Five-minute UP/DOWN

The Sherwood Mint runs the fastest game in the den: a fresh round every five minutes on whether a coin's price finishes above or below where it started.

Bitcoin only, for now. The vault shows only the pits that are taking bets, so today there is one, centred on the entrance. If another coin is opened, its pit appears beside it.

The coin vault. One pit, centred, because it is the only one taking bets.

Reading the arena

The panel on the right holds everything that decides the round:

Price to beat: the price the round opened at.
Now: the live price.
Change and Ends in: how far it has moved, and how long is left.
UP and DOWN prices: what the den is paying for each side.

UP wins if the closing price is at or above the price to beat; otherwise DOWN wins. A flat round pays UP, so there is no tie.

Around the panel, the wall chart tracks the price against the mark, and the ticker beside it shows what other players just won and lost on this coin.

The chart is not the settling price. It is drawn from Coinbase spot, for the shape of the move. The round settles against the Chainlink feed for that coin, as below. The two agree on direction and differ in the last cents, so read the chart for where the price is going and the rule for who wins. If a player joins partway through a round, the part of the line before they arrived is drawn at one-minute resolution, which is the finest history the exchange sells; from the moment they are watching it is live.

The five-minute arena: price to beat, live price, time remaining, the UP and DOWN prices, and the wall chart tracking the round.

Placing a bet

Rounds are played in $GOLD, the house currency, and settle through the ledger rather than on a chain.

From the panel: pick a stake from the buttons or type your own, then press Bet UP or Bet DOWN.

From the floor: walk your character onto the UP or DOWN terrace and a bet slip comes up with that side already chosen. It carries the same four preset chips and a field for a stake of your own, press Enter and it goes down, which matters on a screen where you are watching a price move and timing it. The slip is only there while you are standing on a terrace.

Once the round's cutoff passes, betting closes. Between rounds the panel says the round is preparing. The next round is not ready to take bets yet, and the timer and window you see may not be final. Wait for it to open rather than trying to get in early.

Rounds settle against the Chainlink price feed for that coin. A $GOLD round is not voided for being late: if the closing price is slow to arrive, the round waits for it and pays out when it lands. It is called off only when the source itself cancels, and then every stake comes back. (The 30-minute void backstop applies to the older on-chain rounds, not to $GOLD.)

Real-wallet payouts and long-running operation of these rounds are still being verified, so treat the arena as a development feature rather than something to rely on.