I propose to discuss bets on political events in this topic. Some bookmaker organizations offer such bets. In order not to engage in their advertising, I will not mention their names, but you can easily find them on the Internet using various queries such as “Betting on political events” or even “Betting on non-sports events”. Strictly speaking, political betting is a type of betting on non-sports events. I don’t know whether the moderator will allow this topic to remain in gambling discussions or move it to the politics section. But in my opinion, it is more logical to leave this topic here, because despite political forecasts, we are talking specifically about gambling.
Why has betting become a symbol of sports games? This is not true. We can argue about any event - political, musical, economic, even esoteric. However, political events, such as elections in the United States, have the greatest liquidity. Perhaps a separate topic should be created for non-sports disputes that are also not political.
Here I propose to discuss all political events in all countries on which bets are placed, and not just political events in the United States.
This is why it is too bad that Augur didn't take off. Augur doesn't talk about betting per se, but about prediction (markets).
Here you can find a very long, but super interesting read by Vitalik Buterin.
The difference is that Augur was supposed to be a prediction aggregator with real world value. Because odds represented what actual people have voted on so far, not what any bookmaker set as the starting point. This is extremely interesting because Augur could have become a place where you could actually see tendencies for certain outcomes. The big thing about it was that manipulation was only possible with skin in the game.
Let's assume someone wants to manipulate the market such that it looks like Trump would win and let's also assume that millions of people are using Augur, it would cost a fortune to let the odds look like Trump would win because someone could only manipulate by logging in real value. Then someone else could come and exploit this by going all in on Biden. The manipulator would lose everything.
Desinformation barely costs a thing as it can be proliferated via social media for literally zero cost across all platforms, reaching millions. There is no skin in the game as it can be done anonymously on top of all other things.
Augur wanted a place where skin in the game makes sure that someone gives exactly the answer that someone thinks is right. Otherwise real value is lost.
@Julien_Olynpic I like how you pointed this out:
Why has betting become a symbol of sports games?
That's why the term "predicting" instead of "betting" might be less connoted with gambling, and gambling in turn is mostly associated with sports betting and casino games. Augur was supposed to allow for any market to be set up by anyone. Just anything as you said. Political, sports, economic, esoteric, astronomy (when does the next asteroid hit planet Earth), anything...
These days bookmakers are close to offering all kinds of bets as well. But a platform that in a decentralized fashion allows anyone to set up any prediction market with any conditions where either someone else agrees to bet against or let the proposal die because the conditions are bad, would be amazing.
One problem with the decentralized prediction markets was the definition of the oracle. That could become quite complicated, for instance when you predict the weather in two weeks on a Sunday, which source will be consulted to determine the result (still an easy one, but there are more complicated cases).
It would actually be nice to see big bookmakers publish the volumes that have been placed on Biden/Trump in the case of the U.S. election.
However, political events, such as elections in the United States, have the greatest liquidity.
What exactly did you mean by this? I think I know, but maybe you can elaborate. Great topic!