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Comment by Yhippa | Hacker News Reader

I'm asking this question out of ignorance: if you were able to do this, why would you make it public for $10MM instead of keeping it private and exploiting it. Say, in algorithmic trading models?

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I'm answering this out of naivete: some people want to benefit humankind over their personal interests.

In that case, why would you be motivated by a $10m prize?

To clarify, I as a relatively well-off adult would consider donating towards such a prize pool with the explicit intent of drawing people who aren't as willing or able to give money themselves towards solving a problem that I believe would benefit humankind. That is, I have a personal interest in that outcome (especially as compared to that tech being closed and controlled by governments/corporations) and would be willing to donate money to motivate others to join this effort and make this model open source.

Some private enterprises would undoubtedly ignore this prize, but a lot of academic researchers (including students) would be more than motivated by this prize.

Two reasons: (1) These are two different problems. Human mathematicians tend to be good at both, but there's no reason to believe (yet) that this generalization can be achieved with software.

(2) Trading has second order effects, no matter how good your algorithm is, if you apply it at any kind of scale the market reacts to it and you are left with something that doesn't work or cause large losses in the worst case.

I see no reason to believe such a machine would be helpful for algorithmic trading. Why should it?

How well do current gold medalists do in trading?

Alameda Research had some gold medalists iirc!

Yes, but they stopped doing math puzzles when they started trading. Math puzzles aren't how they trade.

Maybe I’m being dumb here but isn’t the brain of one of those people the same, basically, as the model? So if a model can do X and is valued so highly, surely it’s value is pinned on a known brain that matches its skills?

I was curious as to why an algorithmic trading firm is sponsoring this. What's in it for them?

A lot of finance companies sponsor events / prizes like this simply as a means of advertising and PR. If you come across this prize as a math student, now XTX is in your head and maybe you'll look them up and decide to intern there. And 10m is a drop in the bucket for such goodwill and PR, especially because anyone who has the skills to win this can surely be hired and make them as much money.

>Say, in algorithmic trading models

Higher level math is nothing like the math used in trading algorithms. It wouldn't be any more useful than a top tier PHD graduate.

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