From: Pete Loshin <pete@loshin.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 12:04:30 +0800
To: "'cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: RE: ecash lottery (Was: ecash casino)
Message-ID: <01BABEA9.4771C9E0@ploshin.tiac.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Ian Goldberg wrote: 
>
>Here's an off-the-cuff idea:
>
>[Disclaimer: The following post is a gedanken experiment.  It should not
>		be interpreted as condoning or encouraging anyone to break any
>		laws, no matter how stupid the laws are.]
>
>Anonymous email lotteries:
[details deleted]
>A lottery consists simply of displaying the winning number and random
>noise, whose hash was previously posted (so the participants know
>you're not cheating).

Traditional illegal numbers rackets usually use some
publicly available number so everyone knows it's all
on the up and up (I used to know what the source for
the winning numbers actually _is_, though I think it
has something to do with the stock market, e.g., the
last three digits of the number of oddlot trades, or
something else that is usually essentially random.

In any case, using such a "public" and daily number
eliminates the problem of proving the game isn't fixed.

-Pete Loshin
 pete@loshin.com