• Create a website that allows people to bet on the outcomes of controversial real world issues. Instead of voting for the argument they like best, users speculate with their money on how they think things will pan out. Ex.: Will the supreme court overturn gay marriage? Uphold it? Dismiss? Betting pool
  
• • Betting rules follow some form of stakes format - the more "votes" the lower the return, the fewer, the higher.
  • Different betting pools (high, low)
  • Fixed and scaling pools (buy in on either side is set, doesn't shift with # purchased
• Bet topics are naot user submitted, carefully maintained, selected, and updated by staff
• A small commission would be taken by the house for every bet.
• The house acts as a trusted holder of the money until the bet is over.
• Should host a wide selection of choices in various categories. Gambling on the careers of celebrities, politicians, bills, tv show endings, international politics, technology, scientific research, news stories, etc.
• • Some topics would have higher pools and last longer (will Iran have a nuke in 1 year? 2? 3?) Others should be smaller and refresh daily: (Will Obama stutter in today's address?)

1. If a timeline of when and how people bet is monitored and recorded this could net very useful social scientific information about how people make decisions, act, react, change their bet, and interact as new information becomes available to them such as campaign trail media leaks (if their betting on a nomination) or even as they react to seeing the betting patterns of each other.
2. Net very useful (sellable?) data on how people believe an issue will pan out when asked to put a material stake in their predictions. Informative on what people believe, before and after others add their own bets to the pot. May be a good predictor of trends. Its essentially like giving people an opinion poll they're very motivated to answer truthfully.
3. Motivates people to poll. Think of a nomination - actual polling of who a favored candidate is a tortured process where people are spammed to answer questions they aren't motivated or interested in answering, leading to unrepresentative, and incorrect statistics. People are even disenfranchised with the nomination itself and a large number of them don't turn up to vote. Now, if there were a state wide or nationwide betting pool on the results of each state's nomination people would not only become much more involved but the betting data itself would be a demonstrative figure of the progress of each candidate

• The classic fake currency work around: It's a game and everyone gets free fake money to spend on their bets, and it's a game to make more. By the way, if you want more money to gamble you can purchase it for a micro transaction.
• • Would work great as a mobile app. Take the Zynga approach to futures speculation
  • • An investment/gambling game works well on the mobile platform, as it involves short bursts of gameplay (browsing and investing, following portfolios), then operates in the background (accruing interest/winnings, changing odds) until the user checks in again, or a notification is pushed about an outcome.
• Operate the bets in bit coins: use unregulatable currency in your online gambling and anteater yourself from the need of bank approvals.
• • Would also loose 2/3 of a potential user base by making betting over complicated - barrier to entry.
  • Still would have to fight illegal online gambling.

Reference: Look up that wii everybody votes game. Might be interesting to compare.

-----------

InTrade lets it's members buy and sell actual shares of the event occurring. It sets the prices such that each share is worth $10 if the event occurs, and 0 if the event does not. Thus, up until the event actually occurs the shares can be bought and sold by individual members from other individual members at a price between 0 & 10 at a valuation based on supply and demand. InTrade does not issue nor collect these shares, rather shares are introduced to the market by allowing users to short shares they do not own. This allows them to buy their shares back later if they choose, or making a profit if the event does not occur and the shares become useless.

• Dependent bonds: Every investment is added to a massive collective pot that is then distributed to each victor at the end of the event according to the odds at the time of their investment. In essence every investor is purchasing a contract for a potential % of the pool, as influenced by number of people voting against them or with them and the amount invested. (.5x back, 2x back, etc.) This is similar to buying a bond that's dependent on you're choice winning.
• • (?) Bond entitles you to x% interest of whatever the pot is at the time of purchase.
  • • X is determined by # of people voting against and # people voting with you.
    • This allows early bidders to grab larger chunks of the early game pot (as there wouldn't be as much competition) without granting them a large chunk of the cumulative pot
    • • Makes a math nightmare of figuring out what the payout of the pot is worth if every subsequent investor gets a % of the pot up to that point combative with the % before.
    • 
      
• Racing rules: Place odds on each option that shift over time as news comes to light. In this model the house doesn't charge a commission on each transaction, but rather plays the odds in it's own favor by assigning probability higher than 1. Allows house to make a bit of money.
• • Ex.: Horse Odds* Probability (from odds) ----- ---- ----------------------- Horse A 1:1 1/(1+1) = 1/2 = 6/12 Horse B 1:2 1/(1+2) = 1/3 = 4/12 Horse C 1:3 1/(1+3) = 1/4 = 3/12 Horse D 1:5 1/(1+5) = 1/6 = 2/12 ----- Total Probability = 15/12 > 1
  • Would require lots of analysts and accountants to monitor and predict
  • http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/56701.html
    

• Have a system for users to cash out and sell back the bond for under it's potential reward if things are going well.
• • Need a way to encourage investors to continuously buy and sell in the time leading up to the event. Otherwise the first investors will always get the best deals, with each subsequent investor in a choice bracket getting a diminishing value down to the point where there would be no point to join in. If first buyers are not incentivized to sell their stakes early then there would be no continuing value fluctuations, and the model becomes less engaging. We should encourage constant turn over of stakes.
  • (?) Let players create a free market exchanging their bonds
  • (?) Allow players to directly sell back their stake for a payout from the pool for an amount under the worth of their investment + interest, but above that of initial investment. Amount paid out of the pool should be measured by the demand for new stakes in that choice bracket.
  • Basically I want to let people scallop their potential rights to collect before knowing that they've won.
  • • Provides a safer (though less profitable) way for investors to win
    • Increases % payout availability for all other stake holders
    • Allows new investors to jump in or buy higher value stakes
  •