I think for Prediction markets to scale, we need a little more clarity around exactly what we would like to do with the value of truth whilst there’s still a price on them.
Whether it’s to trade them like they’re assets themselves or the underlying representation of another asset. E.g, are Yes/No shares their own assets or are they the underlying representation of an asset like “Will Trump Fire Lisa Cook” ?
For example, Stocks are their own assets. They’re pegged directly to a company’s valuation and we have financial systems designed around them such as Stock trading themselves but also Options Trading where you can Put/Call options however you see fit in that instance.
Memes/Tokens are also another asset class that stand on their own, they’re underlying representations of different narratives for sure but fundamentally, they’re their own assets and then mechanisms such as Leverage, Swaps, etc are applied to them through different exchange platforms.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, are we approaching Yes/No values as independent assets or an existing mechanism on the value of truth - just like Options Trading exist on the value of Stocks.
I believe clarifying this can allow us develop more efficient solutions to the problems we currently have, ranging across Liquidity, Tools, User Experience, etc.
Using Options Trading as an example, the underlying stock serves as a fundamental asset basis - with Prediction Markets, the market topics serve as the underlying asset. Trump firing Lisa Cook, Mr Beast raising 40m, War strikes, etc are all individual topics with values with respect to those who are concerned.
People within the Fed or have large businesses favored by Lisa Cook’s administration are definitely concerned about whether she’s fired or not. Mr Beast, his audience and sponsors are concerned about his raising goal, and companies who sell weapons, people caught in war zone environments are also definitely concerned about whether a missile is going to strike a particular location. Just like how people involved in Tesla or Nvidia ecosystem are concerned about what happens, which is then reflected in the stock value.
These market topics definitely hold value that involves a lot of major stakeholders, it’s up to us as contributors to the ecosystem to design systems as efficient as possible, in order to scale Prediction Markets to standing as its own asset class ⇨ A mechanism for Trading with Unresolved Truths as the underlying asset.
I mean, “a mechanism for Trading on the truth”. That sounds like something everybody knows but it goes much deeper than that. There’s still a lot of ambiguity within UX designs, Liquidity Provision and potential features to add and that is because we haven’t arrived at a consensus on what specific category these assets should fall into.
Inevitably tho, we will reach a threshold entropy value at some point that’d help us forcefully decide what it needs to be if we don’t make a decision ahead. Nevertheless, it’s very interesting times ahead for the Prediction Markets ecosystem and we at Polyfactual will be doing our best to contribute to that to the best of our abilities.