I mean: I don't trust any actor on any market.
If more than half of the actors decide to cooperate,
they trivially win in this case.
If the NSA decides to fuck a prediction, they can buy
ether and their bots will do the rest.
>Does it matter whether the crowds can do accurate predictions if
the main purpose is for special actors with the skills and interest
>to
be encouraged to create outcomes that are being wagered upon.
Probably not. I assume that the people who are implementing Ethereum have to (or, at least, want to) justify the existence of that proposed system somehow. One analogy is with sports-betting systems, which have been attacked by law in various jurisdictions. This amounts to their 'cover-story'. Crop insurance, ordinary life insurance, and other examples of insurance would apply as well.
>I've not
looked closely at Augur but back in Cpunk days stumped for PMs that
included forwards, similar to financial futures, but where the
>participants could create contracts which narrowed the prediction
windows to months, weeks or even days within the greater expiry period
>(e.g., Dec. 31, 2015) but were not required to specify
which month, week or day . By enabling
such sub-contract narrowing the benefit for
>an accurate prediction
scales with its temporal ratio with the general contract thus increasing
leverage and benefit to special actors.
>Steve
Prediction markets can be structured in (at least) two ways: One, in which the current status of the prediction is kept known, for instance what the Policy Analysis Market was apparently intended to do. ("Bet on the probability of a bombing attack at an embassy in Beirut during a given week"). In such a system, everybody can see the value of such a prediction coming true, varying up and down in amount over time. The second, such as my AP essay, where the predictions are kept carefully secret until after the prediction comes true. One potential weakness is that people might tend to game the system, concealing the death of a person, or alternatively, faking his death.
I can certainly see that there is a reason to turn things into futures-type market, as long as information about the predictions can be kept secret for long enough (days) to not give non-special predictors a hint as to the outcome, early.