i'm confused play a game, it's like binary right?
Hi bajing, hope you’re well, thanks for your question.
Here’s a summary of how Crypto Ball works and the collective intelligence principals that underpin it.
You make a prediction as to the price of BTC at either 00:00 or 12:00 UTC on a date of your choosing. Unlike binary options, you make a specific prediction, e.g I might predict the price to be $334.69 at 12:00 UTC on Saturday 20th December.
Each prediction costs just 0.01 BTC and all payments for that date/time go into a pot. The 5 most accurate predictions are rewarded with a share of the pot. The larger the pot, the greater the share the winners receive, e.g if the pot is 2 BTC 1st place gets 0.352 BTC (17.6%), but if the pot is 8 BTC 1st place gets 3.02 BTC (37.8%). Check out our
Rewards page for more info.
In order to promote the launch of Crypto Ball we’ve pre-loaded pots for the rest of December, so people feel less nervous about making the first move. For example, the pot for 12:00 UTC on Saturday 20th December is pre-loaded with 2 BTC.
If you end up being the only person who makes a prediction for that date/time, you’ll win 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place, because of course your prediction will definitely be the most accurate - this means receiving 0.6 BTC. If lots of people make predictions then there’ll be a bigger pot, which means a much bigger reward for the top 5 predictions. All in all it’s a perfect storm.
Beyond this, the key element that makes Crypto Ball stand out is its exploration of collective intelligence. Yes, you are rewarded in BTC for the accuracy of your predictions, and sometimes that reward can be substantial, but ultimately this is incentive for gathering valuable data - large numbers of people’s predictions on BTC price movement.
Collective intelligence is the combined intelligence of a diverse group of people. In certain areas collective intel has proved more useful than the single opinions of experts - one such area is market movement. Simply put, if we combine or average the many opinions people have about BTC price movement we’ll end up with a prediction that’s more accurate than that of any individual.
How’s this useful to you? Well, every time you make a prediction you’ll be sent the average of all predictions for that date/time. You can then use this data to facilitate your own trading. Who knows, you might make a killer Christmas trade as well as winning Crypto Ball.
Collective intelligence is already being used in mainstream stock market trading and to great effect - it’s about time we got a slice of the pie over here in crypto. Furthermore, there’s an argument to be had that crypto has some advantages for good collective intel, e.g strong, diverse, distributed, competitive and decentralised communities.
NB: Just as a side note, you’ll notice Crypto Ball using two terms: Collective Intelligence and Wisdom of the Crowd. They are both based on the principal of deriving intelligence from large groups of people, however the method by which they achieve this is different. Whilst knowledge of the differences isn’t at all necessary to take part in Crypto Ball, please feel free to ask if you’re curious.