Creating a bitcoin prediction market is a great idea.
One thing I've been wondering recently is why more people don't create Bitcoin alternatives. Many of the alternatives that already exist have ridiculously high market capitalizations, with what appears to be minimal marketing and almost zero rationale for their existence. If you could create an alternative that had "baked in" solutions to some of the problems people complain about re: long-term adoption of bitcoin (limited divisibility, difficulty of transferring in/out of USD, volatility (somehow fix this? e.g. if the protocol was somehow robust to high-frequency trading, perhaps that would deal with volatility as HFT people traded using volatility pumping strategies), performance problems as the network grows large, general awkwardness of waiting for confirmations and stuff), or had some kind of killer app that bitcoin didn't have, and then put an actual marketing push behind all this (and bribe the existing exchanges to accept it or find a way to piggyback on the existing bitcoin infrastructure), it seems like it could be a great way to make money.
Creating a bitcoin prediction market is a great idea.
I'm considering seriously. In the last several days I've analyzed the technology already in widespread, looked at the possibilities and explored the limits. The potential is huge. Cryptography is like wizardry that works in the real (abstract) world!
One thing I've been wondering recently is why more people don't create Bitcoin alternatives.
The main not-ridiculously-pointless alternative on the horizon is ripple, which has a different focus to bitcoin. If they have marketing awesomeness behind them...
The bitcoins that I had set aside for a Cryonics contest two years ago (and were unredeemed) are suddenly worth a lot more.
Details: I had added 10 bitcoins to get things started, and there were 4.75 worth of additional donations. These were partially lost when the hosted online wallet that I was using (MyBitcoin) was hacked, but 49% was recovered. As of today, after refunding part of the donated money, it is now worth 5.2675. I will be adding from my personal store to bring it up to an even 5.5. At $140 per coin, the new total is $770.
I've decided to follow the buy-and-hold strategy for at least another year, since it worked so well. I don't have exact details on what I'll do with it, but it will not be converted or spent for at least one year, and will eventually be used for promoting cryonics in some way.
Some things I have in mind if it gets big include:
Contributions can be made to:
1Jdn36JUwvJdr3Qiie4aAseFdcoTsND9Qo
(Updated, since the previous address was attached to my personal wallet on an outdated client, which was causing money to be moved out of it by accident. The above is a brainwallet with a reasonably secure passphrase, generated using Blockchain.info.)