This lecture brought out a completely new topic of prediction markets. It made the case for why alternative coins may be necessary who had be built to solve different problems and allow for newer solutions.
- Can real world data be brought into Bitcoin?
- What is a prediction market?
- What parts of prediction markets can you build on Bitcoin?
- What about an altcoin?
Real World Data Consequences
Getting real world data opens the door to sow many new applications. The main topic is getting a mechanism to assert real world events. Once you get this into the system, the lecturer mentioned bet and hedge results using smart contracts (programmable pieces of logic) and opens the door to more complex financial products like forwards, futures, and options on Bitcoin. The general formulation is known as prediction markets though.
Prediction Market
A prediction market is pretty straightforward. It’s a market where you can trade shares in a potential future event. Shares are worth some money if the event happens, and zero is not. The current price / x = estimated probability. Before the event, the price may fluctuate based on people’s expectation of the end result. The lecturer spoke about two examples the World Cup 2014 and the 2008 Election between Obama and McCain. Thus as the tournaments progressed the markets changing belief of the winner impacted the probability. The key element that differentiates pure betting, is that one can trade even prior to an event happening. Thus over a hype cycle you can profit and short sell quickly and exit prior to the event even occurring. However, in the long term they will have accurate results.
Thus prediction markets are loved by economists since they reveal all the knowledge about the future. In addition, they allow for profit from accurate predictions and end up beating experts claims. Not sure I believe the bottom quote, but it definitely reveals the confidence placed in prediction markets.
“The most heeded futurists these days are not individuals, but prediction markets, where the informed guesswork of many is consolidated into hard probabilities…The Economist: The Future of Futurology
Intrade
Intrade was a prediction market company that did all this in a more centralized way. It was founded in 1999 and was a web-based prediction market company. They allowed members to take positions (trade ‘contracts’) on whether future events will or will not occur. The company ran into several regulatory issues in the United States even though it was a Ireland based company. So much so that in 2012, the CFTC filed a civil suit again them for unregulated trading of commodities. In 2013, they had to suspend trading for US investors. Finally, in 2014, they closed shop. Interestingly, their website actually points to a decentralized exchange known as Augur which is built on an Ethereum, an altcoin network. That’s wild in my eyes as really this lecture from 2015 kinda projected the future of this space.
Decentralized Prediction Markets
Bicoin or other public blockchain provide that decentralized service.
- Decentralized payment and enforcement
- Decentralized arbitration
- Decentralized order book
Decentralized payment
This requirement is the easiest according to the lecturer. This can be achieved by Bitcoin and trusted arbiters. Escrow transaction can exist.
Decentralized Arbitration
The alternative would be to use an altcoin that had built in support for arbitration. The lecturer then describes the mechanism for some of the custom transaction types. There should be a BuyPortfolio and SellPortfolio. Lastly, there would be a TradeShares() where you can exchange shares for each other or currency. This means that you essentially buy a share in every possible outcome. Then you would trade the shares to reflect your beliefs on the future outcome. Arbitration has its own mechanism as well. With Bitcoin, you could use trusted arbiters mean that allows anybody to define and open a market and the risk of an incorrect arbitration would be absconding. Users essentially vote which requires incentives. Thus the users are would vote on the outcome thereby tying they a sufficient number of them were honest. This may not be as easy if there was collusion or something. Miners who vote may be disinterested though. Note sure why we’d ask them to take on this role.
There is a company who did this known as Realitykeys, a certificate authority for facts. I think the company is now called Realit.io. Essentially one can sign information on Bitcoin or on Ethereum. Realitio verify real-world events for smart contracts and provide some guarantees. From there website it looks like they’re a decentralized application that can answer questions.
Decentralized Orderbook
An orderbook is a data structure that separates bids and asks while a matching engine actually matches the best bid and ask offers together. it allows the orders to be matched up or split the difference. Usually if there is a space, some party known as a market maker may step in to help facilitate the trades. Centralized order books have issues in that there could be front-running in that someone gets more information about the buys and sells and artificially can profit from this information. Thus they also require regulation, auditing, and monitoring.
Decentralized order books have slightly different issues. You give the orders to miners, and they match any possible trade. The spread is retained as a transaction fee by the miner. The spread is greater than the transaction fee and thus not profitable for the miner. Front running is not considered profitable. Overall, the system may be less efficient as there will be high fees and slower trades.
Wrap-Up
Overall much of this lecture has actually been done in reality. Gnosis and Augur are two examples of prediction markets that live on the Ethereum blockchain. As mentioned this lecture served more as a segue to discuss some of the limitations with Bitcoin and open the door to new possibilities with these alternative chains.