I would like to address that question at this time.

Obviously news of BitBet made its way to all the corners of the interwebs, including that atrocity of a forum of Graham'sⁱ. Obviously this means all sorts of self-important douches feel both entitled and required to immediately prove just how useless they currently are and how pointless their continued existence is, through that age-old method of opining, preferably in the form of grandstanding about things they don't understand and better yet, haven't researched at all. But "they've heard" and "it's logical", so "obviously". Heck, why not. They have an account after all.

To cut the intro short :

This betting site has a really stupid betting system. It appears that the amount of money you receive isn't based on a pricing of the bet, as is done on all real prediction markets, but based on a simple payout of all the bets received on the other side of the bet by the end of the bet date.

Yes. It is called mutual betting : some people bet against some other people. Welcome to some time many years ago.

This system has two practical consequences: 1. You can't determine the markets current probability estimates from the current state of the market, as you can with priced markets.

This is not just false, it's mindnumbingly contrary to its very own premise. You'd think Obama is making a statement or something.

No, you clueless douche, it doesn't have that consequence. It has the exact opposite consequence : that in this system you can determine actual current market valuations of risk. This unlike the systems you cite, which are nothing but glorified scams, and which specifically prevent you from gauging the market sentiment precisely because they're not market priced.

2. You should never bet until the last second so you can know the odds for the bet. In fact, it would make sense to create a sniping bot that would programmatically calculate the odds, compare them to your probability estimate, and only make the bet if it is favorable.

This idiocy is based on the presumption that you can import the "real odds" from somewhere. This is not what BitBet is doing, importing the "real odds" from somewhere else. BitBet establishes the actual odds. You know, those which everyone else imports into their scummy AirBnB type of slick thing.

Edit: It appears that they actually tilt the payouts of bets based on an arbitrary weighting factor towards earlier bettors (arbitrary in that it doesn't at all take into account changing risk circumstances or likely levels of risk decay as a real market would), in some undisclosed fashion.

Edit : It appears I wrote something based on having spent half a second on some new site I've never seen before. Turns out that what I wrote was wrong. You know, just like I'm wrong in general and just like my dumbass parents were wrong not to get that abortion. Sorry. I'll do it again tho, it's what I've been doing ever since I bought AoL to connect me to Internet Explorer.

There douchy, fixed it for you.

I recommend that no one bet on this highly flawed system.

O wait! Anondungwad on unheardofsite recommends! Wecare.gif!

I have to agree, I was trying to work out how the odds are calculated and it makes no sense. Why not copy what Betfair or Intrade or something like that do.

Because unlike fuckwits that gather on Graham's supposed venture blablablital site, we don't copy what other people do, we do what other people copy. Shocking, isn't it, you buncha Chinese cca 1970 that you are. Go make some papier-mache cars and air beds and breakfasts on some other Internet already.

There's nothing to say where you're based, or if you're obeying their laws. Where are you based? Are you obeying their laws?

With the advent of Bitcoin the last rope grounding Internet to Real World, ie bank accounts has been severed. From here on there's absolutely no need for an Internet something to be "based" anywhere.

So, unless somewhere that wants an Internet something to be based there makes an excellent offer, that Internet something just... isn't based anywhere.

Taking bids. They'd better be very good.

1. No, I'm not linking to it, and no I'm not making an account to answer there. In fact, I'm not making any account anywhere, this account business has gone on far enough. I'm not sure some random douchebag site understands just about how pretentious it is to ask a user to "make an account". Banks give away toasters yo! [↩]