What happens if I win?
This section is okayish.

Can I remain anonymous if I win?
No.
Bitcoin has anonymity as one of its basal pillars. You cannot remove anonymity.
This may help you prove your authenticity , but it would help more if you utilize a provably fair system like on-the chain betting or instead use a live random.org drawing.

Which kinds of causes will you be supporting?
Good section.

Cool, can I help in some way?
Okayish.

C- Setting up security , from you and for you.


You need to set up a reliable system to ensure that you won't get "hacked"
Secondly , you will need to use an escrow or start really really small.
There are a tonne of escrows that you can use , but it shall make expanding beyond a certain point almost impossible.

TL,DR; I've received your identity verification , but before you can start accepting Bitcoin , you need to think out your idea in more detail , express it properly in FAQ , create a new "game statistics" page and get an escrow , or start out at a much much smaller scale than 500,000$

Can someone post TL;DR so people don't have to read through all this crap like scam or not scam so we could move on to the next scam

It's a one word domain that is exactly relevant to our purpose followed by the tld .cool (top level domain like .com or .org) which is brand new, 21st Century & descriptive of what this is/will be. I do see what you are saying there but it still works extremely well in our opinion or will do if this flies.

Well those are our names, not much we can or should do about that, I will take the pix etc right now and send them to you, please clarify "send them your ID" do you mean send you my user account info for this message board?

Escrow, definitely, thank you jambola. Initial research - escrow.com doesn't seem to handle this kind of situation, safefunds.com might, sending them an email after writing this post, will post it and their reply here. Can anyone recommend a trusted Bitcoin Escrow service? I know the blockchain is it's own usually but for this project it still doesn't work lol. Such an interesting thing.

Thank you too Frank, please do keep it coming you are good at what you do, your points about the prize fund are excellent, we are still looking into insurance too but if we go with escrow I think that would negate insurance no? If you would be happy with that then we know most other people would be too, please know that this is meant sincerely and is not an insult dressed in a compliment.

Private message with info & picture attached on its way jambola.

lottery.cool sounds like the best domain name ever , if you are trying to attract 13 year olds.

Mike and Paul. I'm not sure if it is just me , or do these names sound like the most generic names ever ?

Here's some things we could do to prove that you are real :-

1-Prove that you own any Bitcoin at all ?
Sign a message with today's date and your website URL.

2-Get your identity has "Paul Coleman" (ie most generic name) verified.
Ask a trusted member to verify it for you. You should take a picture of yourself holding a card of your username/website and send the person your ID. They should then post here if you can verify that you are really who you say you are.

Those will prove that you are really "Paul Coleman". Even after that you need a way to make sure people can trust you with money.
You will need to use an escrow.
All your lottery funds must go to a escrow instead of your address.
The escrow should be well known and a single address should be used.
You can let the escrow do the drawing of the lottery too and then let the escrow pay it out. (along with sending you any house edge)

you have no clue..

when you want $1million from people they dont care about your hobbies. they want to know your insured, or your home address to know where to go to slap people with a wet fish when they screw over other people..

your replies are empty and meaningless and do not add anything to your credit..

so get your insurance sorted, else your just spouting out boring waffle that most see as delay tactics and attempts to gain trust through stories.. oh and please dont reply that your honest and doing this because you had a relative that .. blah blah blah sob story.. bla bla bla family death, bla blah bla sob story, changed man bla bla blah

your not doing anything new that most have heard before. the more you talk the worse you look. let the next reply you post be an insurance reference details message. and yea dont post a random number, or the reference to a car/house insurance.. those tricks have failed before too..
remember its been 5 years of people trying these tricks.. ever wonder why after 5 years thre is not 1000 different lotteries running,, your not the first

Yes, well done you, we are NOT hiding, we registered the domain name to our bricks & mortar business address with our real names & any fool could find out who & what we are. Would you like to know a little more about me? My name is Paul Coleman, I am 40 (just turned) I am a father, from the British Isles, well educated, very well travelled, a Buddhist, a spinner of fire, a waterer of plants, a saviour of bugs, a fighter of the good fight, a spurner of riches and a dreamer of 21st Century dreams.

Research away, I have nothing to hide whatsoever.

You do not speak on behalf of all Bitcoiners, people out there still have faith in human beings & the future of the web, sincerely though, thank you for your input irrespective of its delivery.

whatever
until you have insurance, take down the coinbase payment link as it counter argues the point that you say you havnt started yet or seek to hold peoples funds until 1800btc total (the randsom)
 just get legit quick, or Mike should get back on his bike(a hint to how much i know already about him). as i can make things become very legit and real.

we bitcoiners are sick to death of illegitimate money grabbers. and we are starting to get the law involved if businesses and services do not want to follow consumer protection laws. we will want the law to follow them instead (im not talking about regulations)

I will reply at a time of my own choosing thank you Frank. Excellent point though, looking into liability insurance now, I have used it before for various purposes it may take a few days however & this should not halt other discussion which would be welcomed.

other posters, did you see that he didnt even agree to the liability insurance part. thats something he can to in 20 minutes right now, no solicitors, no legal jargon, no paper signing. but guess what.. i bet they dont get liability insurance.

so
to: Bitcoin Lottery

do not reply unless you reply with a legitimate liability insurance reference number in your post and website. any replies, trying to act smart, rebuttle the requirement just makes you look worse and untrustworthy and thus not needed within the community.

there is no reason to argue reasons why liability insurance is not needed. so unless you are going to reply with a reference.. do not reply..

this is all!!

to: other posters
this is not about regulation (money laundering or gambling) this is about consumer protection. if they want to handle 1800btc (amount they want to accumulate before the first draw) then they need to show they are insured to hold other peoples funds.

Damn right, we are WELL aware of this, hence our real names, the taking of responsibility in the open & this forum thread. Hopefully the community can use the message board for it's most noble of puproses and help figure out a solution to this problem. It really is the only hurdle to get past & we are completely open to suggestion, change, adaptation & outside involvement. We don't even see or think of this project as ours, we just want to curate it into existence then give it over to the crowd somehow if it works, exactly how that can be done however is open for discussion.

there is a lot of counterparty risk with lotteries, especially if you don't know or trust the party that is hosting it. it could work just fine though, since there are enough people willing to give their money away.

This is not illegal & is not even fully launched/formed yet therefore it adapt, you are being presumptuous Frank.

Ransom? Not bothering to reply to this.

You are taking offense at the email address I used? It is not in anyway fake, it is very real, very secure & very appropriate for the task at hand, would you prefer, law, devs, media or [email protected]? Maybe I should make [email protected] just for the overly paranoid and rude, hey would you like job?

Steal? Again, you are being presumptuous Frank.

K, we know you think it's a scam, point made.

Valid concerns, we are interested in discussing ways to allay them across the internet, maybe some sort of foundation made up of the more well known players in the BTC world.

you dont need full regulatory compliance, but if your gonna ignore the laws that you do have to obide by, then dont expect people to trust you.

oh but get some liability insurance atleast, especially if you are going to hold peoples funds to ransom unless you get 1800BTC from people (your $500k minimum jackpot + 10 runner ups)

lol and the winner is Mr Rand ham. he has won 900BTC well done to him (secretly its paul but shhhhh no one will know)

steal untill you are caught.. yea that works, .. for you.. but not the victims


yea 'untold' because scams dont give positive PR, oh well seems you lazy a-holes are going to continue scamming people until your caught.. cant say i didn't warn people..

Hi Frank,

No worries, I am here to see what people think, your input is appreciated & I am learning already.

We expect mistrust, it is the correct response initially, how to combat it is one major thing we would like to discuss in this forum. Openness, transparency & 100% honesty go without saying but they are intangible, we are currently looking at creating a governing body/document and registering with a country somewhere to be regulated. Is this a good idea for the Bitcoin world however? Would official regulation not also be very much mistrusted by Bitcoin folk?

I dislike lotteries too for the same kind of reasons, I see them as a stealth tax on the poor, this is not that is all I can say, I will have to prove it later. People with Bitcoins are generally not desperately poor & it is only a ponzi when there is someone other than the winner making a profit, we will not be doing so.

We have various ways to deal with the legal situation, registration/regulation is mentioned above but there are other methods too, we have yet to decide upon which route to take but this is not a simple black & white issue by any means. If a court tells us to stop, we will.

Correct nothing new, not fundamentally anyway but I think the positive PR for Bitcoin aspect remains to be seen, this project certainly has the potential to do an untold amount of good all in the name of Bitcoin & it's community.

Welcome, always gotta give things at least a shot right?

hi paul

im sorry but we have had enough rob peter to pay 'paul' scams

lotteries are ponzi's sorry but they are. just because governments themselves do one doesn't make it legit for others to do them. try aiming your skills at a useful business not just a money grab business. make an ebay clone, make a competitor to bitpay, make a clothing store where you can sell clothes.. just dont make money grabbing ponzi's.

as for your FAQ page, ignore your mom and dad. many people are going through court right now by not having gambling licences etc

oh and by the way, one of your winners... please when you fake the names to your own winniing bitcoin address, don't call yourself Mr Rand Ham ("random").

your not trying anything new, and definitely not trying anything that will bring positive PR to bitcoin..

but thanks for your attempt

Hello

Am here to see what the Bitcoin community thinks of our idea/project - Bitcoin Lottery

Also to see if anyone would like to help, be that with getting it off the ground, marketing, development, direction, whatever.

We are two normal guys, both web professionals of many years, we both have real jobs & ordinary lives. We made this project because we love Bitcoin & want to give it some undeniably good PR, also because it could be a whole heap of the very best kind of fun of course (doing good). It is of course a not for profit venture, we just want to see it fly if we can.

No point making a hugely detailed post, if you are interested please ask questions, poke holes & make suggestions, this is the only way for us to give it an acid test & your thoughts are appreciated.

Many thanks to the BTC Talk community and the people that maintain it.

Paul (me) & Mike.