since the contract is so distorted, I doubt it could be called a futures contract. In fact, you'll probably never gain any fame for this miserable half-contract. The terms are so arbitrary on both sides that I could easily have used this to gain lots and lots of bitcoins.
It's not distorted at all - his refusal to pay what he owes doesn't suddenly throw everything into disarray. There's in fact 4 pages of documentation proving in detail that the terms were clear to everyone. Contract law is clear - he owes and is a deadbeat.
I would have no problem letting him take as much time as he wanted to pay the ~1 btc, or using any payment method, or paying in alpaca socks. Doesn't matter to me.
I've saved (some of) the best quotes for last:
02:30 luke-jr maybe we need a trusted 3rd party to hold the escrows and evaluate the marketWhy on earth would we need a trusted party to "evaluate the market" unless the final market price determined the winner of the bet?
That would make no sense at all under his current claim that this whole thing was somehow independent of the market price. You only need to an independent party to evaluate the market when you're settling based on the actual market value at the end of the contract (there's no other reason) - which is how the vast majority of deals are done - something he now refuses to do.
Rather than contradicting the previous 4 pages, his last statement that he will buy 25 @ $1.15 on April 13, simply confirms the discussed terms - that he will take the buy/long position and settle based on the April 13 price. It is entirely consistent with the many previous statements. Rather than throw out the previous 4 pages to make it seem like the delivery method we discussed somehow disappeared, it merely confirms it.
(As an aside, the problem with escrow is that there's no way to escrow usd, so there's no way to determine the size of the escrow on the buyer's side, unless you put a limit on the gains).