Futures exchanges and online prediction markets

[Rezwan]

Thinking about the “Transition” portion of our website, and the economic impact. Searching the net on marketing. Found this:
http://ppx.popsci.com/help/faq.php

Fascinating.

“PPX” stands for “The PopSci Predictions Exchange,” a virtual stock market where the stocks are the future of science and technology. Think the iPhone will be the greatest hit since sliced silicon? Buy! Think the International Space Station will never get built? Sell!

The PPX is for fun, but there are some futures markets out there for real: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_Analysis_Market How do we get LPP stock trading on them? This seems like a good approach for publicity and so forth. Must investigate further.

[Duke Leto]

A simpler bet might be to utilize the Intrade.net system for user created contracts. Intrade.net is just for fun, but it uses the same DB and software as Intrade.com and if there is sufficient interest in the user created Intrade.net contract, it may be picked up by the main site.

Not guaranteed press by any means, but it’s free (I think) and unless you try to bid up the contract yourselves (like McCain’s camp did at the 11th hour during the election) there isn’t much risk involved. (Unlike editing your own Wikipedia article.)

[Rezwan]

Will check it out.

Yes, not sure of any real substantial impact. But at the very least, it could be a fun little thing that makes our website more interactive (watching the ticking faux stock is entertaining) and gives food for thought on transition and futures.

[JimmyT]

I don’t know Rezwan, some people regard the futures markets (at least the ones where real money is involved) to be very accurate predictors of future events. They are certainly viewed that way with regard to elections in the USA.

Futures trades could suggest to some people that Focus Fusion is a real possibility in the fairly near future, and not some far fetched dream.

[Rezwan]

JimmyT wrote: Futures trades could suggest to some people that Focus Fusion is a real possibility in the fairly near future, and not some far fetched dream.

That would be the ideal outcome. I’ve just sent off a querry to both intrade and ppx about putting us on. Will keep you posted of response. Now to see about those “real futures markets”.

[Duke Leto]

It would surprise me if they do give out an ActiveX or Java control allowing you to diplay up to the minute trading info on a contract. That’s a bit of a premium function. The display they had put together for Yahoo on the election contracts must have taken some time to code and Yahoo certainly reimbursed them for their trouble…

[Rezwan]

You’re saying they’re not like youtube, trying to get embedded on every site?

OK, so I went to intrade.com as well (having only visited .net) and found they do have fusion – cold fusion: “Dr Arata’s experiment to be replicated in peer-reviewed scientific journal on/before 31 Dec 2009″.

Suggesting a contract seems easy enough. Just send an email to markets@intrade.com with the Subject: Contract Suggestion.

But how to word it?

[Rezwan]

Hang on, it seems you can embed a chart onto the site. Here, let me try:

<a href="http://www.intrade.com/aav2/trading/tradingHTML.jsp?selConID=615448">

	<img src="http://data.intrade.com/graphing/closingChart.gif?contractId=615448&intradeChart=true&transBackground=true&transBackground=true" height="225" width="460"

	alt="Price for Dr Yoshiaki Arata’s Cold Fusion Experiment at intrade.com"

	title="Price for Dr Yoshiaki Arata’s Cold Fusion Experiment at intrade.com" border="0"></a>

Code not appearing in forums. Check out cold fusion article instead.

[Duke Leto]

Color me surprised.

All this new fangled Web 2.0 stuff with your embedding and streamlined XML data interchange. Back in my day if you wanted something embedded in your website from another website, you used HTML Frames. Yes, and you had to send the Request Object trudging through the snow every day. Dagnabbit…

[Rezwan]

OK folks, after a bit of back and forth, mostly over trying to figure out how to phrase it, Focus Fusion is now listed on Intrade. Check it out,

Will net power be generated using the Focus Fusion process?
Focus Fusion process to generate net power before midnight ET on 31 Dec 2014.

Wanna bet? Go to the contract on intrade.

Want to find out more, read our post: https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/195/

[Aeronaut]

Too bad they don’t take PayPal or otherwise process deposits as a card not present merchant account. I’d take that bet for $10 otherwise, and even more as the “informed world” drives the price down. I’m predicting a low price of around 10 to 20 once we start getting some public awareness. That would be a sweet time to buy in large quantities.

I just contributed the $10 to FF. Better use of the money, anyway.

[kentwhite30]

Interesting post! When it comes to economic activities, many people rely on predictors. Over time, many unusual economic signs have been proposed by “experts” that read like they may be better predictors in the Bizzaro Planet. Also called Htrae (Earth backwards), it is a cube-shaped planet populated by gonzo types of Superman and other DC universe characters. Here are some indicators of economic health that probably make total sense to Htrae economic experts.

[Author]

Posts