For those of you keeping score, Mmitech decided to pull out of our bet from yesterday. He asked me to prove I had ownership of the 20BTC by moving it to a wallet which I did. However, when I moved it back out of that wallet after confirming, he said that I had to keep it there for 7 months - the reason I didn't want to take the bet in the first place - and then he said he was cancelling the bet and wanted to anyway.
While I am disappointed that again bets on this forum are always cancelled for some reason or the other, I thought I'd pass on the information and let it go. No hard feelings.
I thought that was a great bet, and I wished that it would go through b/c it demonstrates committed predictions.
I am of the belief that either escrow needs to be used (especially when such long time periods are involved) or to make the bets of such a small amount that they can be made on the honor system. 20BTC is too large an amount for anyone - even if you are holding 20,000 BTC or more. Why cannot the bet be made for 1BTC or much less? It still proves the point of commitment to the prediction, no?
Frequently, I ask about escrow possibilities, and hopefully some day, these are going to be more easily accessible within the bitcoin world.... trust-less escrow.. I look forward to the day.