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Technology Review Launches Futures Market 160

Posted by CowboyNeal from the betting-chips-on-chips dept.
prostoalex writes "MIT Technology Review launched a futures market, allowing people to bet on ideas. A similar concept was at some point introduced by the Pentagon, but later the project was shut down. Currently you can bet on major stock indices, on answers to yes/no questions ('Will Oracle acquire PeopleSoft Inc before March 31st, 2004?') and technological achievements ('When will there be a commercially available electronic device using ultrawideband technology?')" Although the game doesn't use real money, the prizes are pretty swell. I like to think of it as the nerd's version of sportsbook.
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Technology Review Launches Futures Market More

Technology Review Launches Futures Market

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  • Richard Stallman coming to make us an offer we can't refuse.

  • Whats to stop this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mesach ( 191869 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:10AM (#7414837)
    What's to stop this from becoming real? Why can't I bet on things like this in Vegas or Atlantic City?

    • Re:Whats to stop this (Score:5, Informative)

      by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:20AM (#7414878)
      basically, you have to either run it as a gambling operation or as a securities exchange. As a gambling operation, you can't run it across state lines, so you have to go out of the country. There are a couple such; tradesports.com is the biggest, iirc. If you want to make it an actual exchange, that costs $1M to the SEC. This has so far been prohibitive. The other thing of note is the Iowa Electronic Markets, run by U of Iowa, which bet on the presidential elections. They have special permission from the SEC as a research institution, but are highly limited in what they can trade, who can trade, and how much. So, in short, it's hard to do in the US, but there are places doing it.

      Also of note is Foresight Exchange [ideosphere.com], a long-established play money market. It seems a lot of people are interested in it being real, but unfortunately it seems difficult at present (and the few there are charge high comissions).

    • Re:Whats to stop this (Score:2, Insightful)

      by altek ( 119814 )
      Well, think of the opportunity for corruption. I mean, there were reasons that they gov't didn't really go ahead with the program when the original story was posted. Say there's a bet on there for "When will the next terrorist attack be?" Obviously someone is going to see the opportunity to make money off of any real situation and create a self-fulfilling prophecy...

      Do you really want to live in a world where major world events are influenced by people trying to make a quick easy buck off gambling?
      • Do you really want to live in a world where major world events are influenced by people trying to make a quick easy buck off gambling?

        hmm... isn't that what capitalism is all about? I mean, isn't a sizeable chunk of the stock market pure gambling?

        Sivaram Velauthapillai
      • Welcome to the commodities & derivatives market :)
      • Say there's a bet on there for "When will the next terrorist attack be?" Obviously someone is going to see the opportunity to make money off of any real situation and create a self-fulfilling prophecy...

        Hogwash. No terrorist would log on to a defense sponsored application and provide indications of their plans. The entire point of the market was to gather information, not let people make a buck off of terrorism.

        There are plenty of current markets that would be far more effective for that anyway.
    • There used to be occasional promotions like this (and maybe still are) on the Howard Stern show. For example, one of their gambling advertisers was taking bets on whether or not Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck would get married by a certain date. You were betting with, and stood a chance to win or lose, real money.

      I can't remember now whether it was GoldenPalace.com or BetOnSports.com doing that particular promotion... Both of them are Stern show sponsors, and both of them are based offshore. But wacky, off

      • Re:Offshore casinos, for one (Score:4, Informative)

        by tiled_rainbows ( 686195 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @06:22AM (#7415432) Homepage Journal
        From what you say, it sounds as though this kind of thing is much less common in the US than in Britain (where I am). Here in the UK, where gambling is much more legally, and socially, acceptable, bookies (high street gambling shops) take bets on most things that can be bet on. Huge amounts of money change hands during the general elections. And in political reporting, for example with the recent leadership challenge to the leader of the opposition, it's very common for the reporters to quote the odds given to various outcomes by the big bookies.
        Other non-sports bets include:
        Celebrity and royal marriages / breakups.
        The Booker Prize (a bit like your national book award, I think)
        Outcomes of television programmes such as Big Brother
        The weather on Christmas day (snow / not snow).

        I even heard a science programme about SETI on the radio where they got a big bookie to give odds on the discovery of alien intelligence.
        • And the sports indicies are even more similar to this. I forget any of the names but there are a whole bunch of indicies where you can buy futures and options on sporting events and other major happenings. People buy "stock" in them for (large amounts of) real money. I know several people who I work with who participate and win/lose substantial figures regularly.

    • Re:Whats to stop this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tessaiga ( 697968 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:47AM (#7414960)
      What's to stop this from becoming real? Why can't I bet on things like this in Vegas or Atlantic City?
      Much of this is already "real". You can already go to the financial markets today to try to profit from what you think is going to happen to the price of commodities (via futures contracts), interest rates (swaps), stocks (options), etc. The key line from the article is:
      Innovation Futures is a prediction game.
      Similar to fantasy stock market games, this one lets players trade on all kinds of events.
      The point of this seems to be to take a "real" game (the financial markets) and apply it in a virtual form, not vice versa. I'm sure Vegas and Atlantic City both have stockbrokers sitting around somewhere that would be happy to take your cash.

      What I disagree with is this statement later in the article:

      Innovation Futures, like any speculative market, aggregates the individual expertise and opinions of well-informed and well-motivated traders into a single easily understood number: a stock's trading price. This number can be taken as indicating the collectively agreed-upon likelihood of a particular outcome in the real-world. Even non-participants may thus benefit from such market signals.
      Real markets (and the "terror market" which the US proposed earlier) contain information because people work very hard to make sure their investments perform well and that they don't suffer financial losses. In stock market games, on the other hand, participants aren't penalized for losing money, only for winning huge amounts of it. (The article even prevents you from going bankrupt: "When your account's net worth is below a certain level ... you'll be given a choice of contracts that you can get for free and then resell on the markets against fresh cash.".) What tends to happen here (and I've seen it plenty of times in stock market games where they offer cash prizes to the winners) is that people start loading up on risky ventures, essentially turning the whole contest into a lottery rather than a reasoned investment strategy. I really doubt that under this sort of a situation any valid information can be read from the virtual prices.

      • Real markets (and the "terror market" which the US proposed earlier) contain information because people work very hard to make sure their investments perform well and that they don't suffer financial losses. In stock market games, on the other hand, participants aren't penalized for losing money, only for winning huge amounts of it.

        I don't know how the MIT version will turn out, but the Foresight Exchange does fairly well. It seems that people tend to care about their accounts, and for the most part p

        • I don't know how the MIT version will turn out, but the Foresight Exchange does fairly well.

          One difference would be that the Foresight Exchange doesn't offer prizes. It probably has trouble attracting enough qualified players though...

          • Yes, the lack of prizes probably helps. There is some cheating, but it's usually fairly blatant and quickly noticed. There are about 6500 registered players, and I think somewhere around 2000 of those are currently active. It's not as many as would be nice, but it seems to be enough to keep prices reasonable and keep the major claims relatively liquid. Feel free to join :)

    • Why can't I bet on things like this in Vegas or Atlantic City?

      I don't know about Vegas, but in Atlantic City you can only bet on things which the New Jersey government specifically approves for you to bet on, and these things have to be approved by the voters in a special election. It's right in the New Jersey Constitution.

    • How about the same thing that stops it from being legal to gamble on professional wrestling. You can only gamble on what's technically a RISK. If the outcome is possibly known, there is no risk involved, and thus no reason for Vegas to make it something to gamble on. That would result in them losing money, which = bad.

  • DNF (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Will Duke Nukem Forever be released? Ever?"
    [ ] yes
    [ ] no
    • I think the Futures Market implies that the subject in question is at least somewhat possible. I don't really think Duke Forever applies here. Though you might consider trying Team Fortress 2.

  • hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:17AM (#7414862)
    what's the over/under on the amount of time until emacs becomes self-aware?
    • Well, I suspect it's somewhat after the time that humans can figure out how to communicate with it, and likely shortly before they figure out that they don't want to anyway.

      • Re:hmm (Score:3, Funny)

        by Hank Reardon ( 534417 )
        Communicating with emacs is easy:
        ((((((((( setq self-aware-emacs-polite-greeting "Hi!" )))))))))

      • It's easy to communicate with emacs. Simply type this...

        M-x doctor RET

        For those new to emacs, that "M-" means the meta key which might be the Esc button or it might be the Alt button. "RET" means press the Enter button.

  • In the classic Shockwave Rider, Brunner describes exactly these kind of contests. In the book they were called "Delphi Polls", and were used by the government to both predict the future and, more subtley, guide public opinion.

    Shockwave Rider was, of course, a novelization of Toffler's Future Shock -- I don't know if that's where the Delphi Polls idea came from.

    thad
    • An amusing idea. Supposedly one can get a correct answer to an unknowable question, simply by polling enough people with enough knowledge of the subject to have an opinion. I loved Brunner's description of it:

      "Even though nobody knows what's going on around here, everybody knows what's going on around here."
      • polling enough people with enough knowledge of the subject to have an opinion

        I'd like to paraphrase that into "Nobody knows what's going on around here, but everybody has an opinion".

        Just look at the audience votes in Who wants to be a millionaire. I saw some screenshots from the German version where this lady was asked what George W. Bush's first name was (THE FULL NAME WAS *IN* *THE* *QUESTION*!) and first she used the 50-50 lifeline to eliminate all options except George and Edward. Then she asked

  • I hope they consider making this rule: (Score:5, Funny)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:19AM (#7414876) Homepage Journal
    No betting on when a time machine will be invented. Because the person who guesses when, is probably the bastard that did invent it.

    If this post didn't make your head spin on your shoulders and implode, then you have a better temproral mind than I.

    • No betting on when a time machine will be invented. Because the person who guesses when, is probably the bastard that did invent it.

      If this post didn't make your head spin on your shoulders and implode, then you have a better temproral mind than I.

      Sorry, my head was already spinning on my shoulders from a lack of sleep. I'm inventing a time machine, you see.

    • Well, it didn't make my head spin or implode. But if you like that, how about the question of why, if time machines are possible, I haven't invented one and moved back in time to teach myself how to invent one yet?

      Just a thought.

      • Since I actually believe in time travel (no joke), I can answer that.

        There are two possibilities:

        Possibly I: messing with the past is banned

        It may happen that the time travellers may have banned interference with the past. This is quite plausible for many reasons. First of all, it is normal for most humans to feel that they shouldn't be messing with ancient cultures. For example, I don't see too many people going and destroying the pyramids or the Aztec temples and so forth. People do it but it
        • Nah, you miss the point. If you all could time travel and I couldn't, I could logically create a time machine using the information I learned from travelling back in time to tell myself how to create a time machine. This accounts for possibility I and II, because I would still be able to create a time machine right here right now (if it works that way, essentially--if it requires massive amounts of energy and wormholes and whatnot, then obviously I wouldn't be able to).

          If there are multiple universes, i

    • http://www.cheapass.com: U.S. Patent #1. [cheapass.com]

      Anyway, this thread reminds me of one of the CheapAss games:

      Game Synopsis: U.S. Patent Number 1 is a racing game. Every player is a scientist who has invented time travel, and now everyone is racing to the Patent Office to prove who invented it first. Because you have a time machine, it's not enough to get to the Patent Office fast. You actually have to go back in time, to the day the Patent Office opened!

      During this race you will upgrade your machine with some

  • residents of the United States and Canada (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:22AM (#7414890) Homepage Journal
    http://www.technologyreview.com/trif/rules.asp
    No purchase is necessary. The promotion is open solely to legal residents of the United States and Canada (except Puerto Rico, and the Province of Quebec) who are 18 years of age or older. Children aged 13-17, persons residing outside of the United States or English-speaking Canada, and persons residing in areas where this Promotion is void (including Puerto Rico and the Province of Quebec) may play the Game for recreation, but may not participate in Prizes.
    Crud.

  • How to win (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ortholattice ( 175065 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:27AM (#7414906)
    1. Set up 2^n accounts.

    2. Bet half one way, half the other. Discard the half that loses.

    3. n--

    4. If n>0, goto step 2.

    5. Profit!!!

    • Re:How to win (Score:4, Funny)

      by KrispyKringle ( 672903 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:43AM (#7414943)
      That doesn't make sense. First, on what cycle do you discard/retest? Extending that, why even discard any? After all, some may be on the downswing and later pick up. So your idea is a needlessly complex version of `how to win: register more than one account.'

      Assuming you had an infinite amount of money/debt you could go into, there is a probabalistically certain way to win a given finite amount. Simply keep raising the bet (that amount + the sum of all your previous bets) each time you bet. As n->infinity, the sum of n of some finite value of the probability of winning will converge to 1, i.e. your probability of winning if you wait forever is nearly certain. So you will eventually win back that finite amount more than you've already bet.

      Of course, this assumes an infinitely long competition and an infinite amount of debt you can go into before Fat Tony smashes in your kneecaps.

      • Re:How to win (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jbuhler ( 489 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @03:10AM (#7415020) Homepage
        I think the poster was misremembering a classic stock scam. What he *really* meant was this:

        (1) Identify 2^n gullible people as "marks."

        (2) Send each mark an email predicting the outcomes of the next n successive events (I'm assuming the outcomes are all yes/no). Each mark gets one of the 2^n possible sets of predictions.

        (3) Wait for the n events to unfold.

        (4) Identify the one mark who got an email with all correct predictions, and persuade him to subscribe to your "amazingly accurate" prediction service for a hefty fee.

        (5) Abscond.

        In the original version of the scam, the events were that a particular stock would go up or down on each of a succession of days.
        • Last time I saw I spam like this I noticed it was lower down in my InBox than mail I had already received. This meant it was sent with the time and date field set back a few hours into the past. I deleted the spam without bothering to check but I presume the stock in question had experienced a sharp rise in those few hours.

          Obviously a more efficent version of the scam you are talking about, because you don't have to discard any of your "marks".

        • The modern day equivalent are all those 1-900 sports betting advice lines, where they'll give you tonight's SUPER DELUXE TRIPLE GOLD LOCK OF THE MILLENIUM, for FREE FREE FREE!!! Some of these services were found to actually be giving out different picks to different callers for the same events, in the hopes that a certain percentage would think that the advice line had actually been right. Scary, indeed...
      • I think that's why they do not allow geeks in casinos ;-)

  • I'm not in the United States or Canada (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    you insensitive futures exchange clod

  • Foresight Exchange has been doing this for years (Score:5, Informative)

    by SiliconEntity ( 448450 ) * on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:36AM (#7414930)
    The Foresight Exchange [ideosphere.com] online game has been doing this since 1994. It was invented by economist Robin Hanson [gmu.edu], who was also the mastermind behind the ill fated Pentagon effort.

    One of the big problems with these "funny money" based games is the possibility of cheating. Sine it doesn't cost anything to register, you can create as many accounts as you want, for free. What you do is create multiple accounts under different names, and arrange to funnel money from one account to another. You have one account make bad trades so it loses money, which then goes into the other accounts, building up their scores. Since this MIT game is offering valuable prizes, they can expect problems with this kind of cheating.
    • I agree that games like these, with no identity checks, are open to cheating. However, I don't understand your cheating method. I just signed up so I don't know the full rules yet, but I don't think you can "funnel money from one account to the next".

      Related to your point, I'm wondering if it is possible to launder money via stock exchanges (sort of like what you described, although I think you need more sophisticated methods). Can a drug dealer in Colombia transfer money to some corrupt DEA agent in Ne
      • Can a drug dealer in Colombia transfer money to some corrupt DEA agent in New York by using stock markets?

        Possible, but unlikely. Money laundering schemes normally work by routing "dirty" money through a "clean" operation with a small cut being taken by whoever's doing the washing. You'd want to make sure that you're money isn't at any more risk than normal, and the stock market would inject too much risk into the transaction. Not to mention that huge bidirectional trades of stock in a short time can caus

      • The way this works on FX is this: You want to move money from player A to player B. You find a thinly traded claim, say currently trading at a price of 50. Player A offers to sell a bunch at 20. Immediately, most of the other orders on the board will execute, but you picked a thinly traded claim, so they should represent a relatively small fraction of the ammount you wished to move. Now there is a big offer to sell on the board for 20, which player B scoops up. Then the process is reversed, with playe

  • I've seen something like this before... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Siener ( 139990 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @02:36AM (#7414935) Homepage
    It looks a lot like Long Bets [longbets.org], which has been around for quite some time. It was launched as a spin-off of Danny Hillis's [longnow.org] Long Now Foundation [longnow.org]. Other interesting projects of theirs include the Rosetta Project [rosettaproject.org] and the 10,000 year clock [longnow.org].
  • Someone else was doing this circa 1998/1999 IIRC... myhand.com? Invible Hand? They had exactly this kind of market, but with funny money. There were bets on the outcome of Madonna's upcoming release, whether who would win the GOP and DNC 2000 Presidential nominations, and bets on tech stuff too... anyone else recall this?
    • Yep, myhand.com was the domain. Invisible Hand was the site name. It was a site that I started. I am happy that you remembered. We later raised some VC money, changed the name, and lost the VC money. I still own all the code for it and been wondering whether I should GPL it.
      • I still own all the code for it and been wondering whether I should GPL it.

        I'd be interested to see something like what you had -- which was apparently quite well developed, by the way -- released/active again, despite the fact the wheel is obviously being reinvented. Probably more to your lasting fame and credit to release it rather than keep it ... or perhaps at least find someone willing to donate bandwidth. Unless of course you've got a smart business plan hidden up your sleeve, to jump to step three
  • I don't know why people think this is strange. The military program, and this one, is similar in theory to one of the logical/statistical tools the Navy uses to find lost submarines, a version of Bayes theorem of subjective probablility. Its a type of staistical game theory.

    The jist of the theory is, a panel of experts would make a educated "bet" based soley on intuition, and the average of their guesses usually came up with "close" answers. That is what these two project are hoping to achieve, a cummu

    • The problem is that it's just a game, as in game theory, just a set of arbitrary rules. The selection of those rules is determined more by who gets the most advantage than by any form of reality check. The stock market is only a good predicter of the stock market. Right now the stock market is rising so things must be "good", right? Tell that to all the thousands of unemployed.

      There's also the assumption that there are a core group of "experts" who really are good at predicting things. Studies of suc

    • The jist of the theory is, a panel of experts would make a educated "bet" based soley on intuition, and the average of their guesses usually came up with "close" answers. That is what these two project are hoping to achieve, a cummulative, and perdictive, "best guess".

      ...and, the more participants you have, the more accurate the consensus is likely to be. While newsfutures [newsfutures.com] has ~12,000 registered (but not necessarily active) users, the sports betting industry is huge.

      I tested this in the sports section

  • Maybe they can use this as a testbed for their incredibly well-thought out "terrorism futures exchange", an idea which was unfortunately scuttled, probably by the communists.

    They could shake things up by combining the two overarching themes: Will Microsoft hire mercenaries to keep Linux out of the Sudan? Will Lars Ulrich be assassinated by a rogue faction of the EFF? Who the devil is Wintermute?

    windside
    --

  • The Iowa Electronic Markets [uiowa.edu] at the University of Iowa has had this for a long time. And it does use real money, and is fully legal.
  • All this is very similar to the 'Delphi' futures betting system described by SF writer John Brunner in his novel 'Shockwave Rider'. Yet another case of Science Fiction getting there first I think.

    Note that Brunner described some bad consequences of such a system, as well as the advantages. Also note that 'Shockwave Rider' is the 'book of honor' this year for the literary SF convention Potlatch [potlatch-sf.org] which will be in Seattle next Febuary...

  • Sladot strikes again! (Score:3, Funny)

    by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Friday November 07, 2003 @04:08AM (#7415142) Homepage Journal
    Offline
    Sorry our servers are temporarily unavailable. Please try again latter.

    Not only did we cause their server to go off-line, we caused them to start spelling wrong, too! Now just wait until they re-launch the same service tomorrow, pretending they haven't noticed it's a dupe...

    • I wonder when some site owner is going to get irate over a slashdotting? The slashdot effect demonstrates one of the core flaws of the internet -- the connectivity to each node vastly exceeds the scalability of each node. It is too easy for a single node to become the focus of an unsustainable level of traffic.

      I wonder if there will ever be a ubiquitous opensource equivalent to Akamai's distributed caching system? Although it would be hard to do with dynamic content, static content could be automatica
      • That idea is vulnerable to a whole number of issues. First of all, on the internet, no node is trusted. So if routers in between are sending back something and claiming to be from the destination, that router pretty much has hijacked that transaction between the user and the server.
  • When MIT establishes a futures market for ideas, it's good.

    When the U.S.A. does the same thing, it's bad.

    That concludes our lesson for today. Remember class, your essays on Marx are due next week, and extra credit for anyone who comes to the church service disruption scheduled for Sunday.

    • I am an anti-capitalist and don't think you can get the truth from the markets. Having said that...

      The difference is... one is academic while the other is for government purposes. There is a big difference between the two. It's too bad you don't see the difference. In any case, I am not against USA doing it; I am against anyone doing it. It doesn't matter if it is another country or not, same opinion.

      That ends the evil Marxist view...

      Sivaram Velauthapillai
    • Actually, a socialist view would want it run by the state, and NOT private industry.

      Too bad, you lose.

    • Re:OK, get it straight (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Oh come on, you're misrepresenting and oversimplifying the issues and you know it.

      The terrorist futures market (your "U.S.A" futures market) was to allow people to bet real money on when/where the next terrorist attack was going to occur. This creates an incentive for those trading in those futures to help make sure the attacks happen so as to cash in on their investment. People would literally be betting on other peoples' lives; a rather morbid idea, don't you think? Especially considering that the t
      • People would literally be betting on other peoples' lives; a rather morbid idea, don't you think?

        It may seem morbid and morally repugnant, but its a trillion dollar industry that has been going on for hundreds of years. The entire life insurance industry (including annuities and death benefits) is all about betting on peoples lives. And liability insurance on big construction projects includes bets on the number of lives lost on the project -- the contractors often get a bonus if not too many lives are

      • Re:OK, get it straight (Score:3, Insightful)

        by danila ( 69889 )
        still I oppose(d) the terrorist futures market on the grounds that it creates financial incentive to end human life.

        That was really stupid. You can't be a libertarian if you allow your emotions to overcome your intelligence so quickly. I mean, I understand perfectly, why some people would be up in arms about the "terrorism market" (because they are idiots), but the arguments simply do not hold water. Whatever financial incentive there might be to commit the act, do you honestly believe that it can be in a
        • You can't be a libertarian...what sane person would do a terrorist act for a few thousand dollars?

          No one ever claimed all Libertarians are sane :)

          (Before you mod me as flamebait, I'm card-carrying. Libertarian, that is, not mental patient)
  • There's no penalty for failure! People will exhibit risk-seeking behavior, "investing" in longshots like cold fusion, because the rewards are only given to the very highest earners. Also, there's no political categories, which is no fun. I'll stick with Tradesports.com (I find it highly amusing that for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton was beating out everyone except Dean and Clark, and Clinton's not even running! She's started slipping, I guess people are finally getting the mess

  • Insider Trading (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gerf ( 532474 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @07:03AM (#7415514) Journal

    Becomes a whole lot easier. Imagine the corruption! This stuff is a lot LESS random than sports events, which can be 'thrown' are a lot easier to spot as frauds.

    I'm just waiting for the disgruntled engineer to whisper to his cousin to place his money on the new Intel Hypertanic chip to be released in Q4. Then flee with the millions reaped. Puh-leez, this ==lame idea;

  • I just made about 34% in about 4 hours betting on Viagra futures. I can see how day-traders can get hooked.

  • Speculative Bubbles = Noninformative Prices (Score:3, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday November 07, 2003 @08:40AM (#7415684)
    One core assumption of these types of trading markets is that the price of the item is tied to some objective value. In an ideas market, the price should reflect the probability that the stated idea or proposition will be true. Under this assumption, people could use the price of the idea as a proxy for the probability that the idea is true (and make product development or VC decisions with the information).

    But some traders act not on the intrinsic value of the item underlying the tradable instrument, they act on the movement of the price. Thus they might buy in on a idea, not because it is undervalued, but because they think the price will go up. Such speculators profit from short-term trades. Called momentum trading, it is a good way to create a bubble in the price that has nothing to do with the true value of the idea or probability that the idea will come to pass.

    Markets like this ideas market and the stock market tend to reflect both rational economic facts and human subjective thought patterns. The problem is that one can never tell when the price represents reality or a mass dillusion.
  • I really think there will be some kind of securities market based solution for paying free content producers in 25 years, and this is a step in that direction. It's not a pyramid scheme, because when you put money into the hands of *highly productive* free content producers, they will make enough free content to ensure increasing overall wealth/intrinsic value in the economy to keep the market prices rising so that all good investors can expect a return on their investment in the long term. The bigger the
  • In the same way that Fox will turn into a hardcore sex network in the next 30 years gradually enough to avoid the sensors, this betting could turn into exactly what the pentagon tried to do.

    2004: When will helicopter prototype X be released.
    2007: How long until the first helicopter X will be shot down?
    2008: When and where will the next helicopter X be shot down?
    2009: What is the current mailing address and phone numer of the next person who will shoot down a helicopter X?

  • Sounds like the Delphic Lottery from Larry Niven's Ringworld and related stories.

    Larry should have taken out a patent on it.

  • tried submitting this when I learned about it:

    http://www.longbets.org/ [longbets.org]

    It's a similar concept, and there are some very familiar names making wagers (Dave Winer, Eric Schmidt, Vint Cerf, even Ted Danson)

  • In a regular futures market, you're not gambling in a pure sense. Your commiting to buy something (a real tangible something) at some future date for a price you specify today. If that thing becomes more or less valuable by the time you are obligated to buy it then you win or lose money. Generally you sell your contract before the due date, and there is always someone who needs/uses the product that picks it up at the end. This is a bit different than betting on events. What is the market value of an event

  • Okay, so here's a game whereupon the players gamble with fake money for fun and entertainment. They never see a dime of real money, ever. (Unless they happen to fall into the top 8 when the game is over.)

    Note, however, that in order to gain full access to the game, you do indeed have to PAY THEM real money.

    What a bargain.

    • RETRACT (Score:2)

      by Eil ( 82413 )

      Whoops, I retract the above post. Turns out that you can pay for premium access to the *magazine*, not the game. I was misled by some text on the account creation page. Moderators, do your thing.
  • Ok, I started on this page [technologyreview.com], which was linked in the story. I found this link [newsfutures.com], which is presented as a link to registration in the section labeled "How can I get x$ to start playing?". Interestingly, this link is to an outside domain, nf4.newsfutures.com. More interestingly, nf4.newsfutures.com presents a self-issued SSL certificate with a common name of www.snakeoil.dom and issuing CA of Snake Oil CA.

    Ok, so I start to think this is all an elaborate hoax. However, when I click through the link at the
  • People were predict like 2015, based on M$ "Moore's Law" growth in stock price in the 1990s. Now the stock price has been stuck at the same place for over three years, and not as likely.
  • Seemed like the whole system was developed by MIT students and/or faculty, but it was not [newsfutures.com].
  • The whole idea of using a market based system to get a poll sample is based on the idea that people will have more realistic responses if they have their money on the line, even if they don't necessarily agree with that particular outcome. The old "put your money where your mouth is" idea. Without actually putting down some green, it's all just hot air. There is a reason that the IEM [uiowa.edu] was constructed by professors in Economics as well as Poli Sci and others. Because without the Economics part, it's just
  • 500 quatloos on the newcomers!! (STOS)

  • This might be one of the 5 coolest things I've ever seen.

    I was kind of disappointed when the Pentagon cancelled their futures market plans because (even though the program was presented as the macabre plans of an evil genius) it really looked like an interesting experiment for sifting through data and evaluating information. But this... this.... THIS LOOKS LIKE A LOT OF FUN. It's like fantasy football on crack, but with monopoly money and no social diseases.

    Kudos to NewsFutures for putting this toge
  • Looking through the rules, I found this little gem (emphasis mine):

    "TR reserves the right to penalize, suspend, disable, and/or destroy the account of any user that it merely suspects has engaged in any negative or cheating behavior, including:
    Using the message boards to spread unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind, or any message negatively inclined in any way towards TR, its sponsors partners, their staff, Ne
  • ...it's a market where you trade bets on future events. Not the same.

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