Terms and Conditions

1. 1.The Bid

   1. 1.1Bids are made in United States dollars, in whole dollars only. The minimum bid is $1. Amounts including cents are not accepted and are not rounded.
   2. 1.2A bid is charged in full at the moment it is placed. It is not an offer, a pledge or a deposit, and it is not held pending the outcome of the day.
   3. 1.3Bids made from the same email address on the same day add together. Bidding a second time increases your total; it does not replace it.
   4. 1.4There is no maximum bid and no limit on how many times you may bid in a day.
   5. 1.5Bids are charged in US dollars. We absorb the payment processing fee, so the amount you enter is the amount we charge you.
   6. 1.6If your card is issued in another currency, your bank converts it at its own rate and may add a conversion or foreign transaction fee. That fee is your bank’s and not ours: we neither receive it nor refund it, and the amount shown on your statement may therefore differ from the amount you entered. Your bid counts as the US dollar amount you entered, whatever your bank charges you for it.
   7. 1.7Your email address determines who you are for every purpose in these rules. Bidding from a different address makes you a different bidder, and the two totals do not combine.

2. 2.Blind Bidding

   1. 2.1No bid amount is disclosed to anyone at any time. This applies to the current day and to every day that has closed.
   2. 2.2After bidding you are told only whether you currently hold the highest total. You are not told by how much, nor how many others have bid.
   3. 2.3The holder of the title is not told what they paid relative to anyone else, and is not told what it took to hold it.
   4. 2.4No amount is published, exported, or included in any certificate, register entry or notification.

3. 3.The Day And Its Close

   1. 3.1A day means a calendar day in Pacific Time, observing daylight saving. Every bid is attributed to the Pacific day on which it was placed, determined by us and not by your device.
   2. 3.2While a day is open, whoever holds the highest total is named on the front page as the richest person today. That name changes as bids are placed.
   3. 3.3The day closes at midnight Pacific Time exactly. Whoever holds the highest total at that moment holds the title for that day.
   4. 3.4Once a day has closed, its result is permanent. No payment settling afterwards, and no correction, dispute or chargeback, changes who held the title.
   5. 3.5A bid counts towards the day it was placed on, provided the payment completes before that day closes. Payments requiring authentication with your bank may take several minutes, and the site warns you when the cutoff is near. If a payment completes only after its day has closed, the bid counts towards the day it completes on instead: a closed day is never reopened, and no payment is ever taken without counting towards something.
   6. 3.6Where two bidders hold the same total, the title goes to whichever of them reached it first.

4. 4.Your Handle

   1. 4.1Your handle is the name shown publicly while you hold the title, and in the register afterwards. It may be between 1 and 40 characters.
   2. 4.2Your email address is never shown publicly, in any circumstance.
   3. 4.3Handles are screened before any charge is made. A handle may be refused for obscenity, or for impersonating a person named on the published rich lists.
   4. 4.4Handles are not reserved and need not be unique. Two bidders may hold the same handle, on the same day or on different days.
   5. 4.5Your most recently submitted handle applies to your whole total for that day. Bidding again under a different spelling relabels the earlier bids; it does not split them.
   6. 4.6We may obscure or replace a handle that is displayed in breach of 4.3. Doing so does not refund or reduce the bid.

5. 5.Payment And Refunds

   1. 5.1All bids are final. No bid is refundable, in whole or in part, whether or not it results in the title.
   2. 5.2Bidding does not guarantee the title. Somebody may always pay more, and you will not be told that they have except by no longer leading.
   3. 5.3If you do not hold the title when the day closes, you receive nothing at all. There is no second place, no ranking, and no indication of how close your total came to the winning one — not at the time, and not afterwards.
   4. 5.4Placing a bid is a purchase of participation in that day, not of the title itself.
   5. 5.5Where a payment by the person who held the title for that day is reversed — by chargeback, dispute, or any other return of funds — the title is forfeit and any certificate issued for it is revoked. The day is recorded as having had no holder, and cannot be issued again.
   6. 5.6Nothing in these terms affects any right you have under law that cannot be excluded or limited by agreement.

6. 6.The Certificate

   1. 6.1A certificate is issued to the holder of a day at no charge, when the day closes. A printed copy may be bought separately; the certificate itself is never sold.
   2. 6.2Exactly one certificate exists for any given day. No day can be issued twice.
   3. 6.3Each certificate carries an identifier that is unique and not sequential. It is a lookup key rather than a password: it shows that a certificate is genuine, not that the person holding it is you.
   4. 6.4A certificate is a page at richest.today/verify, not a file you download. It shows the date, the handle and the identifier, and never an email address. Any certificate may be checked by anyone; it is not secret.
   5. 6.5A certificate records who held a title on a date. It confers no continuing right, and no rights over the words “richest today”.

7. 7.The Register

   1. 7.1Every closed day is entered in a public register recording the date and the handle that held the title.
   2. 7.2The register never records or displays an amount, and never displays an email address.
   3. 7.3A day on which nobody bid has no entry. An absent entry means the title went unclaimed, not that a record was removed.

8. 8.Independent Auditing

   1. 8.1Blind bidding asks you to trust a result you cannot inspect. This clause exists so that trust is not the only thing on offer.
   2. 8.2A bidder whose own bids for a single day totalled $20,000 or more, and who did not hold the title for that day, may require that day to be audited independently.
   3. 8.3The request must be made within 30 days of the day in question, and is paid for by the bidder making the request.
   4. 8.4Requests are made to audit@richest.today, and must be sent from the email address the bids were made from. That address is what identifies you as the bidder, so a request from any other address cannot be acted on.
   5. 8.5The auditor is given the complete record for that day and for the two days either side, and confirms that the day was decided in accordance with these terms. The neighbouring days are included because a payment can settle across a midnight and count towards the following day under clause 3.5, so a day cannot be checked in isolation.
   6. 8.6The auditor may test the day against any part of these terms they choose. What they confirm to you is whether the result was correct — that the winning total exceeded yours, and that every payment counted was a genuine settled charge.
   7. 8.7We do not bid to take the title. We may place small bids from time to time to check that payments and results are recorded correctly on the live site, and any bid we place is identified to the auditor as ours.
   8. 8.8You receive that confirmation and nothing further. No amount is disclosed to you, because no amount is disclosed to anyone — an audit is not an exception to clause 2.
   9. 8.9An audit examines the conduct of a day. It does not reopen it: clause 3.4 applies regardless of the outcome.