Not in a bubble? $2,500. In a bubble? $10K.

Not bad, eh? Sure I overshot the top, but wouldn't you like a coin for $500?

I guess that puts me somewhere between deplorable and meh. 

Buy at $710, coming up fast. More coins for me!

Already done. I also sent in a complaint to ABC News on the feedback form.

This one's on Monday:

http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/beyond-silk-road-potential-risks-threats-and-promises-of-virtual-currencies

Don't worry, I'll be selling on the other side. Others will be too. The price just hasn't gotten high enough to take a position yet.

What you are missing is that the spread is not due to the relative value of the Bitcoins, it's due to the relative value of the $.

Oh FFS. You would think Google Docs could handle bit manipulation in a reasonable way. Never mind the earlier link, use this one for the random number generator instead:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsBByTjGFrPUdFYwSVhJYmJRb2lqbEJRSmZBQTNhSWc&usp=sharing

There are too many odd cases for this to be verifiable. Also the block hashes are reported in hexadecimal. You are not going to get a number evenly distributed between 0 and 99.

My original idea was to use a third party as a random number source, which required the salt and the hash. If you can get a random number from a future source, like a block hash, then you don't need to keep the file contents secret. Thus all you really need here is to turn a block hash into a random number and then use that to select a ticket. In order for this to be provably fair it is absolutely necessary that you state the rules for doing this precisely and unambiguously before you know what the random number is.

Here is a straightforward plan. Make a list of tickets in a spreadsheet. If someone has more than one ticket, put their name in the spreadsheet twice. Give each line a number starting with 0. So, assuming boba has two tickets:

0 nikto
1 boba
2 boba
3 spork
4 azrael

Post the spreadsheet in this thread.

It turns out I can't resist a good math problem. I put together a Google Docs spreadsheet that turns block hashes into a random number, and then into a row selector:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AsBByTjGFrPUdFYwSVhJYmJRb2lqbEJRSmZBQTNhSWc&output=html

It is a small improvement on tescomatty's idea. I cut up the 256-bit hash into eight 32-bit chunks, XORed them together, then took the modulus of that and the number of entries to get a random number between 0 and the number of entries minus one. If anyone with a CS or cryptography background cares and wants to double-check my work, I would appreciate it.

When you post your spreadsheet, announce a block number a good 20 links higher than the newest one. When the block is generated, post its hash to the thread. PM me. I will update the spreadsheet with the hash, and it will spit out a number matching one of the entries in your spreadsheet.

If there is actual money at stake here and you are planning to run a fair and verifiable giveaway, it would also benefit you to post the address of the wallet you will be distributing the coins from.

That would certainly be a big improvement over what you have now. However I would doubt the sanity of an unbiased hero member who would be willing to do something like that. No, I think tescomatty had the right idea. If you need help with the math I'm sure there's plenty on this forum who can help you.

As I posted in your other thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=219632.msg2332147#msg2332147

See also the followup post by tescomatty for some excellent ideas.

If you want, you can make this a fair and verifiable raffle.

Unfortunately, you have set up a system that seems fair but is completely unverifiable. Either you are giving free money to build a good reputation (which doesn't seem to be going very well), or you are running a puppet show and collecting all the winnings. Really there is no way for an outside observer to tell the difference.

Good idea! That's a trick that might come in handy.

There is a system for picking giveaway winners that is random, fair, and verifiable. Put the list of entries in a text file, sort it randomly, and then add some salt at the end. Number each entry, starting with 0. Post a hash of the file to the thread for all to see. Then get a trusted third party, like an uncontroversial hero member, to post a random number, preferably a few orders of magnitude larger than the number of entries. The trusted third party must attest that he has not seen the contents of the text file. For appearances' sake the trusted third party should also not have entered the giveaway. Mod the random number by the number of entries; this is your selector. The entry corresponding to the selector is the giveaway winner. Post the contents of the text file in such a way that the entrants can reproduce the hash.

For example, this could be the list of entries:

boba
spork
nikto
azrael

Here's the text file (secret):

0 nikto
1 boba
2 spork
3 azrael
g3qnuqnjkfrenfduvrbequig5q34b/,mcsm,/hachm,/atm,/a

The hash (public):

MD5 (giveaway.txt) = f139f1c4069cfa99022a2fbea534431b

Trusted third party "weeboo" says he has not seen the secret and has no conflict of interest. He provides the number 42.

Post the secret file. 42 mod 4 is 2, so the winner is spork.

I did a quick pessimistic exponential curve fit and came up with $2670. That is completely ridiculous for sure, but it's what I answered for the poll. If that is the price on 12/31/13, I predict that it will then crash and we'll all be able to pick up some cheap coins at $500. 

Give BitMinter a try. They have a downloadable mining client that might work with your graphics card.

Thank you mysterious benefactor!

Heh. I think that's kind of the point.

Curious to try this out. Anyone have XRP to spare? rKPuYYRXmu96F5U9nB9XbrdR4oUPQZymJt

There's a very small set of problems which are difficult to solve but easily verifiable. This is necessary to prevent cheating. I think there would be much more cheating in the distributed computing projects if there were $$$ at stake. However, I think your idea is on the right track. There are plenty of distributed computing projects out there which are more practically useful than, say, SETI. If there is a way to verify proof of work for something like protein folding in a decentralized way, I'm sure there's a niche for a "socially conscious" crypto-currency.