Bitcoin, Bytecoin, Lifecoin, ZCash, Etherium… where will the cryptocurrency craze end?The crack contest staff at Laughton.org can't answer this question,but they can tell you that the next step in cryptoeconomics is the CryptOlympiCoin,the valueless currency you can generate with your own Olympic-medal-driven device.While it may be valueless, the CryptOlympiCoin is not pointless:whoever generates the greatest number of them will win this contest!

How to Play

This is a fantasy sports competition, but with a twist. As in all contests at Laughton.org,instead of simply predicting winners, participants engage in a little mental prestidigitationby constructing an otherwise meaningless list to utilize an arbitrary and capricious scoringformula devised by the contest staff. Who wins any Olympic event is almost irrelevant;it's the distribution of medals that counts here.What, you know nothing about the likely winners in PyeongChang? No problem!Unlike other fantasy sports leagues in which familiarity with the athletes and events involvedis an advantage, expertise in Olympic Games is of little use in this contest. As always,a little knowledge of mathematics and statistics can be a boon. The most important skill,of course, is an ability to predict the future. We hope you've been practicing!

Coins (as they will be called from now on to stop our spell-checker's screaming)are generated from Olympic medals. You will choose a group of as many as ten countriesfrom which to collect gold medals, another group from which to collect silver, and a thirdfor bronze. The same country may appear in more than one group. As the Olympic Games progress,you'll generate one Coin for each medal earned by any of your countries. Whoever generatesthe most Coins wins!

What's the catch?

Ah, if you're asking this question, you must have entered one of our contests before!Yes, there's a catch, and it's in the last digit of each country's medal count.Your tally of Coins will grow relentlessly as if there's no limit, one for each medal,until the wrong number turns up in your account.Within a group - gold, silver, or bronze - if the last digit of a country's count matchesthe last digit of another country's, your Coin bubble bursts!You get no Coins at all for country counts whose last digits match.The following example illustrates the scoring formula:

The columns above show which countries Gene Eric chose for his gold, silver,and bronze groups and the number of these medals each country earned.Miraculously, all of the tallies in the gold column end in different digits,so all of the gold medals generate Coins. In the silver column, however,the final digits matched for USA and Austria; for both of these countries no Coins were generated.The bronze column shows many matches, cancelling any Coin output for all countries involved.Numbers that have been cancelled are shown in red; they count as zeroes toward the Coin total.Note that counts in one column have no effect on the counts in another.Selecting the same country more than once in a single column guarantees a match,so while the Official Entry Form allows it, we don't recommend making such selections.

There's no requirement to fill each group with ten countries. On the contrary(and at Laughton.org we love being contrary), you may choose only one country in each groupand guarantee that you will generate Coins for each medal earned. Of course, you could increaseyour potential Coin total by adding another country or two, but you risk losing them with amatching digit. But adding just one more country... surely that won't hurt, will it? How muchrisk will you take in pursuit of greater gains?

Use the Official Entry Form to construct your CryptOlympiCoin generator.Once you've submitted your entry, the Laughton.org contest staff will do the rest:they'll update this page regularly with the latest scores and standings during the Olympic Games,and at the end they'll declare the winner and award a prize.

Ties

In addition to selecting countries and medals, each player will provide a prediction for thewinning time of the Women's 30 km Mass Start Classic Cross-Country Ski event. In the event of atie in Coin totals, the winner will be the player whose prediction is closest to the winning timeof this event, regardless of whether the prediction is higher or lower than the official result.In the highly improbable event that a tie remains after the tiebreaker is considered, the playerwhose entry was received earlier by Laughton.org will be the winner.The Official Entry Form provides fields for specifying hours, minutes, seconds, and tenths of seconds.To assist you in making your prediction, here are the winning times of recent Olympic Women's 30km Mass Start races:

• 2014   1:11:05.2
• 2010   1:30:33.7
• 2006   1:22:25.4

Prizes

First prize is an artificial snow making kit from Amazing Toys.We've all heard the admonition not to eat yellow snow; don't eat the blue or pink stuff either, or you'll find out firsthand why they call it Sick Science.

Second prize is a robotic battery-operated reading light. "Robotic" means that it looks cool when the internal spring makes it unfold. Folding it up again is a manual operation that isn't nearly as cool or robotic. But then you get to open it again.

Third prize is an LED flyer, a combination of battery-powered light and helicopter blades that goes up when you spin it and down when gravity decides that you've had quite enough fun. And then the battery eventually dies. Life is not fair.

Entry Details

Use the Official Entry Form below to submit your entry no later than midnight (US Eastern Time)on February 7, 2018. No late entries will be accepted.Your e-mail address will be the unique identifier for your entry. It will only be used tocontact you to confirm acceptance of your entry, to notify you if your entry is rejected,or to contact you regarding prize delivery should you be so luckyskillful. It willnot appear anywhere on this website or be used for any other purpose. If you want to changeyour entry after submitting it, simply submit another using the same address; the new entrywill overwrite the previous one as long as it is submitted before the deadline.

Only one entry per e-mail address will be accepted. If you have more than one address,you may submit an entry from each.

The Official Entry Form provides fields for 10 country names in each of the gold, silver,and bronze groups. Each field contains a menu with all countries known to be participatingin the PyeongChang Winter Olympics as of January 22, 2018. The menus will not be updated evenif a country should join or leave the competition late. Seriously, this contest has been delayedenough while various committees debated who would be competing and who wouldn't.

It's still unclear how the medals will be tallied if a joint team from North and South Koreawins one: will each country get a half-medal? Such an award is unlikely, but if it happens,the scoring formula will be strictly applied: in a medal count of 1.5 (or any other includinga half-medal), the final digit is 5 and will match a count of 5, 15, 25, etc.

Only an address, player name, country selections, and a tiebreaker prediction are requiredto enter. However, the contest staff encourages contestants to provide some comments. Perhapsyou'd like to describe the construction or history of your Coin generator. Do you view it as aninfernal machine or an instrument of joy? Perhaps you'd like to share your views oncryptocurrencies, the Olympics, or any other relevant topic. But don't ramble endlessly;at about the 200-word mark the contest staff tends to start cutting. Furthermore, racist, sexist,or otherwise scurrilous comments are prohibited.Laughton.org is a family-friendly site, so we cannot go into detail here about what happens whensomeone submits offensive comments, but we can assure you that such players do not win contests atLaughton.org.

A roster of players and their entry details will be posted on this page before the openingceremonies begin in PyeongChang February 9, 2018 (some competition begins on February 8,which is the reason for the February 7 entry deadline). Scores and standings will be postedon this page and updated frequently during the Olympic competition. Only the final tally will countfor winning prizes and acquiring the eternal bragging rights associated with victory in a contest at Laughton.org, but intermediate results may confer some fleeting opportunities for one-upmanship at your local watering hole or handheld-device charging station.

Official Entry Form

Tiebreaker:  > 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9hours  > 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 minutes  > 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 . 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 seconds

Comments (optional):

The entry deadline was February 7, 2018.