What is this all about?
The Lightning Gem is a fun game as well as an exercise in psychology. You can think of it as a series of speculative bubbles.
What is the lightning network?
The lightning network is a second layer payment network on top of bitcoin that enables microtransactions and instant settlement. This site uses lnd for lightning functionality.
Why should I buy the gem?
To advertise your name (or link) under it and show off that you own the gem. Not to mention you can make a handsome profit when a new buyer comes in!
How do I create an invoice with an expiry of at least 24h hours?
Using the command line interface with lnd, you can create a long-lived invoice by setting the
expiry parameter to a value over 86400. For example, to create an invoice for 1.25 bits that's good for a day use
lncli addinvoice --amt 125 --expiry 86400.
Why can't I complete my payment to buy the gem?
Your node may be unable to find a payment path to ours. You can open a channel with us directly at
.
How does the price increase?
Every time the gem changes owners its worth increases by 30% rounded to the nearest satoshi.
How do random resets work?
We take the payment request you generated and append a secret string of characters as a nonce, then we hash that using SHA-256. We convert the first byte of the hash to a number from 0 to 255. If that number is less than 8 - which will happen 1 in 32 times - we reset the gem. We use a different secret every day based on UTC time, and every day we will publish the secret for the previous day here so you can check our work for yourself. A list of the SHA-256 hashes for all secrets we will use through 2018 is available as a gist here.
What happens if no one after me buys the gem?
If there's no new buyer for more than 24 hours, the gem will reset automatically to 1 bit and you'll lose your stake.
What's a bit?
A bit, as specified in BIP176, is 1 millionth of a bitcoin - or 100 satoshis.
What happens if I send payment but someone buys the gem before me?
The website will automatically indicate if someone else buys the gem after you have submitted a request to buy the gem, so if you check this page before submitting your payment you can prevent this from happening. If you pay a stale invoice by mistake anyway, e-mail us for a refund.
Someone bought the gem from me, but I didn't get paid!
We probably weren't able to pay your invoice - either your lightning node went offline, or we couldn't find a path to
you, or a path exists but there's not enough balance in any of your active channels to cover your payout.
E-mail us if this happens and we'll pay you manually. Note: you can check if our node is
able to pay you by checking our info page and seeing if QuerySwapRoutes finds a route
for your payout.
I bought the gem but changed my mind, can you refund me?
Once you are the owner of the gem, we can't refund you because the previous owner already will already have been paid.
Who are you, and why should I trust you?
This site is created and operated by Daniel McNally. It is a remake and continuation of the original Bitcoin Gem. We weren't the creators of the Bitcoin Gem, but we were its second and most recent owners and operated it honestly until it was eventually shut down due to lack of interest.
I have another question, how can I contact you?
Click one of the icons below to get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you and answer any questions you may have!