The Rules
The fine print, in regular print.
Most rules pages are written so you won't read them. We wrote ours so you will.
The rules in 5 bullets
- 🔞 You must be 18 or older.
- 📍 You must be 18+ and comply with your local laws.
- 💸 No purchase necessary — The Tsunami is free to enter.
- 🎲 Winners are picked by Bitcoin block hash, not by us.
- 🪪 Big winners go through KYC before payout.
The rest of this page is the longer, lawyer-friendlier version of the same five bullets.
Who can play
No purchase necessary
How BitPoolz works: Tier Pools + The Tsunami
BitPoolz has two ways to win:
🎯 Tier Pools (Paid Bitcoin Sweepstakes)
Prize tiers (expandable as demand grows): Quick Shot (20,000 sats target, ~1hr to fill, prize ~19,000 sats), Main Event (100,000 sats target, ~4hr to fill, prize ~95,000 sats), Grand Prize (1,000,000 sats target, ~24-hour to fill, prize ~950,000 sats). Enter by sending Bitcoin. 1 sat = 1 ticket. More sats = better odds. Winner takes 95% of the pool (subject to Lightning Network processing fees).
🌊 The Tsunami (Free Email-Only Jackpot)
Accumulates 0.5% from every tier pool draw. FREE to enter with just your email. Every paid pool entry also earns a free Tsunami ticket automatically. One winner takes the entire accumulated fund. This is the "No Purchase Necessary" option.
How to enter The Tsunami (FREE)
How to enter Tier Pools
All pool entries are made through your Drip Wallet™ — the on-platform balance you control. To play, you must first create an account, fund your Drip wallet via Lightning, then enter any pool with a single tap.
🪜 The 3-step entry process:
- Minimum entry: 1,000 sats (must be multiples of 1,000)
- Maximum entry: 50% of remaining pool capacity (fairness cap)
- Ticket ratio: 1 sat = 1 ticket (no tiers, no packages, no premium entries)
- Overfill protection: If your entry would exceed pool capacity, only the portion that fits is accepted
- Escrow: Entered sats are held securely until the draw closes — you can see your live position and odds at any time
The 50% maximum ensures fair competition — no single player can monopolize a pool.
Wave Pool™ — automatic pool continuation
The Wave Pool™ is an automatic protection feature. If a pool fills to capacity while your entry is active, your sats are automatically moved to the next pool of the same tier. You do not need to take any action.
Wave Pool™ mechanics:
- Priority boarding: Wave Pool™ participants board the next pool before new entrants. You are first in line.
- Improved odds: Because you enter the fresh pool before the general public, your relative share of tickets is typically higher than if you had entered normally — your odds often improve.
- Automatic transfer: No re-entry, no re-payment, no action required. The system handles it entirely.
- Sats preserved: The full sat amount of your original entry transfers to the new pool. No deductions for the wave transfer itself.
- Same ticket ratio: 1 sat = 1 ticket continues to apply in the new pool. Your ticket count does not change.
Wave Pool™ transfers are logged in the public ledger with a reference to the originating entry.
Pool Rollover (if a pool doesn't fill)
If a tier pool doesn't fill within its time window (1 hour for Quick Shot, 4 hours for Main Event, 24 hours for Grand Prize), it rolls over.
Rollover mechanics:
- Your tickets stay active and carry forward to the next time window
- The pool reopens for additional entries
- Maximum 4 rollovers per pool
- If the pool fills during any rollover, the draw happens immediately
Rescue Draws (Fridays 8pm UTC):
After 4 failed rollovers, unfilled pools from that week combine into a single Rescue Draw. This ensures every entry eventually gets a chance to win.
🎟️ Weighted Tickets (Fairness Guarantee):
When pools combine into a Rescue Draw, your tickets are weighted based on your original promised odds. If you entered 10,000 sats into a 100,000-sat pool (10% odds), and it combines with a 1,000,000-sat pool, your weighted tickets preserve your 10% odds — not diluted to 1%. We honor the deal you signed up for.
The Drip™ Wallet — Required for Entry
The Drip™ Wallet is your on-platform Bitcoin balance and the only way to enter pools. All entries, winnings, and withdrawals flow through your Drip wallet — giving you full visibility and control at every step.
- Funding: Send sats to your Drip wallet via Lightning from any compatible wallet (Strike, Cash App, Phoenix, Alby, etc.). Balance credited immediately upon confirmation.
- Entering pools: Tap Enter on any pool. Sats debit from your Drip balance and are held in escrow until the draw closes. No invoice scanning. No QR codes. Instant.
- During the pool: Your tickets, odds, and position are visible in real time on your Drip dashboard. You're never in the dark.
- If you win: Prize (95% of pool) is credited to your Drip balance automatically — no action required. No Lightning invoice needed to receive winnings.
- Withdrawing: Withdraw your full Drip balance to any Lightning wallet at any time. You control the timing — no lock-up periods, no minimum hold.
- Security: Drip balances are custodial. BitPoolz holds funds on your behalf. We recommend keeping only the sats you intend to play with in your Drip balance.
💧 Why Drip-only?
Every transaction flows through a single auditable layer. Entries are escrow-backed. Payouts are instant internal credits. The full history is recorded — for your protection and ours.
The odds, calculated honestly
Tier Pools:
your_sats ÷ total_pool_sats
Example: Send 10,000 sats into a 100,000-sat pool → 10% chance of winning.
Minimum possible odds: 1,000 sats in Grand Prize (1M sats) = 0.1% (1 in 1,000)
Maximum possible odds: 50% (entry cap for fairness)
your_free_tickets ÷ total_free_tickets
Each valid free entry = exactly one ticket. Final odds depend on total participation.
All odds are recomputable from the public ledger and displayed in real-time before you enter.
How the draw actually happens (Provably Fair)
Before any entries are accepted, each pool publishes a SHA-256 commitment of a 32-byte server seed — locking in a secret value the operator cannot later change.
When the pool fills, we anchor the draw to the next Bitcoin block hash mined after the pool closes — a number nobody, including us, can predict or manipulate. The final randomness is computed as sha256(server_seed || block_hash).
The server seed is then published. Anyone can re-run the math from the public values and verify the result independently. View verified draws →
🔗 Why Bitcoin Block Hash?
Bitcoin miners worldwide compete to find the next block hash. The value is: (1) Unpredictable until the block is mined, (2) Publicly verifiable on mempool.space, (3) Impossible to manipulate (would require controlling 51% of Bitcoin's hashrate — worth billions). This is the gold standard for provably fair randomness.
Platform fees & payouts
Tier Pools (paid entries): When you enter, you pay the full amount and receive tickets on a 1:1 basis (1 sat = 1 ticket). The pool total displayed reflects the gross amount contributed by all players.
Winner payout: The winner receives 95% of the pool total. The remaining 5% covers platform operations (Lightning fees, hosting, support) and feeds The Tsunami jackpot (0.5%).
Payout method: Winnings are credited directly to your Drip Wallet™ — no outbound Lightning transaction, no routing fees deducted. The 95% figure is what you receive. Withdraw to your personal Lightning wallet at any time.
Example: Pool fills to 100,000 sats → Gross winner payout: 95,000 sats → Platform operations: 4,500 sats → Tsunami contribution: 500 sats → Lightning routing fees: ~1,000 sats → Net winner receives: ~94,000 sats
The Pipeline (marketplace): Trades between players incur a 4% fee on the sale price, paid by the seller. Buyers receive full ticket ownership with no additional fees.
How winners get paid
Winners are notified by email and must respond within 14 days.
Tier Pool prizes: Pay out instantly to the Lightning wallet address provided at entry — typically within seconds of the draw resolving. Small wins (under $600 USD equivalent) skip KYC entirely.
Tsunami prizes: Pay out via Lightning after the winner completes identity verification (see KYC section). Winner must provide a Lightning wallet address or email for Lightning address delivery.
KYC — what it is and why we need it
KYC stands for "Know Your Customer." It's the financial industry term for "prove you are who you say you are before we hand you money."If you've ever opened a bank account or signed up for Coinbase, you've done KYC.
In practice, it looks like:
- 📷 A photo of a government-issued ID (driver's license, passport)
- 🤳 A selfie that gets matched against the ID
- 📝 Sometimes a utility bill to confirm your address
A third-party verification provider handles the whole thing. We never see your actual ID or selfie — they just give us a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
Why we have to do it:
- The law. US regulators require operators to verify identity before paying out prizes above certain thresholds. Skip it, lose the license — and you lose the prize for good.
- Anti-fraud. Without KYC, someone could spin up 10,000 fake accounts and sweep The Tsunami. KYC makes that prohibitively expensive.
- Tax reporting.Big prizes (over ~$600 in the US) trigger a 1099 form. We need a real name and address to file it, so you don't get a surprise IRS letter.
When you actually have to do it:
- 🌊 Tsunami winners — always, regardless of prize size (free-entry anti-fraud requirement).
- 🎯 Tier pool winners only when the prize exceeds the applicable reporting threshold (~$600 USD-equivalent in bitcoin). Small wins skip KYC entirely and pay out instantly.
Unverified prizes are forfeited after 30 days. That's not us being mean — it's a regulatory requirement.
Pipeline™ — Probabilistic Ownership Exchange
Pipeline™ is BitPoolz's secondary marketplace for pool positions. It activates automatically when a pool enters Pipeline™ — the period between a pool filling (SmartFill™) and the draw executing.
Pipeline™ mechanics:
- SmartFill™ trigger: When a pool reaches its sat target, it automatically enters Pipeline™ instead of drawing immediately. The Liquidity Window™ opens for a fixed period (Quick Shot: 1h · Main Event: 4h · Grand Prize: 12h).
- Entry Splitting™:Holders can sell any portion of their position — not just the whole entry. Selling 10% of your 25% position atomically creates two entries: your remaining 15%, and the buyer's new 10%. Each inherits its own ticket range. The draw engine is unaffected.
- Partial or full listings: Sellers specify exactly how many sats worth of their position to offer and set their own asking price. The market determines fair value.
- Atomic settlement: Buyer pays via Lightning → entry splits atomically in a single database transaction → seller receives payment minus 4% fee. If anything fails, the buyer is automatically refunded. No manual steps.
- Ownership at draw time determines winner: The draw uses the ticket ranges as they exist when the Liquidity Window™ closes. Whoever holds a ticket range when the draw fires is eligible to win — regardless of trading history.
- Platform fee: 4% of each trade (3.5% operating · 0.5% to Tsunami™ jackpot).
- All trades are final: Lightning payments are irreversible. No refunds once the atomic split completes.
Every split is permanently recorded with a parent-entry audit chain. Anyone can trace any position back to its original entry at pool creation. No hidden moves.
Geographic restrictions
Disputes
Governing law
Intellectual Property & Trademarks
BitPoolz™ is a trademark of BitPoolz, Inc., pending registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Proprietary concepts and features subject to trademark protection:
- Pipeline™ — Our secondary marketplace for pool entries
- Tsunami™ — The site-wide accumulating free-entry jackpot
- Wave Pool™ — Automatic pool continuation with priority boarding and improved odds
- Drip™ Wallet — On-platform Bitcoin balance for one-tap pool entry
- "Poolz" — Our branded terminology for Bitcoin prize pools
- Rollover + Rescue Draw system — Time-based rollovers with weighted tickets preserving original promised odds
- Provably fair methodology — Our specific implementation using Bitcoin block hashes and published server seeds
All website design, code, graphics, user interfaces, and documentation are © 2026 BitPoolz, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction, modification, or distribution of BitPoolz intellectual property is prohibited. For licensing inquiries, contact legal@bitpoolz.com
Who we are
Questions about anything on this page? We answer them.
Email hello@bitpoolz.com — a human reads it.