[HN Gopher] Political betting site PredictIt to shut down after ...
___________________________________________________________________
Political betting site PredictIt to shut down after CFTC withdraws
approval
Author : akelly
Score : 115 points
Date : 2022-08-05 09:47 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.predictit.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.predictit.org)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| "Get money out of politics"
|
| also
|
| "It is a shame that a financial incentive to manpiulate elections
| or to vote for a candidate for any reason except the voter's
| confidence in that candidate got banned"
|
| I'm not saying I definitely want political bookies banned, but I
| don't immediately see how it is anything but a detriment to
| honest decision making in choosing how to respond to issues.
| Maybe I'll vote to take away some human rights if the election is
| close and I can make a few bucks?
| karlkeefer wrote:
| Prediction markets have a built-in incentive for accuracy
| that's absent from broadcast news. It's useful to have an
| aggregate answer to things like "how likely is Russia to invade
| Ukraine" that is to some degree shielded from the normal
| filters of partisanship.
|
| Or from another angle:
|
| Changing your individual vote in an attempt to shift the
| outcome of an election is extraordinarily unlikely to actually
| make the difference, so prediction markets most likely punish
| people (with losses) who try to game it with their own votes.
| If you and a large group of people plan to do this, that will
| be priced into the market, preventing you from profiting very
| much.
| AccountAccount1 wrote:
| The gambling angle is straight up dumb, why are they framing it
| that way? Aggregating information (however true) provides a net
| benefit in any endeavor, and there has to be a financial
| incentive to do information arbitrage, that's the whole point,
| because people would not even worry about it.
|
| The whole thing is that, the media now cannot say that elective x
| has a 65 approval rate (based on a survey of 6 coworkers) when on
| Predictit is at 10%.
| caseyross wrote:
| From the official withdrawal letter [1]:
|
| > [Victoria University] has not operated its market in compliance
| with the terms of [the 2014 letter granting no-action relief].
|
| Nowhere does the CFTC state exactly what the alleged violations
| where, so we can only speculate. It certainly lends support to
| the hypothesis that the no-action withdrawal is regulatory
| capture by a competing prediction market.
|
| [1]: (Forced PDF download)
| https://www.cftc.gov/csl/22-08/download
| salawat wrote:
| Seems to me they've got things branded incorrectly. Don't make a
| prediction market. Make a PasteIt.
|
| Think about it, you're trying to get people to process and offer
| up unknown information, right? Focus on that.
|
| It's bounties for verifiable information. Not predicting, or a
| game of chance. You pay for information to be brought up that you
| would never have thought to look for.
|
| If you do it that way, you're completely sidestepping the issue
| of providing a gambling primitive. You're just incentivizing data
| collection and dumping. The outcome becomes secondary, the
| context generated maintains primacy, and I wager what markets are
| really interested in is looking at highly accurate predictors and
| trying to infer what channels of information they're privy to in
| order to expand data observation pipelines.
|
| Unless these "prediction markets" really are just some high brow
| word for gambling parlors. Then again, I always figured that was
| all futures and derivatives trading were, yet there is a staunch
| refusal to classify them as such.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| In an anonymous pastebin, there is no incentive for you to
| provide info that is accurate and complete. Prediction markets
| give you an incentive to find the right answer.
| seaourfreed wrote:
| We need prediction markets. It is evil that government kills
| prediction market companies. Prediction markets are needed to OUT
| establishment politicians that are far worse that challengers.
| (For both sides of the partisan spectrum) It is evil that
| government kills prediction market companies.
| unholiness wrote:
| Betting on PredictIt has been a side-hobby of mine for the last 5
| years, in which time I turned my fun $10 deposit into (just) over
| $1000. For me, it's a satisfying way of interacting with the
| news, motivating clear-headedness and accuracy over simplicity
| and filter bubbles.
|
| The talk about "rational markets" in this thread is well-meaning,
| but I think it could better targeted toward BetFair and other
| uncapped foreign markets. PredictIt has a cap of $850 from any
| individual in any market, which means almost no market is
| dominated by "sharps" exploiting differences between prices and
| reality. Sure, PredictIt's prices are often more accurate than
| the average person's guess, but they still exhibit a lot of small
| and predictable biases:
|
| - "Yes" positions are more popular
|
| - Pro-Republican positions are more popular
|
| - Cheap, improbable positions are more popular
|
| - Positions confirming simple ideas are more popular
|
| - Positions traders wish were true are more popular
|
| - Things being discussed on the news are treated as more
| contentious than they are
|
| Ultimately, almost all of my 100x growth just boiled down to
| finding these biases and maximizing my expected log(return) with
| them in mind.
|
| I do believe PredictIt was good for discourse. Though it may have
| ultimately affected a small number of views, the "put-up-or-shut-
| up" mentality is much closer to the scientific method than media
| and its tendency to navel-gaze. The domain of PredictIt markets
| was small, but I often imagine a world which creates this kind of
| ecosystem for a broader array of scientific fields.
|
| For me, though, this is the end of the line. The 2020 races (with
| Georgia runoffs) risk being unresolved by the 2/15 deadline, and
| it's impossible to predict what PredictIt will do then, much less
| if markets will properly price that in. It's been a fun run, and
| I'm glad it lasted as long as it did.
| ummonk wrote:
| The fees that PredictIt charges also make the market highly
| mispriced. E.g. you can't arbitrage two markets on PredictIt
| because PredictIt will take a cut of any profits you make in a
| particular market, without deducting any losses in other
| markets.
| unholiness wrote:
| This is true about arbitraging between markets _on PredictIt_
| , but I do think the impact of fees on market prices (and on
| ability to make money on PredictIt) was usually overstated.
|
| PredictIt has two fees: A 10% fee on winnings, and a 5% fee
| on withdrawals.
|
| The 10% fee on winnings is _only on winnings_. So when buying
| a share for 90C/, your $1 won will earn 99C/ and pay 1C/ in
| fees.
|
| This means in a market with multiple candidates, betting "No"
| on all of N candidates will always earn you $(N - 1) without
| fees. That's is a winning bet iff all the "No" shares add up
| to $(N - 1.1111). In practice, the bias toward "Yes" shares
| alone is strong enough that buying all "No" shares, even at
| current asking prices, usually cost between $1.07 and $1.10
| less than $N.
|
| So, if you're only buying "No" shares in markets with
| multiple outcomes, the prices are set close to a point that
| entirely negates that 10% fee.
|
| And of course the 5% fee on withdrawals is only on
| withdrawals. If you send the money straight back into another
| trade over and over, the fee is diluted enough to be
| irrelevant to any individual trading decisions.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Same, though I went $30 to $180 or some such shit and I didn't
| keep playing because it locks up the money. Concur with
| everything you're saying. On PredictIt the black swan was over-
| weighted.
|
| You can take the suckers' money, but you end up still being a
| sucker because your money is locked up.
|
| What I find amusing is that they have some Plaid-type
| integration for deposits but withdrawal still needs this
| routing number / account number shit.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Okay crypto people. For better or worse, here's your use case.
| flaque wrote:
| Here you go: https://polymarket.com
| JoshCole wrote:
| I know many people strongly believe in rational market theories.
| For these people this sort of betting site isn't just a betting
| site: it is the mechanism by which they engage in understanding
| politics and their primary means of political discourse. Beyond
| that, it is also an incentive for their own political engagement.
| They have several mathematical models that are strongly
| suggestive that they are right to have this belief.
|
| From that framing the government should have no authority
| whatsoever to take action against PredictIt: doing so is a
| _gross_ violation of natural rights. To me this seems like an
| error comparable to restricting freedom of religion, detaining
| someone so as to prevent them from voting, or the burning of an
| intellectuals book and the jailing of them so as to prevent the
| spread of their ideas. It seems an abomination.
|
| What is the justification? Just that there was gambling or is
| there a deeper fundamental problem that I am missing? Gambling to
| me seems more fundamental to reality than breathing. Everyone
| engages in it all the time, but we just don't call it that when
| we think it might be a gambling category which is of benefit to
| society.
|
| If there is no justification - what paths can be pursued to
| permanently sunder the governments ability to take this sort of
| action in the future? I say all this with no sense of judgement
| for the CFTC; clearly this is within their mandate under
| reasonable interpretations. Rather, I think other mandates - more
| important ones - supersede theirs and should be restricting their
| authority.
| bequanna wrote:
| The government has no problem with gambling or lotteries. They
| only have a problem when their percentage of the action isn't
| big enough.
|
| An alternative theory is that this market was providing
| information that the current regime is looking to suppress:
| actual popularity of candidates, policies, etc.
|
| Any speech that violates the official narrative is deemed
| wrongthink and seems to be fair game for law
| enforcement/regulators.
| JoshCole wrote:
| > An alternative theory is that this market was providing
| information that the current regime is looking to suppress:
| actual popularity of candidates, policies, etc.
|
| I don't mean to suggest that this is the _intent_.
|
| I'm saying it seems to me that something _worse than that_ is
| the fundamental consequence of the decision. Banning the
| mathematically rational discussion of politics is actually a
| bit more extreme than say murdering and burning the books of
| intellectuals; in terms of attacking truth it does so on a
| more fundamental level, it is like banning the use of
| addition as a method of counting - an attack on the very
| process by which things are known, not just a person. You
| aren 't just murdering one person - this kills an entire
| category of rational agent; it isn't a ban on knowing a
| particular fact that is inconvenient. It disallows the
| seeking in a much more general way.
|
| To try and maybe get across the nature of the violation: this
| seems to me about as bad as the government declaring that the
| scientific method was no longer allowed to be used or that
| people were no longer allowed to have faith. For sure methods
| of arriving at the truth can be very dangerous, but I don't
| think it follows from that that the government ought to be
| allowed to prevent their use for that purpose.
|
| So I'm wondering what I'm missing - or whether there is
| actually an overstep of authority that ought to be reigned
| in.
| trebbble wrote:
| > Any speech that violates the official narrative is deemed
| wrongthink and seems to be fair game for law
| enforcement/regulators.
|
| I see enough "democrats in disarray" or shitting on the Biden
| admin (maybe both justifiably! That's irrelevant for this
| post) from allegedly left-leaning outlets that this seems
| incredibly unlikely to be true. If it is, they're entirely
| failing at it. Or have for some reason decided to focus only
| on minor players while major players, with 100+x the audience
| (ask around in the real world and see how many people have
| even heard of PredictIt), carry on as usual.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| You could make the same argument about any market. And there is
| a self-consistent libertarian position that no voluntary
| economic transactions at all should be limited for this reason.
| But if you accept any form of regulation, the same arguments
| apply for regulating any market: historically, many markets
| have been set up with unfair rules that cheat participants
| because there is a information imbalance between organizers and
| participants. The CFTC proactively sets standards of fair play
| and disclosure to address that gap.
|
| Their letter suggests that they were specifically withdrawing
| the right of predictt to operate without registration. It seems
| like the discussion can be advanced by registering.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| "For these people this sort of betting site isn't just a
| betting site"
|
| just because you choose to assign it some other emotional value
| doesn't change that the core purpose is illegal
|
| "i'm not burgling, this is how i engage in understanding
| economics and the primary means of discourse, and the
| government should have no authority to take action against me"
| JoshCole wrote:
| Theft isn't people coming together for the purpose of
| aligning incentives so as to share information with each
| other while remaining rational. This has far more in common
| with Truth than it does with Theft. First and foremost,
| because it was by agreement that they entered into the
| arrangement - none were forced. Second and also motivating
| it, because losses are taken in hope: that a better
| understanding of the underlying conditions is obtained by the
| whole of the community which is of benefit to even the losing
| participant.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| JoshCole wrote:
| > The "rational market hypothesis" has nothing to do with
| the rationality of individual actors.
|
| It sucks that the rationality community started calling
| themselves that since now people get confused when you
| talk about the aspirations of empirical skeptic
| communities trying to act selflessly. Language kind of
| sucks - even the word selfless doesn't quite capture what
| I'm trying to say.
|
| It is all to imprecise. Which is why..
|
| > I think you're flying on social media knowledge.
|
| I generally try to think in terms of game theory -
| especially the equilibrium considerations. I'm very far
| from the general consensus about what intelligence and
| rationality are - for example, I don't believe that
| pejorative cognitive bias and predictable irrationality
| exist with the strength that some do. I've found studying
| the sort of machine learning that is not often used in
| practice because it is computationally intractable to be
| a better guide to understanding than the inductive
| approach most people seem to favor.
|
| > This is word salad.
|
| In non-cooperative games selfish play produces
| information hiding. You play a harder to predict policy
| because it makes you unexploitable. In cooperative games
| you can play an easy to predict policy, because it makes
| you predictable, which allows coordination. I think these
| correspond with Lies and Truth. Fiction and facts and
| lies and truth don't seem to be the same thing to me.
| Obviously, Theft corresponds with selfish strategies, the
| Lies strategy.
|
| If this still seems like word salad sit awhile with these
| questions: if there are three doors two labeled A and one
| labeled B and two agents have to pick a door without
| communicating with each other which ought they to pick.
| Now lets say one agent is trying to kill the other agent
| and this happens if they pick the same door. Which should
| they pick?
|
| I capitalized the words, not because I didn't know what
| they mean, but because I have _very precise_ ideas of
| what I 'm trying to talk about.
|
| > I don't believe you've ever taken an economics class.
|
| I have an intuitive feeling that there _is_ a
| justification for preventing people from working together
| so as to better understand things; but your approach isn
| 't it at all. The rationality community which often
| promotes the use of prediction markets also happens to be
| champions of effective altruism. Some of it is probably
| signaling - the best love is quiet since then it came
| from the right place - but trying to pretend these people
| are all comparable to thieves seems too far to me.
|
| It doesn't give me greater confidence in the strength of
| your argument that you've abandoned it in favor of
| character attacks. Someone who strongly believed they
| were right would be courageous enough to try and explain
| their position with more depth and clarify the terms.
|
| Since it seems to me you want to "win" go with the
| perverse incentive angle. I've been rolling it around in
| my mind for a while and while there are aspects to it
| that seem common to all situations with hidden
| information I'm definitely not confident enough to
| disagree with it. You'll get to carry your "victory" over
| me around as a mark of something. Internet points? I'll
| even be one of the people who give them to you, because
| generally when someone asks questions in good faith they
| rather intended to get answers in good faith. You can try
| to act like you meant that all along when you implied
| that the people I was trying to discuss were thieves and
| I'll be powerless to refute you, because I'm still
| puzzled by the issues. On the other hand, if you actually
| have the answers - please share. I'm not claiming
| knowledge, but ignorance.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >just because you choose to assign it some other emotional
| value doesn't change that the core purpose is illegal
|
| The bigger question here is, why is it illegal? Most rational
| adults understand that the arbitrary decision to ban adults
| from "gambling" their own money in certain ways, while
| promoting gambling in other ways is absolutely ridiculous.
| Here in New York I can today bet on sports and horse racing
| from my phone or my computer. I am pilloried with ads to play
| lotto - perhaps the worst form of gambling with only a 50%
| return on investment in most games - by the state itself! But
| it is illegal for me to gamble on a skill-based game like
| poker or predict-it. It reeks of the authoritarian hypocrisy
| that is the defining feature of our government on every
| level.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Sadly I think in modern society we have shifted from having
| to justify why something should be illegal, and today for
| many the default assumption is that all activity should be
| illegal and one should need to justify the value,
| subjective "goodness", or utility of an activity, business,
| device, etc for it is be ruled "legal"
|
| >by the state itself! But it is illegal for me to gamble on
| a skill-based game like poker or predict-it
|
| I think you have hit on the root cause, poker and other
| games of skill is harder for the government to inject
| themselves into it, harder to control the odds and revenue
| (like lottery), etc.
| swatcoder wrote:
| You spent a lot of time writing that post and raising
| questions, but all of the answers are within two clicks of the
| article.
|
| PredictIt linked to CFTC and CFTC explains their original act
| and their justification for the withdrawal in extensive detail
| in documents linked from there.
|
| If you're actually curious and not just trading outrage for
| upvotes (I assume not), I'd love to see how your impression
| evolves in light of the actual facts available to you.
| JoshCole wrote:
| I did read that, but it doesn't address my questions.
| Actually, it doesn't even begin to answer them.
|
| On one level - you don't even seem to have recognized what I
| was asking about. I wasn't asking about the justification for
| this particular decision: you'll note I explicitly mention
| that this is in the mandate for the organization. So any
| reading that thinks I'm talking about that is actually just a
| misreading of my point.
|
| I'm asking if it even make sense to allow the government to
| prevent discussion of political issues using a mechanism
| which has some basis in being mathematically rational? It
| really doesn't seem obvious to me that the government ought
| to have the power to do so. I'm not asking for the
| justification _for this decision_. I 'm asking if there is a
| justification for political oppression of the mathematically
| minded more generally.
|
| That said - even under the framing that the letter answers
| the misunderstanding of what I was asking about - I still
| don't find it to have done so.
|
| The letter is vague with respect to which particular issue
| they were breaking; it listed the things not which of the
| things they contested were not the case. The extent to which
| it is vague is such that even on the linked page PredictIt
| contends it still has not broken the commitments.
|
| This isn't the extremely specified justification you seem to
| think it is - at least not to someone who isn't extensively
| familiar with PredictIt; and apparently given PredictIt
| didn't acknowledge that it felt it was out of line - it isn't
| even something that someone with extensive familiarity can
| easily spot.
| vkou wrote:
| The reason we have freedom of religion is because when we
| don't, we get things like holy wars, massacres, and genocides.
|
| It's not because it's some kind of privileged form of
| understanding the universe. You need to do a lot more work to
| have your hobby horse hitched to the protections and privileges
| it receives.
| motohagiography wrote:
| While I am a fan of prediction markets, I understood the main
| argument against them is that they create perverse incentives
| for people to engage in extreme acts to profit from the
| outcomes.
|
| I wanted to create markets for things like individual airline
| flight delay insurance, and a futures market for airline
| tickets, but all of these are regulated as futures with the
| same barriers to entry that protect stock exchanges, and there
| are some rules in insurance about not being able to take out
| insurance on someone elses' property for related reasons. It's
| a moral hazard. Betting on politics appears to be framed in
| similar terms, but the counter arguments would be interesting
| as well.
|
| I gave up on prediction markets years ago, but if there were a
| darkweb prediction market for smart contract cryptocurrencies,
| that would be the most subversively interesting thing to become
| real in a while.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > darkweb prediction market
|
| Dammit, I had forgotten about the whole "hire a hitman while
| pretending to just make predictions" thing. It probably isn't
| just a spooky theory anymore :/
| theptip wrote:
| > I understood the main argument against them is that they
| create perverse incentives for people to engage in extreme
| acts to profit from the outcomes.
|
| Is that the line of reasoning CFTC is using though?
|
| > if there were a darkweb prediction market
|
| I think this is Polymarket / Gnosis right? Or are you looking
| for something more obfuscated?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "they create perverse incentives for people to engage in
| extreme acts to profit from the outcomes"
|
| So does the very existence of the media, which will amplify
| any sufficiently gross act of violence to the global
| auditorium that would otherwise never hear of it, rewarding
| the culprit with their 15 minutes of fame and possibly
| inspiring others to do the same.
|
| That isn't a reason to censor journalists, though.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| They were definitely operating in an extreme legal grey area.
| Without a doubt it's straight up gambling. Yet they issue you a
| normal 1099 at the end of the year. It felt really weird having
| to claim a "political consulting" business on my taxes instead of
| just claiming it as gambling income with a W-2G. Not sure how
| they were ever legally able to operate in the US honestly.
| dustyleary wrote:
| > Without a doubt it's straight up gambling
|
| Not "without a doubt".
|
| Gambling means a game of chance/luck. Court cases over poker,
| regardless of which way the decision goes, hinge on whether the
| Court is convinced that poker is a game of skill, rather than
| luck.
|
| Predictit definitely did not want to issue W-2G, because that
| is for gambling income, and their position is of course that
| their platform is not an illegal gambling service.
|
| I think that it's pretty easy to argue that consistently
| winning money on a prediction market is a matter of skill. Just
| like consistently earning money on the stock market.
|
| Of course, both _can_ be used for gambling.
|
| So if prediction markets are not allowed, why are day trading
| or stock futures allowed? A casual read of a few relevant
| subreddits will show that there are a lot of people "straight
| up gambling" with financial markets.
|
| It's a real shame that prediction markets aren't allowed to
| operate in the US. Markets (of any sort) are incredibly useful.
|
| Disallowing them because you can use them for gambling is
| throwing the baby out with the bath water.
| tialaramex wrote:
| In my country gambling is legal but regulated. And so you
| can, indeed, bet on political outcomes, subject to certain
| rules. Just go to a web site, prove you're eligible, deposit
| money, gamble.
|
| Now, I don't gamble, but in December 2020 I was able to use
| that platform to "bet" that Donald Trump had lost the US
| presidential election he lost the previous month. I "won" a
| bunch of money. Because lunatics had decided facts aren't
| true, we can just make up whatever we want, and it took a few
| weeks for that to get knocked down and meanwhile you could
| just bet against these morons.
|
| As to financial instruments: For a bunch of the instruments
| you are actually buying something, and these are clearly just
| fine. If you buy Oil futures or Pork futures that actually
| literally deliver oil (or pork) and you're holding them when
| they come due, you're getting oil (or pork). This is probably
| not what you wanted, but that's what those instruments do,
| the people who were _supposed_ to be buying them want oil, or
| pork, and so they 're happy, too bad for you.
|
| I agree that some derivative instruments might just be
| gambling, these instruments are also too risky and poorly
| understood, so if you say we should ban those with gambling I
| don't see why not. Again, gambling is legal in my country,
| and so are these derivatives, but the Americans can choose
| different, as they have on many things.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > Now, I don't gamble, but in December 2020 I was able to
| use that platform to "bet" that Donald Trump had lost the
| US presidential election he lost the previous month. I
| "won" a bunch of money. Because lunatics had decided facts
| aren't true, we can just make up whatever we want, and it
| took a few weeks for that to get knocked down and meanwhile
| you could just bet against these morons.
|
| Yep. Betting on politics in 2020 was as close to free money
| as you'll ever see. On _election night_ , the odds for
| Texas flipping blue were 70/30. Literally free money.
| User23 wrote:
| > Gambling means a game of chance/luck. Court cases over
| poker, regardless of which way the decision goes, hinge on
| whether the Court is convinced that poker is a game of skill,
| rather than luck.
|
| I think it really just has to have an element of uncertainty.
| For example one can gamble on chess tournaments. I suppose
| one can broadly construe an element of "luck" if Magnus
| somehow botches a game, but it strikes me as something quite
| different from whether or not one's lottery numbers come up.
|
| As you say, poker is the archetypical example of a skill game
| with an element of chance. Backgammon is another good
| example. I would say darts is another example that falls
| further on the skill end.
|
| > So if prediction markets are not allowed, why are day
| trading or stock futures allowed?
|
| As noted in another comment on this submission, it appears
| one can greatly increase the chances of regulators approving
| an activity by having former regulators on staff. Needless to
| say traditional finance companies enthusiastically hire those
| people.
| kube-system wrote:
| Prediction markets for sports is reported on a W2-G, and
| skilled people can consistently make gains doing sports
| betting.
|
| Stocks are different because they are assets. You get
| something for your money.
| jkqwzsoo wrote:
| Prediction markets (i.e., cash-settled futures) for
| interest rates, FX rates, volatility, financial index
| values, etc., on the other hand, don't require W2-Gs and
| are even tax advantaged.
| usgroup wrote:
| This has happened many times before. Why do governments close
| prediction markets? What sort of problems do they cause?
| akelly wrote:
| This is a huge blow to political discourse. PredictIt has been
| operating since 2014 with the approval of the CFTC as the largest
| election betting platform in the US. Today they received notice
| from the CFTC instructing them to cease operations by February
| 15th without clear justification for the decision.
|
| One year ago, YC backed betting market Kalshi launched with CFTC
| approval. They employ a former commissioner of the CFTC as Chief
| Regulatory Officer, and two weeks ago applied for CFTC approval
| to have election markets. And half a year ago, the popular
| unapproved blockchain betting market Polymarket was fined and
| shut down in the US by the CFTC.
|
| Further reading:
|
| https://twitter.com/NathanpmYoung/status/1555387422510264321
|
| https://www.cftc.gov/csl/22-08/download
|
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-passage-of-polymar...
| jdmoreira wrote:
| I also have strong suspicions this is related to Kalshi somehow
| belorn wrote:
| In term of political discourse it is/was a good source to
| verify the validity of some of the more up voted stuff on HN.
| One top comment a few years ago predicted that the US would
| abolish election and be a monarchy by 2020. An other that there
| would be a full scale nuclear third world war in 2019. There
| were one saying that the US would enter a new civil war by
| 2021. In each case I checked betting sites to see if such views
| held enough popular support, but alas I could not find any to
| bet against.
|
| If people who hold conspiracy theories put down money and lost,
| maybe that would do more to change how people think than any
| political debate ever could.
| pessimizer wrote:
| As far as I can tell from hanging out on Predictit for years,
| it's actually pretty shit at predicting things. That some
| event isn't something that you can gamble on, or that a
| particular outcome of an event isn't an option until five
| minutes before it actually happens, doesn't tell you
| anything.
|
| > If people who hold conspiracy theories put down money and
| lost
|
| If people who say that the government claim on X is true had
| to put money behind it, we'd see a massive wealth transfer
| from smirking status quo guys to little groups of conspiracy
| theorists. Half the time (like for example the missile strike
| on that family of saints as we left Afghanistan), the
| government line has been disproved before the press release
| even gets out; easy money.
|
| edit: if anything, Predictit acts as a summary of current
| media coverage/sentiment.
| bombcar wrote:
| > edit: if anything, Predictit acts as a summary of current
| media coverage/sentiment.
|
| This is exactly it; you have some small percentage of
| people "putting their money where their mouth is" but most
| of it is people trying to second guess and game everyone
| else (you could reliably make money trading shares on the
| news cycle, for example).
| r00fus wrote:
| Problem with your idea (which is conceptually valid) is that
| you can buy and sell on Predictit well before the closure of
| the "market/event". So many people who agreed with a
| politician or idea (that some event would happen) would still
| sell early (at 90c/1$) because they could use those funds in
| other markets.
|
| Worse still - you have people who would pump & dump the
| market - pushing the contra position (Trump wins 2020) and
| post comments showing showing holdings supporting contra, and
| then dump after it gains a significant share. I've heard of
| some predictit users doing this same operation 5x or more on
| a single market (an iconic example: Iowa Dem Primary 2020).
|
| So it's all speculation.
| frellus wrote:
| I don't understand why they can't just make them trades based on
| future political actors. Feels like that's what the futures
| market is in general - risk betting.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I wonder if some sort of cryptocoin/blockchain alternative could
| be created, that would be harder to shut down.
|
| It would probably have to be based on having an elected council
| (with an odd number of members) signing off on the outcome of a
| market. If people see a bias in their history (which of course
| should be public), they will factor that into their bids,
| hopefully discouraging people from getting on the council to make
| money on their own bids.
|
| And of course the council should be elected with some kind of
| ranked-choice/condorcet so you tend to elect centrists rather
| than extremists.
| Bostonian wrote:
| This is terrible. I wish things would go in the opposite
| direction, with the CFTC allowing futures exchanges such as the
| CME to trade presidential party election futures.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-05 23:00 UTC)