Why bet only imaginary money?(wasRe:[extropy-chat]SETI:Firstradio signal from alien)

[Brett Paatsch]

Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:

[Spike]
> > This is such an obvious idea, it is inconceivable that
> > it hasn't already been done.  We concluded at the time,
> > about 4 yrs ago, that someone somewhere was already
> > running a real money IFX.  Then one of our absent ExIers
> > posted me offlist asking if I wanted to join a real
> > money IFX.  I was busy with a graduate class at the time
> > so I declined, and never got back with it.
> >
> > Whoever is running a real money IFX or knows who is doing
> > so, please contact Brett offline and invite him to join,
> > thanks.
>
> Hasn't foresight been running an IFX (Robin's original) with real money
> for about a decade now? (i could be mistaken in at least three counts on
> that sentence though)

Last I looked between 18 months and 6 months ago (when both Hal and 
Harvey were posting here about it), then I checked and the money bid 
wasn't real. 

I think I recall Robin posting to this list perhaps 12 months before that 
looking for prototype application areas that could be explored commerically
with a view to helping to make the idea more real.

A sort of anticipating-terrorists-attacks idea did raise attention (from 
memory) and may have even been reported as an interesting idea in the
Economist or somewhere but I'm pretty sure it didn't get any real 
traction and also was spoken against by some "establishment types".

Brett