pajenegod's blog

By pajenegod, history, 3 years ago, In English

Let me tell you the story of how I made $2200 from doing competitive programming.

Spoiler

Once many many fortnights ago Hackerrank held one of its regular competitions, "World CodeSprint 9". This was back when Hackerrank actually sent out its prizes. The competition was very unusual in that one of its hardest problems was a scored based approximation problem. This competition was also the first time that I would get placed in the top 100s! Using my beloved Python :)

As I recall the prize for getting placed 4 to 100 was a t-shirt and $75. More precisely these $75 were sent either in Bitcoins or Amazon giftcards depending on where the prize winners lived, and in my case I got Bitcoins. I received the $75 in Bitcoins on 21st of March 2017.

Prices 2017

When I got them, I didn't really know how to do anything with them, so I kind of just forgot about them. Turns out that the value of Bitcoin has increased a bit since then:

Prices 2017-2021

30 times more to be precise! So today I just sold them for a bit over $2200 (Sold when the price hit 26640€/btc). Not too shabby for a 34th place finish in a regular competition! =D

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +19 Vote: I do not like it

Might have missed a big bull run to 50k or more tho.

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3 years ago, # |
Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +101 Vote: I do not like it

Damn it, they only owe me 200 EUR booking.com voucher and 75$ amazon gift card :(

EDIT: well, maybe I should have gotten 75$ in bitcoin too from May World CodeSprint. Amazon isn't a thing in Poland. Hackerrank, I'd like my ~0.07 BC please.

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3 years ago, # |
Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +6 Vote: I do not like it

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +34 Vote: I do not like it

Thanks! That's inspiring

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +20 Vote: I do not like it

I don't know, man. I mean, I had such a prize from Hackerrank, too. And look where it got me.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +10 Vote: I do not like it

Well, not any more :'(, though. I really like approximation problems like that.