LESSWRONG
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by Tim Liptrot
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Last nights prediction markets on the election were heavily traded relative to past PMs. Predictit alone had hundreds of millions of USD in trade volume. Many LWers competed on the markets, for reasons discussed here. If you competed, share your experience here.

Prediction Markets
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sharpobject

150

At deluks917's recommendation, I bet about $265,000, mostly on FTX, and won about $142,000.

I was unable to "buy the dip" on PredictIt because PredictIt was not usable at all for me during that time, and I was unable to buy the dip on FTX because it takes about 2 days for me to move money into FTX.

[-]sharpobject20

FTX currently has a prediction market for "Will Donald Trump be the president of the United States on February 1st, 2021?" I am either about to lose all my money or gain six figures again.

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[-]Tim Liptrot10

Good for you! I'd love to hear more about the crypto betting markets.

I enjoyed betting on Predictit and believe I can out bet the average observer for personal gain. However, the fees push it into negative expected utility for me. What are the effective fees on FTX? Is it difficult to bet from the US?

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1sharpobject
FTX fees are .07% per trade if you take liquidity or 0 if you add liquidity. I paid somewhere under 1% to get the money from IBKR into my bank then into Coinbase then into FTX. Betting on FTX is not allowed for US residents. I'm a US person but not a US resident, which gives me more options for prediction markets than most people. I heard some US residents were betting on Catnip. While FTX is a web site that lets people trade cryptocurrency balances held by FTX, Catnip is a decentralized market, so in some sense it's more of a "real" crypto betting market than FTX.
2Tim Liptrot
Wow those are very reasonable fees! Suppose that a person in the US bought etherium then logged into a VPN and traded on FTX. Is there a realistic possibility of that person being caught, and if so what is the pathway? Also why is Trump still trading at 10% on catnip? With fees of 1%, that's free money.
1sharpobject
To withdraw more than 1000 USD ever from FTX, a person must do level 1 KYC, which involves proving their country of residence. So a person would have trouble if they were only willing to lie using their IP address. Trump is trading at 10% in a bunch of places! No clue, maybe people expect SCOTUS to participate in a coup or maybe they sincerely believe there is massive election fraud.

Tim Liptrot

80

I bet 4.5k on PredictIt with a spread of; likely Biden states (WI, MI, MN), Biden prez and popular vote. To pick my bets I used the Kelly betting algorithm with 538 stats and PredictIt's fees included. I only bet on the races with an kelly fraction (F) of .5 or more. The average F of the bets was .7. The spread would break even if Biden narrowly lost (Trump wins AZ, PA, GA, NC, FL), and only return negative with a major poll error of 8 points in the Great Lakes. Therefore I was watching FL for a large polling error.

After FL results came in I attempted to sell my Biden prez tix. PredictIt crashed, but I was among the first to refresh the page and sold my Biden tix at pre-election value of .66. Biden tix fell to .20 at 10:00 pm and I bought 1000 at .12 because I knew the redshift in Michigan was skewing the results. In total I gained about 20% on my portfolio over the night.

NunoSempere

50

I bet 50€ for myself and 25€ for a friend, which I roughly doubled. I did this by setting a betting budget I was willing to loose and Kelly betting on it. I used betfair.es

sapphire

20

I bet around 22K and will win around 11K. I had some bets that look like they will not work out (Dems win Senate). I would have put in more but by the time I decided to trust catnip.exchange I did not have time to get the crypto. A number of my friends won way more 11K. It was somewhat harder to make money if you were American but ways existed. At least I got out with 11K.

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[-]Tetraspace50

I bet £10 on Biden winning on Smarkets upon reading the GJP prediction, because I trust superforecasters more than prediction markets. I bet another £10 after reading Demski's post on Kelly betting - my bankroll is much larger than £33 (!! Kelly bets are enormous!) but as far as my System 1 is concerned I'm still a broke student who would have to sheepishly ask their parents to cover any losses.

Very pleased about the tenner I won, might spend it on a celebratory beer.

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