Following the incident where BitBet ended up paying out the winners of the Jeb Bush nomination bet twice due to probably miner cartel action, BitBet is now seeking a receiver. The full announcement is reproduced below:
Kakobrekla notified me yesterday that he won't be signing the report above. Discussion hence has clearly delineated irreconcilable differences, but in any case – I won't be signing anything else. The truth being but one I have relatively little choice.
This means Bitbet will fail to uphold its contractual obligations with MPEx, and in due time be delisted by that exchange, and lose its status as a Bitcoin registered company. More pressingly, Bitbet is also currently bankrupt, by either "liabilities in excess of assets" or "standing claims it can't dispose of", whichever standard you prefer to employ. This means it is headed into receivership.
Bitbet's assets are currently comprised of its domain name and its codebase held by kakobrekla ; whatever goodwill with the public may survive the departure of its founders ; as well as a sum of Bitcoin entrusted to it by bettors, held by me. Bitbet's liabilities are currently comprised of various bills (such as the 17.94766149 BTC it owes as per this report, such as whatever fee it may owe the receiver for his trouble, and others as may arise), which are the most senior ; with the remainder to go to payouts to the bet winners ; with the remainder to go to shareholders, which are the least senior.
The job of Bitbet's receiver will be to
- Receive the domain name ; complete codebase & database ; and Bitcoin held for bettors ;
- Construct, on the basis of data in that database, the list of wagers that were sent to bets not yet closed and paid out ;
- Verify, on the basis of confronting that data with the list of Bitcoin addresses found therein and signed by me that all inputs are accounted for correctly. This will involve walking the list of bets and verifying they were indeed paid to an address on that list at the time specified ; and walking the list of addresses and verifying that all payments were indeed credited correcty to open bets.
- Certify or reject any and all claims against Bitbet, including the 17.94766149 BTC here in contention as well as any open bets.
- Sell any disposable assets, preferably through open auction held in #b-a.
- On the basis of the funds collected thus, adjudicate a pro-rata sum to be paid for bills ; or if the funds suffice to satisfy certified bills adjudicate a pro-rata sum to be paid to the adjudicated bet winners ; or if the funds suffice to satisfy bet winners adjudicate a pro-rata sum to be paid to shareholders and effect these payments.
Interested parties are invited to apply for the job publicly in #bitcoin-assets, stating their fee. Note that while I intend to abide by this instrument, nothing herein contained gives rise to a time-illimited liability on my part. If a receiver is not agreed upon in a reasonable interval, I will simply consider the matter moot.
Still is China's fault?
Yes because muh ego muh pride
Being that any dealings with Mircea present potential for a trapdoor much like the one BitBet finds itself in, I see no reason any sane party would stick his dick in this. Sorry kakobrekla, you deserve better.
From a cursory glance at this, it appears that if all of these bets were Multisig transactions, they could have been cancelled and withdrawn by their owner and a trusted arbiter / custodian because the business has defaulted through casus fortuitus.
The idea of BitBet remains a good one in principle; it simply needed continuous improvement. I do not celebrate the end of it, and neither should anyone that wants to see men other than Wall Street / Goldman Sachs types dominating Bitcoin services.
"casus fortuitus" that can be translated as: a romanian douchebag fled to argentina trying to steal hundreds of btcs from bitbet's customers that are still waiting their bets to be paid.
There's very probably more to this than meets the eye. Mircea Popescu went out of his way (way out of his way) to protect one of his clients, to the extent of openly mocking the SEC, in a way that no ordinary man would. He is also flush with cash, so paying this off for good will means less than nothing. Given these publicly available facts, you can put on your Soap Opera hat and imagine that there are some private issues at play. Or maybe not. It only matters to you if you lost money on BitBet.
The other way to look at it is as another lesson on how not to do something. From the point of view of the user; don't trust any long horizon betting site that does not have Multisig arbitration. There are many others, and I'm sure your clever enough to list them yourself.
Soap Opera fans might say that if the owner of MPEX is willing to burn this company, and show that there is no recourse to anyone for anyone that invests in an MPEX stock, is significant. In a reputation based system reputation is, well, everything. But if you are sitting on a cool Billion Dollars in cash, who cares? The real game is already over, and MPEX won.
"Wall Street / Goldman Sachs types dominating Bitcoin services" such as betting websites?
So Kakobrekla resisted and didn't want to sign and so Kakobrekla was of course to be fucked and shown his place. No matter if it cost bitbet – not that it wasn't dying anyway.lulzy
This should read "minor" problem.
There's no way a 17 btc double pay due to lack of paying miner fees, should sent this outfit into receivership
70 btc lost … I can't believe it…