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What is Bitcoin Potato?

Bitcoin Potato is an open source game of virtual Hot Potato using Bitcoin.

How does it work?

The best way to explain is via an example:

Let's say the current minimal fee is 1 BTC. To play, you send 1 BTC to the address displayed on the homepage. The next fee is adjusted to be 20% more = 1.2 BTC.

Sometime in the future, the next player will find Bitcoin Potato and send 1.2 BTC. 99% of this 1.2 BTC will go to you, as the last player, with the house taking 1% = 0.012 BTC as commission. At this point, you have earned a 19% interest on your "investment".

Sometime after that, another player will find this site and send at least 1.44 BTC, so the previous player will be compensated by at least 19%. This can go on for some time, until "the last player". This player (a.k.a the sucker), will not find anyone to follow him, and will actually lose all his money.

I sent the money, but the homepage haven't updated yet

We will wait until at least your transaction has at least one confirmation.

Can I send more than 20% more than the previous player?

You sure can. The same rules apply - 99% of your payment goes to the previous player, 1% goes to the house. The next player will have to pay 20% more than your payment to join.

Is this a pyramid scheme?

Well, sort of. It's not really a pyramid because the branching factor is 1, but it does depend on bringing more people in - this is not really a legitimate investment, but a game.

Only "invest" money you are willing to lose.

Can I trust you with my Bitcoin?

Well, you don't have to, but I would!

Seriously now - Bitcoin Potato is currently just a fun game, not a Bitcoin bank. I can promise you that I won't run away with your money. My name is Ron Gross (ron.gross@gmail.com), and I'm the author of this blog, so I am not trying to be anonymous (you can stay anonymous of course). I have previously issued a Bond at GLBSE and raised a few dozens of BTC, so this is not my first Bitcoin experiment.

I plan to keep the web server behind Bitcoin Potato running forever * (hosted at Heroku free of chrage, so my only fee is $10 a year for domain registration). So, even if it takes some time to find the next player ... we'll be waiting right here. In practice, I don't really expect the fees to pass 100 BTC, but who knows.

* If the fee ever reaches 21,000,000 BTC, we will consider the game concluded and remove the website ☺.

Still, what about security exploits?

I am not a security expert. Still, I believe the site is "relatively secure", for these reasons:

Why have you built this site?

Well, it's not in order to get rich. As I wrote above, I don't really expect the fees to pass 100 BTC (we're starting the game at 0.01 BTC, so we need about 50 rounds to get to 100 BTC, if everybody pays the minimal fee). I wrote it to:

Got further questions? Found bugs?

Please email me at ron.gross@gmail.com or report issues on github.