Technology Review Launches Futures Market

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.

Comments

Re:Whats to stop this

[evanbd]

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, 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).

Foresight Exchange has been doing this for years

[SiliconEntity]

The Foresight Exchange online game has been doing this since 1994. It was invented by economist Robin Hanson, 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've seen something like this before...

[Siener]

It looks a lot like Long Bets, which has been around for quite some time. It was launched as a spin-off of Danny Hillis's Long Now Foundation. Other interesting projects of theirs include the Rosetta Project and the 10,000 year clock.

Re:Right out of Brunner's Shockwave Rider

[evilad]

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."

Re:Offshore casinos, for one

[tiled_rainbows]

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.