Bitcoin Bets | Devpost

Bitcoin Bets

Inspiration

I was inspired to work on this project by Hal Finney, the late and great Bitcoin developer. In a 2013 Bitcoin Forum Post, Finney wrote,

“Today, I am essentially paralyzed. I am fed through a tube, and my breathing is assisted through another tube. I operate the computer using a commercial eyetracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so this is my voice now. I spend all day in my power wheelchair. I worked up an interface using an arduino so that I can adjust my wheelchair's position using my eyes.

It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad. I can still read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies. I recently discovered that I can even write code. It's very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before. But I still love programming and it gives me goals.”

Finney’s words reflect his pain and suffering after being terminally diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Still his strength was signified by his expressions of gratitude for the things he loved in life, including programming and the pursuit of noble goals. I am inspired to program and work on Bitcoin because of Finney and his perpetual optimism and gratitude in life.

What it does

Bitcoin Bets allows users to bet on sporting events with Bitcoin. The Application allows betting on one of two teams in a contest and win an associated reward for correct bets. Moreover, the application's algorithm allows the odds to be set automatically on-chain by the users, rather than by a book-keeper. This allows for real-time updates and more transparent betting.

Application

Deck

How we built it

Bitcoin Bets is built with React, using Algorand ZKPs as a scaling solution for Bitcoin.

GitHub

Challenges we ran into

Building the front-end was difficult. In the future I hope to improve and simplify the design to allow for more betting options. Another challenge was whether to use Lightning or Algorand as a scaling solution for the Bitcoin transactions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The application is up and running. I hope this serves to prove the concept and act as an MVP.

What we learned

Bitcoin is still a very new and exciting technology. As such, there are many mechanisms for decentralizing and optimizing Bitcoin applications and transactions. Here, we discovered Algorand's ZKPs may be an effective scaling solution for Bitcoin.