Bitcoin Forum

I've seen what we have so far (bets of bitcoin, and bitbet), and these offer no where near the advantages and freedom of betting as a true prediction market like Intrade have.  Is anyone working or thinking of working on something similar?

We (minilottomayhem.com) agree, and we are considering building something. What kinds of events are you most interested in betting on?

no true prediction markets exist in bitcoin

Sporting events, Economic events, among others.

Just as soon as you sit down, read this (http://polimedia.us/trilema/2013/least-likely-to-succeed-character-the-upseller/#comment-92136) and implement it.

Well i skimmed through that, seems to suggest hedging with Intrade, or vice-versa.  If that's what you were trying to get at. Of course Intrade has been down for a while now(the reason i posted this).  Thanks anyway

It's more you clone Intrade and then Hedge on BitBet.

Well if you go to the trouble of cloning Intrade why not just allow it to accept Bitcoin.

Because A WEBSITE IS NOT A SERVICE any more than colored canvas is art. Sure, some art presents itself as colored canvas. This has nothing to do.

I'm thinking of working on something similar to Inklingmarkets or old hubdub like site with BTC-e dot com like interface. But I'm just thinking you know. I would prefer to become a part of this project if any, my role would be market maker of this lovely project. Don't hesitate to message me, if you're working on such a project. I would like to become a volunteer to it.

Well i'm not sure if you're high, and/or your English is just not that great.  Either way you seem to have missed my point.

Yeah, surely what happened here was me missing your point.

I too would like to see prediction markets flourish, for reasons like reigning in pundits (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/11/rip-intrade-the-last-best-hope-for-pundit-accountability/), and to see if there's anything to Robin Hanson's fascinating proposal (http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.pdf).

And I too would like to see something more in the style of Intrade. MPOE-PR, I read your link above (http://polimedia.us/trilema/2013/least-likely-to-succeed-character-the-upseller/#comment-92136), and clicked through to the link about mutual betting (http://polimedia.us/trilema/2013/lets-understand-mutual-betting-together/). And I am open to the idea that I'm wrong - though I'm familiar with basics of game theory, expected value, and the like, I am not an expert.

But so far I still don't see why the mutual approach is supposed to be better. In fact, thinking about it, it still seems to me considerably worse than the Intrade approach.

You say in your link explaining mutual betting, for example, that the Intrade style will take a house cut. But of course this is also true of mutual betting systems. And you say that weighted mutual betting systems allows for hedging. But of course this is also true of the Intrade approach.

Meanwhile, the time-weighting system seems to have two major disadvantages. The first problem is minor conceptually, but I think a big one PR-wise: it makes probabilities and potential returns relatively opaque, as your stubborn "upseller" demonstrated in your post.

The second problem is much more systematic: information relevant to the bet does not flow linearly - it makes big occasional leaps. But the weighting of time of bet placements does move linearly. So it does not track advantages of information accurately.

For example, I recently re-watched the classic old movie Trading Places. In it, there's an all-important secret "crop report" to be released on a specified date by the US Department of Agriculture - a report very relevant to the price of orange futures. Let's suppose this is a binary bet ("crops to be above X bushels") and on both a weighted-mutual site and on the intrade-like site this binary bet is trading, on the day before the announcement, at an implied probability of .2 (ie 20% chance of being true, or 4-1 odds).

Suppose the day before the report my own informed estimate puts the truth at more like .4 probability. I have 20 BTC to play with, say. I bet 10 BTC on the weighted-mutual site and 10 BTC on the intrade-like site. And to keep all other factors constant, let's say those purchases are enough to push the implied odds up to .25 on both sites.

Now it is the next day, and the crop report is released. Suppose the crop report makes it very likely for the binary bet to be true. Betting on both sites leap to an implied probability of .8. On the weighted-mutual site, I am now looking at 4-5 payout, plus the very slight advantage of a one-day extra weighting. I am punished for trying to do price discovery before information comes in. On the Intrade site, if the proposition settles at true, I will benefit much more; even better, I can sell all shares now to lock in a large profit. My risk of betting before more information is released has been rewarded, the way it should be.

• To make it more concrete, say it's the first day the bets open, and there's no house take on either site. On the weighted-mutual site I see the bets at 30-120, so my 10 BTC pushes it to 40-120. And on the intrade-like site, I buy 40 shares (worth 1 BTC each if true, and 0 if false) at .25, for 10 BTC. Suppose after the end of the next day - the crop-report day - no further bets or information come in until the proposition settles as true. Then the weighted-mutual ends at 480-120, so I get my 10 back, plus 2.5 BTC (120/480*10), plus some tiny margin for weight. Meanwhile at the intrade-like site I get my 10 back, plus 30 BTC. (Or I lock in my profit early, and sell my 40 shares at .8, for a 32 BTC gross return.)

I'd love to see a political/predictions market or exchange.  It should be really easy to run, and as a user matching exchange rather than betting against the house, shouldn't even be too hard to set up.  Even right now, there's no reason sportsbooks can't start offering odds for politics and other predictions (Oscars? American Idol? Pinnacle always had those).

someone like btcsportsmatch.com should be able to make this happen SUPER easily, even if they just allowed users to submit or open new bets or markets.

Look no further, you can be the owner of one: I have one for sale!

It is a betting exchange, users bet against each others at fixed odds. It is complete and ready to go, also allows user-created events (with commission-sharing).

See the sales thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=191126.0

Has anyone used bitcoin prophet?