How does calling the bets on those platforms actually work? Is it employees that need to decide which outcome happened? And can anyone make a bet? If so, how do they keep up with all the bets and even just knowing that a bet is ready to be called?
[edit]
ok, i decided to research this myself (so much for the wisdom of crowds).
some platforms have an admin pick what option was the outcome.
And some have a board of traders that vote on what the outcome was(maybe with votes weighted by how many shares of some token they own…)
so yeah, some admin on the platform or a few users are the ultimate arbitrer of truth, which sounds stupid to me. Especially since any ambiguity of the wording of the bet is up to them to figure out.
this page had nice examples of kalshi and polymarket resolution ‘failing’. Was also not surprised that polymarket uses crypto for resolution, of course there’s crypto involved in this somehow… it really fits the online gambling theme
When you start, there are no shares to buy or sell. For a dollar, the market will sell you a “yes” and a “no” share. When the bet matures, one of those shares will be worth a dollar, and the other will be worth nothing. If you keep both shares, you’ll get your dollar back, nothing more, nothing less.
You think the bet will resolve to “yes”, so you want to sell off your “no” shares. You try to sell them at $0.50, nobody buys. You lower your price to $0.30, and they sell. Now you have $0.30 and a “yes” share that might be worth a dollar in the future.
You see someone is offering to buy “yes” shares for $0.80. If you sell your “yes” share, you’ll end up with $1.10 total.
Suppose after a trading back and forth all day, you find yourself with a “yes” share that you’ve paid $0.40 for. You have a “no” share that you’ve paid $0.30 for. At any time, you can join those two shares together and sell them back to the market for $1.
But why would anyone buy shares after an event resolved? You’d expect liquidity to dry up at that point. So i can’t imagine that this is how it’s ultimately resolved and you get paid out.
Where did I say anyone was buying up shares after the event resolved?
When the event resolves, the platform pays out $1 for each share on the winning side. Shares on the losing side are worthless.
If you have a “yes” and a “no” share, you can join them together and sell them to the platform for $1, before the event resolves. You don’t have to wait for the event; you can sell them back at any time.
Yes but my whole question was about how a bet resolves, who decides it is resolved and who decides what the true outcome was. So i assumed your answer was to that question, which it didn’t seem to answer.
But the news papers don’t go and klick a button in e.g. kalshi. Someone/something has to collect the news sources and change the state of the bet to ‘resolved’. Either a human arbitrator, or some consensus vote by users or something like that? And that would already be very problematic, like what’s to stop the arbitrator from deciding in their friends favor?
Humans on their staff. Hopefully, and not AI. And hopefully they have multiple people involved in resolving a bet to avoid that situation (but even if it happened, the people with money on it would absolutely riot, because they are watching almost all of them).
I’ve seen use of wikipedia page update as official bet trigger…the destructive potential is huge, they infect what matters with their gambling eg investment banking infecting commercial banking.
How does calling the bets on those platforms actually work? Is it employees that need to decide which outcome happened? And can anyone make a bet? If so, how do they keep up with all the bets and even just knowing that a bet is ready to be called?
[edit]
ok, i decided to research this myself (so much for the wisdom of crowds).
some platforms have an admin pick what option was the outcome.
And some have a board of traders that vote on what the outcome was(maybe with votes weighted by how many shares of some token they own…)
so yeah, some admin on the platform or a few users are the ultimate arbitrer of truth, which sounds stupid to me. Especially since any ambiguity of the wording of the bet is up to them to figure out.
this page had nice examples of kalshi and polymarket resolution ‘failing’. Was also not surprised that polymarket uses crypto for resolution, of course there’s crypto involved in this somehow… it really fits the online gambling theme
When you start, there are no shares to buy or sell. For a dollar, the market will sell you a “yes” and a “no” share. When the bet matures, one of those shares will be worth a dollar, and the other will be worth nothing. If you keep both shares, you’ll get your dollar back, nothing more, nothing less.
You think the bet will resolve to “yes”, so you want to sell off your “no” shares. You try to sell them at $0.50, nobody buys. You lower your price to $0.30, and they sell. Now you have $0.30 and a “yes” share that might be worth a dollar in the future.
You see someone is offering to buy “yes” shares for $0.80. If you sell your “yes” share, you’ll end up with $1.10 total.
Suppose after a trading back and forth all day, you find yourself with a “yes” share that you’ve paid $0.40 for. You have a “no” share that you’ve paid $0.30 for. At any time, you can join those two shares together and sell them back to the market for $1.
But why would anyone buy shares after an event resolved? You’d expect liquidity to dry up at that point. So i can’t imagine that this is how it’s ultimately resolved and you get paid out.
Where did I say anyone was buying up shares after the event resolved?
When the event resolves, the platform pays out $1 for each share on the winning side. Shares on the losing side are worthless.
If you have a “yes” and a “no” share, you can join them together and sell them to the platform for $1, before the event resolves. You don’t have to wait for the event; you can sell them back at any time.
Yes but my whole question was about how a bet resolves, who decides it is resolved and who decides what the true outcome was. So i assumed your answer was to that question, which it didn’t seem to answer.
See the edit in my original post.
Ah. I think I misunderstood your question.
I have no idea. The whole idea seems so open to manipulation/corruption that I’m shocked that the businesses are working as well as they are.
Usually the outcome is determined by a consensus of reliable news reporting. In this case, it seems like they were using a local weather station.
But the news papers don’t go and klick a button in e.g. kalshi. Someone/something has to collect the news sources and change the state of the bet to ‘resolved’. Either a human arbitrator, or some consensus vote by users or something like that? And that would already be very problematic, like what’s to stop the arbitrator from deciding in their friends favor?
Humans on their staff. Hopefully, and not AI. And hopefully they have multiple people involved in resolving a bet to avoid that situation (but even if it happened, the people with money on it would absolutely riot, because they are watching almost all of them).
I’ve seen use of wikipedia page update as official bet trigger…the destructive potential is huge, they infect what matters with their gambling eg investment banking infecting commercial banking.