Official rules

1. Who runs it

The draw is run by the organiser ("we", "us"). Contact: see the FreeSatsFriday X account, @FreeSatsFriday.

2. Who can enter

1. You must be 18 or over.
2. You can't enter from any restricted place (see section 13), and you may only enter if prize draws like this are legal where you live. It's your responsibility to check.
3. You must not use a VPN, proxy or anything else to hide or fake where you are. If you do, your entries are void and you won't receive a prize.
4. We, and anyone in our household, can't enter.
5. One person, one player account. If we find someone using more than one account to get round the limits, we can disqualify all of their entries.
6. We may ask a winner for proof of age before paying out.

3. How to enter

No purchase necessary. You can enter free instead of paying. A free entry goes into exactly the same draw, with exactly the same chance of winning, as a paid ticket, and appears in the public ticket list. One free entry per person per weekly draw, by post or online, not both.

Free entry online. Use the "Get my free ticket" button in the app. You need a player handle and to confirm you're 18 or over, exactly as for a paid ticket. To stop abuse, we limit how many free online entries come from one internet connection each week. If you hit that limit, you can still enter free by post.

Paid entry. Tickets cost 2,100 sats each, paid over Lightning through our payment page. A ticket only exists once the payment has fully confirmed, and it goes into the draw that is open at that moment.

Bonus tickets. A player's first paid order includes one free extra ticket. A player who invites a friend gets one bonus ticket when that friend's first paid order confirms, up to 5 a week. Bonus tickets are equal to every other ticket in the draw.

4. Limits, breaks and closing your account

1. No player can buy more than 100 paid tickets for any one weekly draw, or more than 300 paid tickets in any 30 days. Up to 50 tickets per order.
2. You can set your own lower 30-day limit at any time, including 0. Lowering it takes effect at once. Raising or removing it takes effect after 24 hours.
3. You can take a break of 1 week, 1 month or 6 months. During a break you can't buy tickets or enter free, and the break can't be ended early.
4. You can close your account permanently. Tickets already in the current draw still count. The handle can't be used again.
5. These tools apply to your player account. Opening another account to get round a limit, break or closure is not allowed and may make its entries void.

5. When the draw happens

Each weekly draw is open for seven days. Sales close every Friday at 20:00 UTC (shown in your own time in the app). Tickets bought after that go into the next week's draw. We never move a draw's closing time or cancel a draw because of low ticket sales.

6. How the winner is picked

Prizes are awarded by chance. Every ticket, whether paid, free, postal or bonus, has exactly the same chance of winning.

1. At close: the ticket list is frozen. Its fingerprint (the SHA-256 hash of the list of ticket number, handle and ticket type) is recorded and published straight away.
2. The winning block: set as the Bitcoin block 3 blocks after the latest block at close. Its hash can't be known or chosen by anyone, including us, until it's mined.
3. Confirmations: we wait until that block has 6 confirmations, and check its hash against more than one source.
4. The calculation: winning ticket = (SHA-256 of "round date | block hash | fingerprint") mod (number of tickets) + 1.

The frozen list, fingerprint, block, calculation and winner are published for every draw. Anyone can check them in the app or with any SHA-256 tool. Contact details and location data are never published.

7. The prize

1. The pot is all paid ticket sales for that week, plus any amount rolled over from earlier weeks, plus any seed amount we add (which will always be labelled as a seed).
2. The winner gets 85% of the pot. 7.5% goes to us to run the draw. 7.5% rolls over into the next week's pot.
3. There's one winner per weekly draw. If a draw has no tickets, there's no winner and the whole pot carries over.
4. Prizes are paid in bitcoin (sats), normally over Lightning.

8. Claiming your prize

1. How we contact you: winners who entered online see a claim link in the app on their device. Postal winners are contacted at the email or Lightning address on their card. Results are also posted on our X account.
2. Never pay to claim: you never have to pay anything to claim a prize. We will never ask for your seed phrase, private keys or player key.
3. Checks: before approving a payout we may check that the winner is 18 or over, entered from an allowed place, didn't use a VPN or proxy, and didn't use more than one account. We may ask for proof of age and identity.
4. Failed checks: if a winner doesn't pass these checks, or doesn't provide what we ask for within the claim period, the entry is void.
5. Deadline: prizes must be claimed within 90 days of the draw.
6. Unclaimed or void prizes: the claim link is closed and the full prize is added to the pot of the draw that is open at that moment. This is shown publicly against the original draw.

9. Refunds and problems

1. Tickets aren't refundable once the payment confirms.
2. If a payment fails or an invoice expires, no ticket is created and no sats are taken.
3. If a genuine technical failure stops a draw from running fairly (for example, a major Bitcoin network problem, or our block sources disagreeing), we wait until it can run fairly and post an update on X. The frozen ticket list never changes.

10. Your information

Your player handle, ticket numbers and ticket types are public. We store: your handle; a hashed copy of your player key; your tickets, orders and limits; the country each entry came from (never your full IP address); a one-way scrambled version of your IP for free online entries, used only to enforce the per-connection limit; for postal entries, the contact address on your card; and, for on-chain entries, your entry code and the ID of the transaction you gave us. Bitcoin transactions are public, so anyone can see a transaction carrying an entry code, but we never publish which handle it belongs to. Use a wallet you're comfortable using for this. Contact details are only used to reach winners and are never shown publicly. We keep postcards for 12 months, then destroy them. We don't sell your information.

11. Tax

Any tax on prizes is your responsibility. Rules on bitcoin and tax vary by country.

12. Changes and law

We may update these rules. Changes never apply to a draw that's already open. These rules are governed by the law of England and Wales.

13. Restricted places

Entries are not accepted from these countries and regions:

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We check where online entries come from using IP geolocation, and where postal entries were posted from. If we find a winner entered from a restricted place, the entry is void and the prize is handled as in section 8.

14. Complaints

1. Email us with your handle, the draw date and what went wrong.
2. We'll acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days and aim to give a full answer within 4 weeks.
3. If you're not happy with our answer, reply and ask for a final review. We'll give a final response within a further 4 weeks.
4. We follow the government's Voluntary Code of Good Practice for Prize Draw Operators. If you believe we're not following it, you can also contact the Department for Culture, Media and Sport at prizedrawcode@dcms.gov.uk.

15. Play safe

This is a game of chance for fun, not a way to make money or solve money problems. See Play safe for limits, breaks and free, confidential support.