Subbed, this looks like an excellent development.

Wow. Completely useless algorithms then.


On the other hand, it looks like one of Nefario's goals is similar to one use case I have for prediction markets.

It starts out by providing a small amount of liquidity, and increases the amount of liquidity it provides as it profits from providing liquidity. This allows markets to initially make large moves in response to a small amount of trading volume, and then as a trading range develops that reflects agreement among traders, it takes increasingly large amounts of money to move the price.

500 bonds are now being offered for 1.1 BTC each.

That was fast. But two major problems:

1. "a prediction market for GLBSE events." What's that about? It should be a prediction market for any event, or perhaps any Bitcoin-related event.
2. Apparently this uses Inkling which 'uses an "automated market maker" to control trading.' I don't know if I like this, we should have the possibility to place bids and asks. (Well, at least the algorithms were designed by Robin Hanson who is pretty cool.)
3. Why is the currency $?

Looks like Nefario's goals with this are completely different from what I had in mind.

Unlike the real stock market or most other prediction markets, Inkling Markets uses an "automated market maker" to control trading.

In typical stock markets, a human buyer must be matched with a human seller of stock. For example, if Joe is selling 50 shares at $50/share, there must be a buyer willing to pay that price and vice versa. The price of the stock itself is based on the supply and demand of the finite number of shares in play. In a real stock market and even most prediction markets in existence today, these transactions are all handled by computers, enabling millions of transactions like this to take place automatically each day.

In Inkling Markets, we do not force a buyer to be matched with a seller, and vice versa. From a trader's perspective, Inkling Markets is always the buyer and seller of shares and there is no limit to the number of shares in play. Inkling Markets also sets the stock price according to demand or lack there of. If a trader buys shares, there is demand for the stock and its price goes up. If a trader sells, there is a lack of demand and the price goes down.

The principles behind our algorithms originate from research by Professor Robin Hanson at George Mason University. Here is some background about Hanson's automated market maker:

Current automated market makers over binary events suffer from two problems that make them impractical. First, they are unable to adapt to liquidity, so trades cause prices to move the same amount in both thick and thin markets. Sec- ond, under normal circumstances, the market maker runs at a deficit.

The amount of liquidity in LMSR [Hanson's logarithmic market scoring rule] is a parameter set a priori before the market maker knows what bets traders will place. Setting the liquidity is more art than science—a constant dilemma for almost everyone who has implemented LMSR. Too little liquidity makes prices fluctuate wildly af- ter every trade; too much makes prices barely budge even following large bets. Exacerbating the problem, the amount prices move for a fixed bet in LMSR is a constant. The 1,000,001st dollar moves the price as much as the first, counter to intuitive notions of liquidity.
Higher liquidity is good for traders but comes at the cost of increasing the market maker’s worst-case loss. In general, an LMSR operator can expect to lose money in proportion to the liquidity it provides (Pennock and Sami, 2007). The cost is rationalized as payment for traders’ information. Yet subsidized markets are the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of markets run at a profit. It’s no coin- cidence that most examples of LMSR in practice are games based on virtual currency rather than real money.

This is dumb. It looks at revenues, not expenses, it only looks at "income" taxes, etc. There is a story here but that infographic does not tell it, it will only preach to the choir.

Pam Sakuda was 55 when she found out she was dying. Shortly after having a tumor removed from her colon, she heard the doctor’s dreaded words: Stage 4; metastatic. Sakuda was given 6 to 14 months to live. Determined to slow her disease’s insidious course, she ran several miles every day, even during her grueling treatment regimens. By nature upbeat, articulate and dignified, Sakuda — who died in November 2006, outlasting everyone’s expectations by living for four years — was alarmed when anxiety and depression came to claim her after she passed the 14-month mark, her days darkening as she grew closer to her biological demise...

...Before Pam Sakuda died, she described her psilocybin experience on video: “I felt this lump of emotions welling up . . . almost like an entity,” Sakuda said, as she spoke straight into the camera. “I started to cry. . . . Everything was concentrated and came welling up and then . . . it started to dissipate, and I started to look at it differently. . . . I began to realize that all of this negative fear and guilt was such a hindrance . . . to making the most of and enjoying the healthy time that I’m having.” Sakuda went on to explain that, under the influence of the psilocybin, she came to a very visceral understanding that there was a present, a now, and that it was hers to have....

...Lauri Reamer is a 48-year-old survivor of adult-onset leukemia...but the illness and the brutal bone-marrow treatments she underwent left a deep mental scar, a profound fear that the cancer would return made it difficult to experience any joy in life. Her illness was lurking around every corner, waiting to haul her away. “When I was near death, I wasn’t so afraid of it,” Reamer said, “but once I went into remission, well, I had an intense fear and anxiety around relapse and death.”

...Griffiths says that he and his research team found an ideal range of dosage levels — 20 to 30 milligrams of psilocybin — that not only reliably stimulated “mystical insights” but also elicited “sustained positive changes in attitude, mood and behavior” in the study volunteers. Specifically, when Griffiths administered a psychological test called the Death Transcendance Scale at the 1- and 14-month follow-up, he saw subjects’ ratings rise on statements like “Death is never just an ending but part of a process” and “My death does not end my personal existence.”

...The subjects who have undergone psilocybin treatment report an increased appreciation for the time they have left, a deeper awareness of their roles in the cycle of life and an increased motivation to invest their days with meaning.

If David Nutt, in Britain, is able to prove the efficacy of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, would the F.D.A. ever consider approving it for that use? And if that ever were to happen, what sort of slippery slope would we find ourselves on? If, say, end-stage cancer patients can have it, then why not all individuals over the age of, say, 75? If treatment-resistant depressives can have it, then why not their dysthymic counterparts, who suffer in a lower key but whose lives are clearly compromised by their chronic pain? And if dysthymic individuals can have it, then why not those suffering from agoraphobia, shut up day and night in cramped quarters, Xanax bottles littered everywhere?

Halpern is not particularly worried about this theoretical future, in large part because he doesn’t see much hope for psilocybin as a medicine. “There’s no money in it,” he says. “What drug company is going to invest millions in a substance widely available in our flora and fauna?”

Why confine this to just the dying? This powerful intervention could be used with young adults who could then reap the benefits of it much earlier.

Several questions have been approved and are active.

I believe that I also hold the power of deciding the answer of the question (as the admin). I'll be happy to hand this off to someone else who is trustworthy if this takes off (if not then I won't have to).

I think it's the question creator, but when they ask the question they need to state where the information comes from, i.e. in the Bitcoin price question the answer is determined by the average price on MtGox at a specific date...or something like that.

I read the forum plenty, please direct me to a place where you announced your offering prior to my own proposal, preferably in a relevant section.

You may be right that I am missing out on IRC, but it doesn't seem like a very productive medium to me. I can usually be found in #bitcoin-il though.

I don't follow mpex closely, nor do I see a reason why I should.

That's... Interesting, I guess.

Do I understand it right that I hardly can buy the BFLS.FUTURES on the market as I don't know from whom I do buy them and where he was on the list.
Do you still offer the futures for 0.7 for the minirig? How does it work? If I ask for let say 20 - you put ask order of 20@0.7 to let me buy in or how?

We could but I'd think it would be better to have it as a separate twitter feed.

Nice work stochastic. I hope this could calm down some pricing craziness of certain assets in the GLBSE in the long run.

One suggestion though: is it more appropriate to calculate the dividend returns with (dividend of last week)/(average price of last week)? It could prevent someone from manipulating the result by putting a fake ask wall, say, 1-2 hours before you post each week's report.

did that include the glbse forums at https://glbse.com/forum/index.php

I'm currently locked out until I get a password reset, but I also did a hunt around for these earlier this week and couldn't find anything.

marked

Well the idea developed over time.  Originally they were "priced" at 1.00 and paid a 0.28 dividend, and we were going to insure them for 25% of 1.00.  Then it was pointed out that it would be better to treat them more like zero coupon bonds with a face value of 1.28 and insure that for 25% (0.32) so we kind of got stuck with the 1.28 face value.  However, it is kind of nice the way it is.  The minimum bid is 1.00 and the max bid is 1.28.  Doing it the other way the minimum bid woudl be 0.78125 with a face value of 1.00000.  We may switch to that in the future.  Perhaps when we start each issue on it's second round we will rewrite the contracts to the more standard form (0.78125 minimum, face value of 1.00000).  If BS&T changes their program we will most certainly change ours and at that time we will probably move to the 1.00000 face value system.  Thanks!

I proposed cutting all Earth military budgets by half (which does not disturb the balance of power) and putting those trillions of dollars per year into research toward practical mass produced warp drive

I love stock markets overall because I'm greedy toward maximizing the productivity of Earth for everyone

lets look at 3 students...a high school graduate, a guy that went to university for a few years and a doctor...

i think logically you would think...unless your the doctor, you would want tuition to increase. In the end we are all paying for the doctors education, and he is the one that will be making the biggest salary. so I do not understand the whole not wanting to pay for your own education.

another problem is for those like me who went to college for a few years but got kicked out for my lack of interest and attendance nd failing marks. I wasted taxpayers money, and the right thing for me to do was to pay for my own failures.

thanks for picking up that tab...

its a no brainer, paying your own way is the way to go.

There is a good reason to try and prosecute and place people in prison, specially in the US OF A.

Some shocking statistics shows that the privately owned(yes most prisons seem to be privately owned by large corporate groups) prisons profit upwards of $50k per prisoner per year from the government.

So get caught with weed and they throw you in some arbitrary prison for a year or 2, thats a easy $100k profit for the prison you end up at and a -$100k from the government and directly paid by taxpayers.

Fucking depressing how corrupt all these things are, its not about putting real convicts behind bars anymore.