Comment by andrewflnr
1 day ago
How much of this is fixed if a person is only able to bet token amounts on each outcome? Let's get crazy and make it $20. A few crazy people might run Sybil attacks but it'll be a lot more limited and obvious. Not that I'm opposed to consigning all these gambling apps back to the fiery depths from which they came, but if you do want to preserve the ability of healthy people to have a little bit of fun, limiting the bet size has almost no effect on that while drastically reducing the damage. It seems like a good compromise, if anyone is looking for one of those.
I'd bet that a significant majority of prediction market revenue comes from people who bet big.
So I expect your solution would fix all of it, as a second order effect, in that running one would stop being a viable business model.
That would be fine by me, but I don't think they need massive revenue to be viable. Certainly they would have to downsize from where they are now.
I bet that most of their revenue doesn't come from people who want to bet big!
If only there were some kind of market where we could materialise our bets...
PredictIt operated with $850 limits for years, and overall this seemed fine. Limits of various sizes might make sense depending on the subject, where the risk of penalty greater outweighs the potential profits.
Part of the argument of prediction markets is that it incentivizes good forecasting. Theoretically if you wanted to concoct a novel political polling technique or rent some compute for a new hyper local weather model, you could recoup your costs via the prediction market.
I think in practice the volume of sharp money in the prediction markets is a small fraction and the majority would be better served with the limits you’re proposing
We're seeing high bets the day before, such that the bet goes through without too many people noticing and adjusting. Maybe forbidding bets X days before deadline would help to reduce chance of insider trading?
Or just shut down the whole thing. Bets on bombing is truly immoral and downright despicable.
You sound like the people proposing how a social network could operate without making people addicted to doomscrolling. Anyone can make a worse service like that but it won't stop the superior service from operating, which is the problem.
I guess I wasn't clear that I'm proposing a statutory limit on gambling amounts, not a voluntary limit by the service, as an alternative to banning it entirely.
I see, sorry.