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Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

vitalik.ca

31–40 of 191 posts

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#31

One thing he didn't talk about was capital gains tax. If I wanted to bet on the election, I would first have to realize my short term capital gains.

Prediction market positions are not capital gains in the same way that lottery tickets are not capital gains. It is gambling.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#32

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." I always thought the the problem with prediction markets is you have the incentive to make the prediction come true. And that gets ugly fast. But hell, I guess that's what all this is at the end of the day.

That's why you have counterfactual prediction markets. You don't have markets on an outcome; you have two markets of an outcome conditional on some action, and on an outcome conditional on that action not being taken.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#33
post #6

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." I always thought the the problem with prediction markets is you have the incentive to make the prediction come true. And that gets ugly fast. But hell, I guess that's what all this is at the end of the day.

Yep, it clearly leads into assassination markets - for example, opening a large bet that person X will die on a specific date.

That's why there is the invalid token too.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#34
post #20

One thing he didn't talk about was capital gains tax. If I wanted to bet on the election, I would first have to realize my short term capital gains.

He avoids capital gains in the article by using a MakerDAO CDP. This is a loan that is collateralized by his Ethereum holdings. (IIRC 1.5 ETH to the amount of DAI you want)

Indeed, though at 3:2 you are apparently at considerable risk of the loan being called by anyone (with no margin call beforehand):

If the value of the ETH collateral that you deposited drops to less than 150% the value of the DAI you withdrew, anyone can come in and "liquidate" the vault, forcibly selling the ETH to buy back the DAI and charging you a high penalty. Hence, it's a good idea to have a high collateralization ratio in case of sudden price movements; I had over $3 worth of ETH in my CDP for every $1 that I withdrew.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#35
I think what we’re seeing is that the set of people making bets on political outcomes leans sharply Republican. It’s selection bias.

There may be a broader message there about representation too: if you are sitting in a meeting and 8 people think something is going to happen, but you disagree, and they are all upper class men (for example), and you’re a lower class woman, you probably have a better than 1 in 9 chance of being right, if it’s an issue that affects the public generally. People don’t realize their views are non representative if they live in an echo chamber.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#36

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." I always thought the the problem with prediction markets is you have the incentive to make the prediction come true. And that gets ugly fast. But hell, I guess that's what all this is at the end of the day.

That's why you have counterfactual prediction markets. You don't have markets on an outcome; you have two markets of an outcome conditional on some action, and on an outcome conditional on that action not being taken.

did you just describe sports betting?

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#37
"Prediction markets" is a fancy word for gambling. It is a highly regulated activity almost everywhere, mainly has it can have terrible consequences at the individual levels and major side-effects such as corrupt games in sports. Let's not even talk about politics where it is generally forbidden for obvious reasons.

The conclusion is disheartening "It shows a lot about how market efficiency actually works in practice, what are the limits of it and what could be done to improve it." Yes at a small scale, but at the current rate of adoption of crypto it will not go well if it is still treated as a playground.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#38
post #29
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just life insurance?

That got ugly too until they prevented people from taking out life insurance on people without their knowledge/consent

Concrete example, Walmart took out life insurance on its employees because they were betting that their horrible working conditions made people more likely to die than the insurance companies thought. And then were incentivized to make those conditions worse.

See https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/life-insurance/dead-peasa... for an overview of current regulations that resulted from that.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#39

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." I always thought the the problem with prediction markets is you have the incentive to make the prediction come true. And that gets ugly fast. But hell, I guess that's what all this is at the end of the day.

One recent example is the man who ran onto the field at the Super Bowl after having proxies place $370,000 in bets on that occurring. However, he bragged about what he had done on a radio show and those bets were invalidated.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#40
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He avoids capital gains in the article by using a MakerDAO CDP. This is a loan that is collateralized by his Ethereum holdings. (IIRC 1.5 ETH to the amount of DAI you want)

Indeed, though at 3:2 you are apparently at considerable risk of the loan being called by anyone (with no margin call beforehand): If the value of the ETH collateral that you deposited drops to less than 150% the value of the DAI you withdrew, anyone can come in and "liquidate" the vault, forcibly selling the ETH to buy back the DAI and charging you a high penalty. Hence, it's a good idea to have a high collateraliza…

While this is true, you could easily write a listener script (very easy with ETH due to the extensive bloom filter use) that adds more collateral to your position if it reaches, say, within %175 of the capital you withdrew.
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