BitMillions.com Review (Offline/Scam)
BitMillions.com was launched as the first 100% fully automatic Lottery System based on the Bitcoin Blockchain, on January 31, 2013. The premise behind BitMillions was the design that a random draw would select four numbers from 00 to 99, and based on how many numbers a player correctly had on their ticket, would determine what their payout would be. For each block found on the blockchain, that block corresponded with a new draw players could enter. The four numbers that a player purchased could either be selected by the player or randomly chosen if no numbers were selected when the entry fee was sent. BitMillions introduced a beta testing stage, as they first were getting popular, that allowed players to get a feel for how it worked and started seeing popularity grow, due to this. Throughout the first half of 2013, BitMillions was regarded as one of the best Bitcoin lotteries and it’s success was clearly evident by the amount of tickets that were being bought. With a four number jackpot of over 1300 Bitcoin, players were playing more as the days passed. Coupled with the fact that tickets now were only .01 BTC, down from the .1BTC that they started at, BitMillions started to gain popularity. This avalanche of popularity, combined with the rocketing price of Bitcoin in late 2013, ultimately left players with winning tickets, but nothing to show for it. The eventual scam, that BitMillions turned out to be, is one that still leaves more questions than answers.
BitMillions started running into its first problems in October 2013, when players who were depositing weren’t seeing their deposits, or receiving tickets, even after a day’s worth of confirmations from the Blockchain. With a lack of support from email inquiries to forum posts, players were reluctant to completely stop playing, although the sites functionality started to slowly dwindle, as the days passed. In November 2013, BitMillions.com was off-line for a period of six consecutive days, with no word or announcement of their return. Eventually, the site had been re-established with a DDOS attack being claimed is the main culprit for its temporary off-line status. One month later, an announcement was made that due to an error, within the lottery’s number selection, a player had stolen more than 30 Bitcoin. At the time, Bitcoin’s value was peaking near one thousand US dollars and on December 31, 2013, BitMillions made the following announcement:
“We discovered a bug on the system that was exploited by a player to steal the online pools.
As you described, the bug allowed the exploiter to create tickets with the same number twice, when that number was under 10, what allow the attacker to steal about 30 BTC from the site.
The bug is already fixed, but we are having problems getting it back online, since there are still some tickets from the attacker that are pending to be paid that need to be removed.
All valid tickets will be paid as soon as the system is put back online.
We are working in having the issue resolved… please apologies for the inconvenience.
Again, please don’t panic, we are not a scam, we are just fixing a bug and once everything is resolved, we will be back on online and have all the pending tickets processed and paid.”
