[ExI] predictit gone?

[Dylan Distasio]

Spike-

FYI, it's up now so your $17 appears safe!

On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 12:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> Since Robin Hanson is back among us and may be considered the father of
> meme betting, he might find interesting the latest development.
>
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> Robin started Ideas Futures, which was a play-money betting site.  We had
> a blast playing that back in the long time agos.  Plenty of us who think
> about the future realized it would eventually morph into a real-money
> version, which it did.
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> Many of the patterns on real money sites are ones we saw and learned well
> on Ideas Futures.  On Predictit and the other real money sites, such as the
> most popular betting is on which candidate will win an election.
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> One of the predictions I made about real money sites is that they will all
> eventually take the money and run.  This of course never happened on play
> money betting, which is why I liked that better: Robin was never tempted to
> grab up everybody’s play money and flee with it to Tahiti, which is why he
> is not there now, sipping Mai Tais on the beach with bikini beauties
> tending to his every whim.
>
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> But…
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> Apparently whoever runs Predictit is there now, for the site suddenly went
> dead yesterday and is not back today.
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> https://www.predictit.org/
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> No biggie to me: my total investment there is 17 bucks.  Theoretically
> they are holding 73 dollars of mine (my initial investment from 4 yrs ago
> plus winnings) but I realized all along by studying the betting volume that
> whoever runs the site was holding an ever-increasing pile of money.  I
> realized it was only a matter of time before she realized the future profit
> potential of keeping the site pales in comparison to the immediate profit
> of skipping town with everyone’s money.
>
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> I have always treated that 73 bucks as play money, knowing that this (and
> every other online betting site) is a Ponzi scheme.  I didn’t know when,
> but there was little question of if: this site and every other growing real
> money betting site will eventually terminate with the CEO’s disappearance,
> taking everyone’s money.
>
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> If anyone knows otherwise with regard to Predictit, do offer me a clue
> please.  Perhaps the CEO of Predictit was shocked SHOCKED! to learn that
> GAMBLING was is going on in here:
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> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME
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>
>
> spike
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