alt Hacker NewsI really wonder whether privacy would actually be the answer here --- prediction markets as they are now where the odds are public really shouldn't be called prediction markets, they should be called "outcome-shaping markets" because largely that is what they do, they let people shape real-world outcomes with massive amounts of liquidity. If instead these were privacy protocols where you can see how much liquidity is on a specific market, but no one can decrypt how much liquidity is on each side until the outcome executes (i.e. using threshold encryption, commit reveal, etc), you'd have a very different situation where your ability to predict in advance is what gets rewarded and there is no ability to "copy trade"
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>outcome shaping markets
I heard something remarkable many years ago, that there are websites on the dark web where you can bet on which day someone is going to die. In other words you can pay to have them assassinated in a very indirect way. It's like kickstarter, for assassinations.
When enough funds are raised, a willing volunteer simply places a bet on the day when they plan to carry out the deed. So they win the bet by default.
Obviously this is a horrible use case, and I'm not sure if such websites actually exist or are just rumors. But I have to wonder about the model itself.
I often thought about an inverse Kickstarter. Where you post an idea, people fundraise the idea, so the idea itself is validated. And then worthy contenders step forth to build it. (I guess donors could vote on who ends up getting the money to actually build it, or if there's enough they could even get divided between them for prototypes.)
For example, there seems to be a lot of interest in e-ink laptops, and a successor to flash. People have been complaining for decades, but not much gets built. How much interest is there? Well we can measure that objectively! You vote with your wallet.
Right now, it's a "pull" system. You have to hope and wait for a small number of highly motivated people. You have to hope they will launch something you're interested in. But what if you could push?
I think we could do a lot more proactiveness on the crowd side of things. As a recent article here mentioned... people actually do know what they want.
And of course this idea isn't just limited to products and services. I think there's a lot of potential for this idea in government as well.
Speaking of privacy, there's a cost to fame and notoriety in societies in which these systems exist. imho markets like this, taken to their extremes, incentivize small local communities, local governance, and very effective communication across boundaries between communities, since they have an event horizon that means individuals needn't be known outside -- where you never want to be known too much as an individual outside your circle of community.
I'm not sure that sounds like such a bad world tbh. I just don't like how it gets there
This doesn't make any sense…
If you want to bet on a binary outcome without knowing how much other participants are betting on the 2 possible outcomes, that's a bookie, not a prediction market.
The entire rationale for claiming that prediction markets "aren't just gambling" and have a legitimate social value is that they surface sentiment and valuation in a transparent and credible way.
(And that's even before we get to the fact that any kind of betting dependent on journalistic work could incentivize outcomes like the death threats reported here.)
> but no one can decrypt how much liquidity is on each side until the outcome executes
This would remove the supposed purpose of prediction markets, where you can get information about the probability of an event based on how much people are betting on it.
Why would anybody make a bet if they don't know the odds or payout?
Surely I am misreading what you mean here. But your comment very much reads like you think "Iran strikes Israel on March 10" at 25% odds is what in fact caused Iran to strike Israel on March 10. I'll search the space of other interpretations in the mean time, but if you could help me out here and clarify…
I assume a lot of people don't know the fundamental odds of something happening but have a vague sense on if Mr. Market has gone bananas or not.
Should be the opposite IMO. I don't think anonymity should exist on websites that are publicly accessible.
If people want to start forming their own meshnets over wifi or LoRA or whatever and remain anonymous, then all the power to them - because those kind of people are the exact opposite of the type of people who make death threats to journalists.
That wouldn’t solve the issue in the article. The gamblers threatening the journalist know how much money they individually gambled on an outcome, which means they know how much they stand to lose if they cannot pressure a source to alter reporting in their favor.