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Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

vitalik.ca

71–80 of 191 posts

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#71
post #13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't that just life insurance?

Yes, insurance in general has this problem if unregulated, hence the evolution of the concept of “insurable interest”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurable_interest

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#72
post #63

The problem with making this bet is that the value of the underlying crypto can move by far more than the possible 15% return while the result is pending. 2 months is more than enough for the price to double or halve and people want to be able to exit to fiat at a moment's notice when they think things are heading south.

There are cash-based markets like Predictit where you could've made a similar bet. Predictit charges 5% withdrawal fees + 10% of profits, but if you expect a 15% ROI, it's still profitable.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#73
post #63

The problem with making this bet is that the value of the underlying crypto can move by far more than the possible 15% return while the result is pending. 2 months is more than enough for the price to double or halve and people want to be able to exit to fiat at a moment's notice when they think things are heading south.

I mean for anyone who wants to use BTC any anything other than an investment vehicle this is how it’s gonna be. BTCs value to non-currency speculators is as a settlement layer of last resort for people that can’t access or don’t want to use foreign exchange markets. You want to get in, do your transfer, and go back to fiat as fast as possible specifically because of the volatility.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#74
Prediction markets are fascinating to me. Of course they are not perfect, as demonstrated by this post, and also by the spreads of certain "fan favorite" sports teams that people throw money at irrationally. I still think that on average (just like prices in any other decentralized markets), the prediction prices are better than any known centralized system, and with a robust implementation, could be used for important planning.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#75
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and as mentioned in the article: The markets were guessing Trump would win after he had already lost. If that's not evidence of a political bias to you I'm not sure why.

When hurricane forecasters predict that a hurricane will strike a city, would that be evidence of their pro-hurricane bias? If they were consistently overeager to predict hurricane strikes, would that be evidence that they supported hurricanes, or merely were overcalibrated to predicting them?

If a forecaster saw a hurricane make landfall in Texas and still gave it a 15% chance of hitting Alabama, that'd be pretty far beyond simple poor calibration, and I think it'd be justified to ask some pointed questions about why they're so dedicated to their bad prediction.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#76
post #72
post #63

The problem with making this bet is that the value of the underlying crypto can move by far more than the possible 15% return while the result is pending. 2 months is more than enough for the price to double or halve and people want to be able to exit to fiat at a moment's notice when they think things are heading south.

There are cash-based markets like Predictit where you could've made a similar bet. Predictit charges 5% withdrawal fees + 10% of profits, but if you expect a 15% ROI, it's still profitable.

The fiat-based prediction markets tend to limit the number of people in a particular markets, the size of positions in the market, and a number of other aspects of the market in a way which make it difficult to seize apparent opportunities and to limit the possible returns from doing so, even before considering the way that their fees eat up returns.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#77
This seems like an extremely risky way to make this bet. By trying to keep his exposure to ETH price changes, he set himself up for a scenario in which he could lose $1 million for a potential upside of $50k. Not sure I would make that bet.

A lot of people recognized this for what it was, but chose not to play because of how finicky PredictIt and other prediction markets were around the rules of the game. In most previous elections they would have already closed the markets.

Personally, I made off with a nice chunk of change buying No-Trump on WI, MI, GA, and AZ after the election, but I only played with what I could afford to lose.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#79

"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.

Just have to keep in mind that bets could be a strange gofundme & don't participate in bets that can be bought out against you
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