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Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

vitalik.ca

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Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#91

Post by mvc »

jtxxwl2 wrote: post #88
Imnimo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The underlying assumption of such markets is that no player has more than one vote in the actual election, out of some 150 million or so votes, so each individual player's ability to affect the outcome is negligible. But this is not necessarily true. In the extreme case, a bettor could be one of nine Supreme Court justices. Or a participant in some sort of fantasy vote-rigging conspiracy. Or even a political insider…

>Or a participant in some sort of fantasy vote-rigging conspiracy. This is even more relevant outside of the US. In the US vote rigging conspiracies are impossible for some inexplicable reason, perhaps related to magical soil, but outside of the US they are a real concern.

May I be so bold as to suggest that not all vote rigging conspiracies are considered impossible. Just the ones that have been rejected by every court that has tested them.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#92

Post by voldacar »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #5

I've always had the impression that the cryptocurrency community was trending rightwards. So it's good to see some quantifiable evidence of it. Which leaves the question: why? Technology as a whole is centre-left, so there's something else going on. One common theme seems to a loss of trust in any institutions, and democracy itself: "the FED is just a private bank" isn't far away from "the mainstream media is lying",…

> Technology as a whole is centre-left

or maybe it just isn't and crypto is a counter example? not sure why it has to be an axiom that tech is "Centre-left" especially considering the historical relativity of terms like right and left

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#93

Post by jldugger »

Interesting that Vitalik doesn't mention that presidential gambling is illegal in the US, save for a few no-action letters[1] to specific clearing houses. That alone puts a massive selection bias when trading contracts on platforms like Augur or Polymarket.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market#Legality

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#94

Post by jldugger »

tantalor wrote: post #31
bigpumpkin wrote: post #7

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.

But your source of funds might be. Sounds like the OP avoided this by borrowing against assets, but since his assets are volatile blockchain stuff, the interest rate was absurd.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#95

Post by [deleted] »

jldugger wrote: post #93

Interesting that Vitalik doesn't mention that presidential gambling is illegal in the US, save for a few no-action letters[1] to specific clearing houses. That alone puts a massive selection bias when trading contracts on platforms like Augur or Polymarket. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market#Legality

[deleted]

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#96

Post by [deleted] »

jldugger wrote: post #93

Interesting that Vitalik doesn't mention that presidential gambling is illegal in the US, save for a few no-action letters[1] to specific clearing houses. That alone puts a massive selection bias when trading contracts on platforms like Augur or Polymarket. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market#Legality

[deleted]

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#97

Post by Tenoke »

phpnode wrote: 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.

Poly.Market which he mentions (and where I bet on the US election) just uses a stablecoin (USDC) pegged to the US dollar. Same situation for the DAI he mentions he used. So this is an already solved issue.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#98

Post by f430 »

xalava wrote: post #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…

It's worse that people actually believe it is a reliable way to predict the future especially now with the pseudo-intellect speak that people in the crypto space resort to.

If wisdom of the crowd worked then casinos would be out of business. There's an entire industry on the other side.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#99

Post by Tenoke »

didibus wrote: post #68

He did need 1 million dollar simply to make a one time 50k return, and it also seemed like it took considerable effort to do it. I don't know how many people with that money also have the know how, are aware of these betting markets, and care much that they'd make an extra one time 50k. I think it'll be interesting to see how crypto based betting markets evolve and if regulations will strike them or not. I don't real…

He locked 1m dollars to take a loan to use, he didn't use 1 million dollars. You can use your assets directly and do earn a 10%+ profit on whatever you put in this case (which I did).

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#100

Post by xur17 »

Tenoke wrote: post #97
phpnode wrote: 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.

Poly.Market which he mentions (and where I bet on the US election) just uses a stablecoin (USDC) pegged to the US dollar. Same situation for the DAI he mentions he used. So this is an already solved issue.

I've used Poly.market a few times and been pretty happy with it - they use a second layer network, so after depositing, trades are fairly cheap (you just pay a market maker fee, no crypto miner fee as far as I can tell). Downside is that the outcome is provided by the poly.market creators, but your actual bets are non-custodial.
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