You'd have to pay a percentage of proceeds to the authorities in order to monetize staying an authority over selling your reputation for a guaranteed win in bitcoins. Especially in a single-authority system.
The basketball score is 94-72 late in the fourth quarter. "Second team wins" contracts go down to pennies on the dollar. But, the arbitrating authority has the fix in for "Second team wins", and buys out massive numbers of the same contract, then takes vast quantities of money out of the system.
For sports, however, there's an easy solution. Just have Google be your authority. So, for figuring out who won the Oregon-UCLA game last night, the system would pay out on the results of the Google search "Oregon UCLA basketball score" as of a certain time. Reading your earlier posts this seems like what you already described, though.
So, for figuring out who won the Oregon-UCLA game last night, the system would pay out on the results of the Google search "Oregon UCLA basketball score" as of a certain time.
You need to have someone that you trust to perform that Google search and read it and then decide who won the money. Otherwise the two people who bet might disagree on what the Google search says.
Intrade, the prediction market website, has shutdown. According to their website:
With sincere regret we must inform you that due to circumstances recently discovered we must immediately cease trading activity on www.intrade.com.
These circumstances require immediate further investigation, and may include financial irregularities which in accordance with Irish law oblige the directors to take the following actions:
During the upcoming weeks, we will investigate these circumstances further and determine the necessary course of action.
Here's a link to an article on the slashdot website with more information about it:
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/intrade-shuts-down-under-murky-circumstances/
Has anyone looked into the feasibility of creating an open source version of something similar, using a distributed application and a microcurrency (such as bitcoin), that couldn't be shutdown?