Not to mention the obvious problems with letting government agents bid

on things like when various unwanted foreign leaders would be assassinated.

Over on Dave Farber's IP list, it's been pointed out that there is a pre-existing, live, real-money market in futures on these types of events. Go over to www.tradesports.com, and click on 'Current Events' under 'Trading Catagories' on the left. Drill down and you'll find things like 'WMDs will be found in Iraq on or before Sept 31', the value of which has dropped from 80 to 25 over the last few months. Peter Trei https://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@minder.net/msg51821.html