2014 USD/mBTC Price Prediction Contest

[RandomPedestrianN9]

TO DA MOON! 1 000 000 USD by the end of week, who disagrees is FUD spreader and troll. My prediction is based on logic and facts.

[Foxpup]

TO DA MOON! 1 000 000 USD by the end of week, who disagrees is FUD spreader and troll. My prediction is based on logic and facts.

My prediction, on the other hand, is based on my having paid the entry fee for the contest. Please refrain from spreading your nonsense in this thread until you're willing to put your money where your mouth is.

[Predatorian]

Ofc price will be higher in future, only need some time for it.

[holomen]

I do believe that this RP post should belong here, but correct me if I'm wrong :

The trial round for the Price Prediction Contest, started in 2014-4-17 and ended 2014-5-17.

The price ended up being 448.39 $/BTC.

The participants received points as follows:

sgbett   1,7231
Trolololo   1,7231
bcdev   1,5213
chessnut   1,3533
Its About Sharing   1,2692
Guinpen   0,8154
wachtwoord   0,6809
pietje   0,6809
rpietila   0,5128
wilfried   0,5128
Bronstad   0,2967
elg   0,167
ArticMine   -0,748
HeliKopterBen   -1,7543
Superluz   -1,9746
ibuyltc   -122,8316     <- ELIMINATED (less than -20 points)

Congrats market wizards!

[wachtwoord]

I do believe that this RP post should belong here, but correct me if I'm wrong :

The trial round for the Price Prediction Contest, started in 2014-4-17 and ended 2014-5-17.

The price ended up being 448.39 $/BTC.

The participants received points as follows:

sgbett   1,7231
Trolololo   1,7231
bcdev   1,5213
chessnut   1,3533
Its About Sharing   1,2692
Guinpen   0,8154
wachtwoord   0,6809
pietje   0,6809
rpietila   0,5128
wilfried   0,5128
Bronstad   0,2967
elg   0,167
ArticMine   -0,748
HeliKopterBen   -1,7543
Superluz   -1,9746
ibuyltc   -122,8316     <- ELIMINATED (less than -20 points)

Congrats market wizards!

Did I submit a test round prediction? Oh wait, I seem to recall something. Where can I find this prediction? (it was just posted in the open in a thread right?).

[sgbett]

click on the "Quote from: rpietila on Today at 06:51:21 AM" link in the quoted text

edit: around page 143 in that thread

[rpietila]

I do believe that this RP post should belong here, but correct me if I'm wrong :

This thread did not exist yet at the time of the test round

Cross-post is fine.

[wachtwoord]

click on the "Quote from: rpietila on Today at 06:51:21 AM" link in the quoted text

edit: around page 143 in that thread

Thanks! Lol at my prediction for the test round, it was a semi-joke to show I would "bet" very concentrated. Of course my actual prediction (while still very focused) is far less concentrated

[holomen]

I do believe that this RP post should belong here, but correct me if I'm wrong :

This thread did not exist yet at the time of the test round

Cross-post is fine.

aha, this seems to be true. Hope I haven't misguided anyone. Sgbett really makes good bets.

Then I'm Glad to see the steady progress since, on this inspired Thread.

[dnaleor]

less than 2 weeks left... Come on Bitcoin, wanna see the price in the range [562.34;630.95]

BUY BUY BUY  

Even though my top score is between 398.11 and 446.67 I won't complain if your prediction comes true

I wouldn't mind an exchange rate between 501.19 and 562.33.
In that case, I get 1.97 points

With the current exchange rate, I get only 0.75 points

[wachtwoord]

less than 2 weeks left... Come on Bitcoin, wanna see the price in the range [562.34;630.95]

BUY BUY BUY  

Even though my top score is between 398.11 and 446.67 I won't complain if your prediction comes true

I wouldn't mind an exchange rate between 501.19 and 562.33.
In that case, I get 1.97 points

With the current exchange rate, I get less than 1: 0.75 points

I get minus 0.35 for 501.19 through 562.33. I won't complain if it happens though.

Above $891 before the end of the month I'm out of the competition. I'll be quite content with that outcome as well.

[sgbett]

This is one of my favourite books ever... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games

This is one of my favourite blog posts ever... http://oliveremberton.com/2014/life-is-a-game-this-is-your-strategy-guide/

I used to play a game called earth 2025, and then later another called StargateWars. Both strategy/resource/efficiency type games, huge timesinks. I would spend hours thinking of how to optimise my play. Turn out these are transferable skills.

Money is just a sub game. Complicated by the fact you are compelled by your human desires and emotions to play a less than perfect game. That's just part of the challenge though. Knowing you can't play prefect you have to devise a strategy that still works. When BTC cam along it was like I'd discovered some crazy bonus side quest. Some secrete room that you stumble across in adventure games full of traps and treasure. Its interesting because its fairly easy to do pretty well, but the temptation to do *really* well could make you end up doing really badly.

So far I'm doing pretty well on this sub quest, I think all them years playing games give you a real advantage.

As for this contest, I devised a strategy that maximises my chance of winning. Not just to win the contest itself, but to try and ensure the best overall outcome for me. I placed more importance in winning in scenarios where the prize was worth winning, hence I weigh in heavily bullish in my guesses. My goal was/is if BTC goes nowhere, then I have no chance of winning the $600, but if it goes to $10k I want the highest chance of winning $16k. To win is to understand the scoring system and how best to use it to get points.

Because of the format - i.e. having to guess 8 months out, harvesting big points for black swan type events felt the most statistically sound (most +EV) way to play, especially given bit coins historic price volatility. I also based it on my experience of how people tend to assign probability to events. They often under assign probability to outliers, and over assign to stasis, in particular when long timescales are involved. In the trial round I played this way, because it was a short time. However in this contest the timespan is huge, and so the chance of 'black swan' is far higher than people intuit. Rpteila mentions this earlier in the thread when he talks about the potential for price to be vastly different from where it is now.

For this reason I knew I wouldn't have to assign too much probability to outliers and still be way ahead in terms of points if they came true. I would still have enough to defend from elimination in the case of no price action. Finally, it's impossible to get big points on no price action because everyone is going to cluster their probabilities around the current price, so even if you are right, you are fighting for scraps.

If you can accurately predict where the price is going over 8 months, then you would easily beat my strategy, but the odds are that you can't do that, if the price does start to rise quick I have already locked in big scores from the first round. So even if you assign high probabilities in the coming months, everyone else will be adjusting their distributions upwards too, limiting your winnings.

Its still a way to go and as other players see how I'm playing they might try and adjust accordingly, but I think by then it will be too late. This first month was the critical one, ensuring you get big points for any large movements over the coming months, whilst protecting yourself from elimination if the price doesn't move.

For those who would say this is gaming (well, yeah it is, see first few links!) ...my entries represent the most statistically likely spread of price action imho. That's why I think they are most likely to win. So yeah that's gaming - and I think is ultimately what rpteila wants out of this - the most statistically likely spread of future price action!

[wachtwoord]

This is one of my favourite books ever... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games

This is one of my favourite blog posts ever... http://oliveremberton.com/2014/life-is-a-game-this-is-your-strategy-guide/

I used to play a game called earth 2025, and then later another called StargateWars. Both strategy/resource/efficiency type games, huge timesinks. I would spend hours thinking of how to optimise my play. Turn out these are transferable skills.

Money is just a sub game. Complicated by the fact you are compelled by your human desires and emotions to play a less than perfect game. That's just part of the challenge though. Knowing you can't play prefect you have to devise a strategy that still works. When BTC cam along it was like I'd discovered some crazy bonus side quest. Some secrete room that you stumble across in adventure games full of traps and treasure. Its interesting because its fairly easy to do pretty well, but the temptation to do *really* well could make you end up doing really badly.

So far I'm doing pretty well on this sub quest, I think all them years playing games give you a real advantage.

As for this contest, I devised a strategy that maximises my chance of winning. Not just to win the contest itself, but to try and ensure the best overall outcome for me. I placed more importance in winning in scenarios where the prize was worth winning, hence I weigh in heavily bullish in my guesses. My goal was/is if BTC goes nowhere, then I have no chance of winning the $600, but if it goes to $10k I want the highest chance of winning $16k. To win is to understand the scoring system and how best to use it to get points.

Because of the format - i.e. having to guess 8 months out, harvesting big points for black swan type events felt the most statistically sound (most +EV) way to play, especially given bit coins historic price volatility. I also based it on my experience of how people tend to assign probability to events. They often under assign probability to outliers, and over assign to stasis, in particular when long timescales are involved. In the trial round I played this way, because it was a short time. However in this contest the timespan is huge, and so the chance of 'black swan' is far higher than people intuit. Rpteila mentions this earlier in the thread when he talks about the potential for price to be vastly different from where it is now.

For this reason I knew I wouldn't have to assign too much probability to outliers and still be way ahead in terms of points if they came true. I would still have enough to defend from elimination in the case of no price action. Finally, it's impossible to get big points on no price action because everyone is going to cluster their probabilities around the current price, so even if you are right, you are fighting for scraps.

If you can accurately predict where the price is going over 8 months, then you would easily beat my strategy, but the odds are that you can't do that, if the price does start to rise quick I have already locked in big scores from the first round. So even if you assign high probabilities in the coming months, everyone else will be adjusting their distributions upwards too, limiting your winnings.

Its still a way to go and as other players see how I'm playing they might try and adjust accordingly, but I think by then it will be too late. This first month was the critical one, ensuring you get big points for any large movements over the coming months, whilst protecting yourself from elimination if the price doesn't move.

For those who would say this is gaming (well, yeah it is, see first few links!) ...my entries represent the most statistically likely spread of price action imho. That's why I think they are most likely to win. So yeah that's gaming - and I think is ultimately what rpteila wants out of this - the most statistically likely spread of future price action!

I optimized for the "going nowhere case" (actually for the very slowly growing case but it;s so much slower than most people think it's effectively the same) because I'm heavily invested in Bitcoin. This contest is a slight diversification 9and a +EV one due to Risto's donation to the prize pool). I hope I lose and the price rises much faster than I predicted.

[dnaleor]

less than 2 weeks left... Come on Bitcoin, wanna see the price in the range [562.34;630.95]

BUY BUY BUY  

Even though my top score is between 398.11 and 446.67 I won't complain if your prediction comes true

I wouldn't mind an exchange rate between 501.19 and 562.33.
In that case, I get 1.97 points

With the current exchange rate, I get only 0.75 points

562.34, here we come! 

[wachtwoord]

less than 2 weeks left... Come on Bitcoin, wanna see the price in the range [562.34;630.95]

BUY BUY BUY  

Even though my top score is between 398.11 and 446.67 I won't complain if your prediction comes true

I wouldn't mind an exchange rate between 501.19 and 562.33.
In that case, I get 1.97 points

With the current exchange rate, I get only 0.75 points

562.34, here we come! 

When we break 530 we seem to be going quite a bit higher soon after.

[rpietila]

New entrants: You have 4 hours to go, to participate in the contest starting from next month!

The entrance fee must be paid now, the prediction submitted before the month changes.

Welcome! 

[dnaleor]

Stop this rally! I want my maximum points... Exchange rate MUST stay below 630.95 USD 
 
(otherwise, I will get significant less points)

Anyway... Starting to making a draft for the next predictions.
I think I will be even more bullish than in the previous prediction 

[sgbett]

Its looking pretty close!

[Foxpup]

I'm about halfway through making the next round of predictions. I don't think I'll change my strategy too much.

EDIT: Done. Prediction sent.

[dnaleor]

Just finished my prediction. Will send it in a minute!

less than 3 hours to go... I Hope the exchange rate stays below 630.96