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Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

vitalik.ca

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Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#161

Post by Sargos »

as300 wrote: post #40
mannykannot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DeFi Saver does this and has a large userbase. https://defisaver.com/

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#162

Post by opo »

btilly wrote: post #119
opo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...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. No, Walmart was doing it since they thought the policies would be tax deductible. They ended up losing money and eventually ended up bringing up a case against their insurance companies: >...Discount retailing giant WalMart cannot su…

My understanding was based on articles like https://workdayminnesota.org/court-slams-walmarts-use-of-dea... . Where Walmart was being sued specifically because there were perverse incentives and what they did was against various state laws. As to your case, Walmart thought that it could deduct the premiums. It turns out that it could not. Walmart also thought that it could create and collect them under Georgia law. I…

Thank for adding more info about some of the lawsuits, but you haven't given any evidence for the key claim you made in your original post:

>...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.

I have seen no evidence that is why Walmart instituted the corporate policy of buying life insurance on their employees. If any evidence of that sort had come out in the various law suits, it would have made headlines all around the world.

Even today many companies buy life insurance on their key employees - that doesn't mean their plan is to treat their key employees so poorly that they have an earlier death.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#163

Post by gbronner »

Imnimo wrote: post #25
pdonis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem with prediction markets is you have the incentive to make the prediction come true If players in the market have ways outside the market to significantly affect the outcome that the market is betting on, then it isn't a prediction market. The whole point of a prediction market is that there is no such feedback mechanism. For example, the article discusses prediction market bets on Trump winning the elec…

>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…

This is the explicit aim of prediction markets: to incentivize people with real knowledge to place bets, implicitly leaking information

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#164

Post by yibg »

jtxxwl2 wrote: post #158
yibg wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big difference between the general statement of "vote rigging is impossible" and "this last election wasn't rigged". The usual claim is the latter, not the former.

If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and inv…

The threshold isn’t just “it’s possible”. There needs to be some evidence. All sorts of things are possible, doesn’t mean we go around thinking they are true, or even assume they are potentially true.

It’s not Impossible I’ve murdered someone, doesn’t mean I should be presumed a murderer.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#165

Post by tim333 »

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.

That depends on the rules of the particular tax system(s) you are subject to. In the UK one it's kind of a grey area. Buying and selling a crypto at a profit would probably be treated as a capital gain but betting with a bookies or spreadbetter isn't.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#167

Post by CyberDildonics »

jtxxwl2 wrote: post #160
dragonwriter wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries I'm not convinced that it is. Sure, election rigging happens, but that's not the “getting away with it” that would be at issue. Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes),…

>Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes) Why do you think that's implausible? What evidence of election fraud would you expect to be left behind that would be difficult to dispose of? >is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely d…

This isn't someone slashing your tires overnight when you are parked on a street.

It involves thousands of people directly and an extreme amount of information collecting and statistics analysis.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#168

Post by jtxxwl2 »

yibg wrote: post #164
jtxxwl2 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and inv…

The threshold isn’t just “it’s possible”. There needs to be some evidence. All sorts of things are possible, doesn’t mean we go around thinking they are true, or even assume they are potentially true. It’s not Impossible I’ve murdered someone, doesn’t mean I should be presumed a murderer.

Yes, absolutely. We must use the evidence available and draw inferences, assuming that there is no magic soil type phenomenon involved. In this case, the evidence available includes 5 years of statements and actions performed by members of one political party which demonstrate beyond any doubt that they overwhelmingly possess a seething hatred of one of the candidates. It also includes undisputed evidence that election officials instituted rules for some election facilities that greatly hindered the ability of outside election observers to ensure no fraud was taking place. And it also includes undisputed evidence that these same election facilities are totally politically dominated by that one political party, and have been for decades. We can therefore infer that it is overwhelmingly likely that they engaged in fraud.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#169

Post by jtxxwl2 »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #167
jtxxwl2 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes) Why do you think that's implausible? What evidence of election fraud would you expect to be left behind that would be difficult to dispose of? >is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely d…

This isn't someone slashing your tires overnight when you are parked on a street. It involves thousands of people directly and an extreme amount of information collecting and statistics analysis.

Not thousands of random people picked off the street, though. It involves thousands of people that overwhelmingly share a seething hatred of one of the two candidates.

Re: Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election

#170

Post by chillacy »

ketamine__ wrote: post #115
lunatuna wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fascinating part of this article is in the third paragraph: ". . . I would make all of these remaining bets, against willing counterparties, after Trump had already lost the election." I wasn't expecting that. But we are in GME and WSB phase of markets. I guess I have a lot of catching up to do.

Many people felt Polymarket resolved the market too early after the election was called. They then setup another market where the question was whether Trump would be inaugurated. It was possible to make 20% on that market at one point. I wouldn't compare it to GME and WSB though. It's still stupid.

Then after he wasn’t they set up yet another market asking if Trump would be the sitting president in March 2021. It returns 5% or so in only a few short months.
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