Was it worth it?

Bitbet has gone dark.

A little more than a year after I bid it up and into the hands of the problematically passwordedⁱ Znort987, the former megaphone is no more. Hit by a bus ? Or a hit and run ? It doesn’t really matter, does it.

The latest cached snapshot shows that 278.73 BTCⁱⁱ were in her cookie jar – tempting her day after day to walk away – practically taunting her to weigh out the costs of dealing with the unreasonable expectations of mouth-breathing konsoomers year after year or just going quietly into the night with more cash than could reasonably be made back in another decade of tedious labour.

The choice was clear, wasn’t it. Without reputation, which is to say representation in the Republic, there could never have been enough skin in the game to stick around.

It’s a sad day for anyone who still believes in corporate personhood. For the rest of us, it’s another nail in that coffin.

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1. Mi emailz was haxxed! Hurr!! It’s furthermore not clear, nor can ever be made clear, if the Znort987 keyholder that won the Bitbet auction was the same one what helped on the MPEx FAQ back in the day. ↩
2. At least…. She paid 86 BTC for the property and based on my back-of-napkin calculations made between 20 – 30 BTC this last year with the increased fees of 2%. The ROI horizon was turning out to be longer than either of us had calculated during the auction, largely on account of the skepticism previous bettors (myself included) had towards the new ownership group and the lower sums wagered as a result.↩