Both lil-tail bots stopped trading on 2026-05-03 / 2026-05-06. The dashboard above kept showing activity because state files weren't cleared. Real story below.

v1 — penny tail buy

• Strategy: buy 5m BTC Up/Down outcomes when one side hit ~$0.05.
• Ran 2026-05-02 → 2026-05-03 (~14h). 5 tickets placed. 4 losses, 0 wins, 1 stuck on-chain. Cumulative PnL: -$5.00.
• Tail bets at $0.05 imply ~5% hit rate. 4/4 losses on N=4 is variance, not edge failure — but also not a finding.
• The 1 stuck position: BTC UP @ $0.05 on 2026-05-03 01:35-01:40 UTC. Window closed at -$13.42 delta → UP lost, position is worth $0. Stuck because the bot stopped before redeeming.

v2 — mint-arb split-and-sell

• Strategy: mint $1 → split into UP + DOWN → sell both at $0.02 GTC → redeem winner. Designed to capture ~$0.04 per cycle in premium.
• Ran 2026-05-03 → 2026-05-06. 1040 cycles, 0 profit, killed by 100-cycle no-profit trigger.
• Structural math problem: if both sells fill at $0.02, the bot no longer holds the winning token at redemption. Net per cycle becomes −$1 mint + $0.04 sells + $0 redeem = −$0.96. The strategy could only break even when neither sell filled (bot mints $1, redeems winner for $1, $0 net).
• Reality: 100/100 closed cycles were flat ($0). The premium-capture path never worked because PostOnly sells consistently failed with "order crosses book."
• 1 cycle is stuck (mint succeeded, both sells failed, bot died before redeem). On-chain value: $1 pending manual chain redeem.

why it kept "showing trades multiple times a day"

The price hits the $0.01 / $0.05 trigger multiple times a day — that part is true. The bot isn't there to act on it. It hasn't run since 2026-05-06. The dashboard above was reading stale state files and presenting them as live. That's now labeled honestly.

remaining action items

1. Chain-redeem the 1 stuck v2 cycle (recovers ~$1 - gas ≈ $0.95 net). Requires lil-tail wallet private key (0x9Ba5...62F9).
2. If you want a real test of the v1 tail-buy thesis: run N≥50 cycles, not 5. Current N=4 is statistical noise.
3. Do not revive v2 as-designed. The selling-both-sides path is negative-EV by construction.