This is a social experiment. One counter, one free Instax Mini 12, and 1,000,000 bids between here and it. Nobody gets there alone. The question is whether the world — strangers, one circle at a time, in every country — can come together and carry the count all the way.
Whoever places bid 10,000 · 50,000 · 100,000 · 250,000 · 500,000 · 750,000 wins a small surprise gift, posted to them free. A gift is a small random surprise, not the grand prize — winning one doesn't mean you'll receive the Instax Mini 12, which goes only to whoever places bid 1,000,000. Gifts don't affect the prize in any way. If the site's own counter happens to land on a gift bid, the first person past it wins it instead. The winner has 10 minutes to give their details, and we'll email them about their gift; if they don't, the gift passes to the next bid. In the last 100 bids up to each gift bid it's one circle, one bid, so every gift has one clear winner.
Whoever places bid 1,000,000 wins the Instax Mini 12, shipped free. They have 10 minutes to give a name, email and delivery address. If that window closes unclaimed, the next valid bid takes the prize, and so on until someone claims it.
Every bid counts for the country it comes from, and countries are ranked live. When the count reaches 990,000, the country ranked first at that moment is locked in, and only bids from that country count for the last 10,000 — the winning one included. In that final stretch it's one circle, one bid: a stroke counts once, however many loops it goes round. If the world wants the prize, it has to decide which country carries it home.
No purchase necessary. Nothing here costs money, ever. The dollar signs are a joke and the amounts are not real. There is no payment step, no card, no account, and nothing to buy. A bid is a circle drawn with your finger; bids are free, unlimited, and worth exactly nothing. The counter is a tally, not a price, a pledge, or a debt.
So a quiet hour doesn't look like a dead site, the counter ticks up by one every 30 seconds when nobody is bidding. Any real bid stops it and restarts the clock. So the number is not a count of people — some of it is the site keeping itself warm.
It stops for good at 990,000. Everything after that, including the bid that wins, has to be drawn by somebody's finger. The map, the country standings and the circles-drawn total only ever show real bids; automatic ticks count for no country.
The lock at 990,000 is set once and never changes. Your country is worked out from where your connection appears to come from; we don't ask, and we don't store it against you. A bid whose country can't be determined doesn't count in the final stretch. Bids placed through a VPN, proxy or anything else that disguises where you are may be disqualified, and so may a win that depends on one.
One prize, one winner; one gift per gift bid. Void where prohibited. Open to anyone we can legally ship to. We may refuse a claim we have good reason to believe was placed by automated means. Gifts are small, chosen by us at random, and can't be exchanged.
When you share, the link carries a short random id so we can count how many bids it brought in, shown to you as a number. That number earns nothing — no extra chances, no weight towards the prize or any gift. It is bragging rights, and only bragging rights.
Every bid records an approximate city-level location, supplied by our hosting provider, so the map has something to draw. We do not store your IP address — only a keyed hash of it, used for rate limiting. There are no accounts.
We do use Google Analytics, through Firebase, to see how the site is actually used — how many people finish a circle versus give up halfway, how often people come back, whether anything is broken. It records events, not identities: that a bid was placed and what number it was, that a gesture was abandoned and how far round it got, that the sound was switched off. It is never told your name, your email, or your address, even if you win.
This does set a first-party analytics cookie. Advertising is switched off at the source — ad storage, ad user data and ad personalisation are all permanently denied, so nothing here can feed an advertising profile, and we do not sell or share any of it.
The shape of the circle you draw is kept briefly and replayed for other people, so the object is never still while the world is bidding. A replay is labelled with your country's flag and roughly how long ago it was drawn, and nothing else: never a name, and nothing that identifies you. Only the last couple of dozen are held, and each is overwritten as new ones are drawn.
Winners' names, emails, and addresses — for the prize and for gifts — are collected for one purpose: posting the thing to them. They are not sold, shared, or added to any list, and are deleted once the item has arrived. Your first name appears on the site only if you win the prize and tick the box. When a gift is claimed, the page shows the gift's bid number with the flag of the country it was claimed from, and nothing else about the winner.
Champions are anonymous. Each country's crown belongs to whoever has drawn the most circles for it, counted across their visits. Only the count is ever shown — never a name, and never anything that identifies the person. A crown, like a referral count, a row of days or the artwork, is bragging rights and nothing else: none of it affects the prize, a gift, or anybody's chances.
So a crown can be yours on your next visit, the site gives your browser a random, anonymous visitor id in a cookie that only our server can read. It is how we count your circles towards your country's crown, keep a copy of your tally and best number (some phones wipe website storage after a week away), and count — in aggregate — how many people come back. It holds nothing about you. It lasts a year, and the records tied to it lapse after about 400 days without a visit; daily visit and share counts are kept for 35 days.
Notifications are off unless you turn them on, with the bell. If you do, we keep what your browser gives us to reach it — an address at your browser's push service, not your phone number or email — plus your timezone offset (so nothing arrives between 22:00 and 08:00) and your country (so you hear when it's overtaken). At most one notification a day, and only about your crown, your country, a gift coming up, or your link. Tap the bell again, or block notifications for this site in your browser, and the subscription is deleted; one the browser stops accepting is deleted automatically.
Every circle is also added, anonymously, to one shared picture of all the circles ever drawn. It keeps no link to who drew what.
This is a silly website. It may break, go offline, or be reset if it is overrun by bots. We will honour a legitimate claim if we possibly can, but we make no warranty of any kind.