espringe

Hi, I'm the guy behind bitundo (a controversial bitcoin service) — and hoping to show my latest project to a slightly larger audience: https://www.moneypot.com/

Money Pot is a novel gambling concept I created -- the server generates a multiplier, X, in such a way that the probability of X or higher being generated is approximately 1 in X. (e.g. 2x or greater comes up ~50% of the time) The multiplier is hidden, so no player knows what it is -- however they are able to bet an amount of money against it.

When playing the game, you watch the number increase from 1x until it reaches X. If you stop at X or less, you get to multiply what you stopped at by your original bet amount. If you do not stop by the time the number increases past X, you will lose your original bet.

I created a handy odds calculator here: https://www.moneypot.com/calculator

There's no way to know when it'll stop, so the game is almost all luck. However, I skim 1% off every bet to award in bonuses for people to cashing out later -- so in effect, there's a bit of interesting game theory in play, to try be the last person to cash out.

It's based on node.js -- which feels a bit scary dealing with an application where correctness is so important, but I think it has been the right decision due to not having to context-switch between the server and client. I'm using postgres which I've been extremely happy with. And all the deposit addresses are generated with bip32, which is really reassuring as all the money goes direct into offline storage, and I don't need to worry (too much) about the site getting directly hacked.

Would highly appreciate any feedback!

A few months ago, I wrote a security product based on the whole "scratch an itch" philosophy. I had a couple bitcoins stolen, and realized that most modern malware includes such a routine. So I thought it would be neat to write a service that can generate and monitor a (sentinel / honey pot) bitcoin wallet that can function as an intrusion detection system by sending email/sms alerts when ever it detects on the network the movement of money.

Fast forward to now: the product works great -- all my testing with malware, and potential customers testing has been really positive. However, I'm faced with one seemingly insurmountable problem -- I can't seem to monetize the product. And I'm left with the conclusion that my product is too narrow to stand on its own. Consumers just aren't interested, and companies seem to want a whole "security suite" or just one thing that is installed by a security consultant (Not to mention, a lengthy sales cycle -- which is hard on an engineer like me).

So I'm getting a bit frustrated with the process, and already have been largely dedicating myself to a new venture. However, before I give up entirely, I would like to take a shot at selling the product. I'm not looking for a million dollar exit or anything -- I'd be happy to sell and support/integrate it for enough to cover my living expenses while I pursuit other ventures.

I've tried cold-emailing/calling a few security companies, but they seem largely uninterested. And the two companies that had shown interest, ended up fizzling out after ~3 weeks of talks. Perhaps an acquisition at 50k is just not enough to be worth their time?

So HN, what should I do with my security product?

A few months ago I released https://www.bitcoinvigil.com/ , an idea I had to use bitcoins as a sort of honeypot-as-a-service. Since then I've been improving it, and adding features hoping users would come -- but traction has been really slow? What can I do to really promote it?