Bet anonymously with Bitcoin on Bitbet.us
bitbet.us
Anyone can anonymously place a bet - no account needed.
bitbet.us
Edit: It appears that they actually tilt the payouts of bets based on an arbitrary weighting factor towards earlier bettors (arbitrary in that it doesn't at all take into account changing risk circumstances or likely levels of risk decay as a real market would), in some undisclosed fashion. I recommend that no one bet on this highly flawed system.
That said, I must disagree with some of the substantive points he made in this post.
> No, you clueless douche, it doesn’t have that consequence. It has the exact opposite consequence : that in this system you can determine actual current market valuations of risk. This unlike the systems you cite, which are nothing but glorified scams, and which specifically prevent you from gauging the market sentiment precisely because they’re not market priced.
BitBet, for the bet of Houston Texans to win the Super Bowl, has .07 against and .08 for (an implied probability of approximately 50%). The reality is that if I place a bet today, I won't know the odds that I'm betting against until the last day of the betting. It's true that there are economic results showing that the pricing in parimutuel betting will settle to the market expected value in equilibrium, but this example shows that these markets require much greater liquidity to provide anything resembling real-life probability estimates. You simply can't open a contract on a prediction market for 50:50 that the Texans will win the Super Bowl and have anyone take the other side of your trade.
> This idiocy is based on the presumption that you can import the “real odds” from somewhere. This is not what BitBet is doing, importing the “real odds” from somewhere else. BitBet establishes the actual odds.
In a priced market, informed market participants look at the probability represented by market prices and make their bets taking into account the information that they have. This action causes all of the information to be revealed in aggregate. His statement above implies that the "real odds" are being set by the market, not by reality, which is an inversion of cause and effect. The real odds are always imported from elsewhere, namely reality itself, as estimated through private and public information and analysis.
In order to profit in parimutuel games, you have to have both an accurate understanding of the reality, and an accurate estimate of public sentiment (and knowledge of the actual payout algorithm, of course). For priced markets to converge upon truthful values only requires that informed market participants bet based on their private information and best estimates, which is a much lower bar.
Not all parimutuel markets are created equally of course. Dynamic parimutuel markets[1] have some advantages over traditional markets (they don't suffer from a lack of buy liquidity, for example, but still don't allow traders to know their payouts at the time of the bet), but this doesn't seem to be one.
All that said, I intend no offense to the creators of this project, and wish them all the best in all of their journeys. Three cheers! I wish the world had more prediction markets.
1: http://dpennock.com/papers/pennock-ec-2004-dynamic-parimutue...
Whoa, this man does not know how to take criticism.
Under .US nexus requirements .US domains may be registered only by the following qualified entities:
• Any United States citizen or resident,
• Any United States entity, such as organizations or corporations,
• Any foreign entity or organization with a bona fide presence in the United States
To ensure that these requirements are met, NeuStar frequently conducts "spot checks" on registrant information.
There's nothing to say where you're based, or if you're obeying their laws. Where are you based? Are you obeying their laws? What have you done to protect yourself from vigorous US law enforcement attempts?
EDIT: For the silent downvoters - which part is controversial?
People who say 'bomb' in an airport are dragged off. People who mention, even jokingly, death threats to POTUS attract extra investigation.
This website is doing several things which are not legal in the US. Betting on sports games; financial transactions for off-shore gambling; etc.
This website has a domain registered in the US for US residents only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
An assassination market or market for assassinations is a prediction market where any party can place a bet (using anonymous electronic money, and pseudonymous remailers) on the date of death of a given individual, and collect a payoff if they "guess" the date accurately...
It has been argued that the feasibility of an assassination market precludes the acceptance by governments of any form of anonymous electronic money.
Which is also the main problem with Bitcoins; you get the 'open source' money, but without the existing banking system and its securities, or the governments and their laws behind it. Your Bitcoin exchange gets hacked and you lose your coins? Your problem. You bet money in a dodgy bitcoin betting site and lose it? If the 'owning' government doesn't recognise it as legal tender, your problem.