In my Polymarket prediction, I bet on Ho Ching-Li's victory and lost two dollars.

With more than $3.6 billion bet on the US election forecast on Polymarket, and Trump's election is also highly correlated with the final forecast data, is Polymarket really a new generation of community observation metrics? (Synopsis: Polymarket God Prediction!) Trump's chances of being elected have led the way, and the bet on the presidential election has exceeded $3.6 billion) (Background supplement: Taiwan's President "on-chain gambling market" bet that Ke Wenzhe was elected, Polymarket was prosecuted by gamblers, and the results were released) Next Friday (11.15) 17:30-19:00 I will drift to BCH to leave a bookstore, welcome all Taoist friends to come and chat. Cantonese Podcast GM FM has launched its seventh episode, taking a new form without a specific theme, with three hosts selecting one or two web3 news stories to discuss, and what I care about is that Memecoin and Osmosis launched Memepay and Osmosis Pay respectively, allowing users to buy wonton noodles, don't miss it if you are interested. After the GM FM recording and talking about the self-election news, it was inevitable to talk about the US presidential election, and the co-host Michael asked me which candidate I supported. I can only say that I am not even qualified to choose the leader of my own family, so why should I make irresponsible remarks about other countries' internal affairs (spokesman's voice). Polymarket prediction market is not eligible to vote, but Polymarket prediction market (prediction markets) is open to Hong Kong people, so I invested in "He Jinli wins the coin" a month ago and participated in it. It doesn't matter how this (wrong) prediction is derived, it is not discussed here, and it is the focus of this article to discuss the mechanism design of Polymarket in this case. The core of Polymarket is to marketize issues, such as the issue of "who will win the 2024 US presidential election", which is presented in the form of a market in Polymarket, predicting that Trump (Trump) or He Jinli will win, and you can buy tokens corresponding to their victory; A month ago, as an experiment, I bought 4 He Jinli's winning tokens at a unit price of 0.497 magnesium, spending 1.99 magnesium, and if He Jinli wins, each token can be exchanged for 1 magnesium, that is, a total of 4 magnesium, if this is a horse race, the odds of He Jinli's horse are 1 : 2.01. I myself am very resistant to gambling, Polymarket is not a casino that flips the ratio upside down, otherwise I would not use it, let alone introduce it. As a prediction market, the biggest feature of Polymarket is that it is relatively decentralized, and the center of the investment market is the dealer. When I invested in He Jinli and won the election, the coin price was 0.497 magnesium, not by the dealer, but the result of market supply and demand, similar to the principle of DEX (distributed exchange). All transactions in Polymarket are executed on the Polygon Block chain, any transaction represents an increase in demand from a certain party, as long as the resulting coin price change is greater than 0.000001, that is, the smallest unit of USDC, the coin price will be adjusted in real time. Relying on market mechanisms also derives another feature of Polymarket: at any time before the result is confirmed, participants can sell tokens, take profit or stop loss. At the time of writing, the election was being counted, and Trump was ahead of He Jinli's 99 with 178 electoral votes. As the results are announced, the coin price representing the winners of the two sides continues to change, especially when the results of the key continents are announced, and there is a more likely drop in the water and a stabbing rise: With the defeat of Ho Jinli's election, the coin price corresponding to her victory has fallen to about 0.2 mg. In exchange for gambling, you can only resign yourself to fate and wait for the final result and payout; But Polymarket as a market, the mechanism is similar to futures, you can buy and sell tokens at any time before expiration, if I admit it wrong now, I can immediately sell the He Jinli winning coin at the market price, although the loss is 60%, but it can avoid losing when confirming the result. The steps to confirm the results may seem like a matter of course, but they are crucial in the decentralization mechanism. Earlier, I pointed out that Polymarket is "relatively" decentralized, considering that the absolutely decentralized model does not exist, and there is a spectrum between centralized and distributed. Even if all of Polymarket's buying and selling are traded on on-chain using Stable Coin, since the on-chain world does not know the election results, someone will eventually have to notify the system of the election results, and Block Chain terminology calls this role oracle; In this case, Oracle is assumed by Polymarket, which is a small amount of centralized elements that the whole mechanism cannot avoid for the time being. Some people think of Polymarket as a new type of casino, which is like saying that the stock market is a big casino, which is not wrong as rhetoric, but ignores its essence. Gambling and prediction are two close but different concepts, in some cases difficult to distinguish, for this election, if you have analyzed the polls, debates, political platforms and other factors in detail, judge that a certain side has a greater chance of winning, this is a prediction; Otherwise, if you are purely guessing, it is gambling. As mentioned earlier, the essence of Polymarket is prediction market (here "forecast" is used as a noun), marketizing the issue, using economic incentives, and gathering the wisdom of the masses to deduce the probability of the issue, so as to formulate reasonable policies or make corresponding preparations. For example, "Will there be a new deadly infectious disease in 2025?" If the chance rate is high, the government should obviously deploy ahead, increase medical facilities and manpower, and make a series of arrangements, otherwise it can temporarily rest assured and go all out to "fight the economy". In the traditional system, such issues would probably be judged by experts such as the Health Bureau and government-appointed advisory panels, from top to bottom, deeply influenced by the subjective will of the ruling party. However, if the issue is handed over to the prediction market, not only the power to express the position is delegated to everyone, but also the economic incentives will make the participants serious, unfamiliar with the issue will only participate in the form of tickets, on the contrary, in-depth research on the issue or insider information, it is likely to participate in a large amount; From an egoistic point of view, prediction market helps individuals to monetize knowledge, but mass participation will push the probability of the market to a reasonable level, provide more comprehensive information for public policy formulation, and therefore also produce altruistic effects. If you are clear-hearted, you may have seen through the potential problems of the above examples: if I were a billionaire, wouldn't I be able to bet heavily on a new virus that will appear in 2025, and then develop and spread the virus myself? Indeed, the above examples are purely fictitious, designed to explain the mechanism of the prediction market, in practice, although anyone has the right to raise issues, but to become a market before the Polymarket review, potential problems or unethical issues will be rejected, imagine someone raised the issue of "Trump will be assassinated", although it seems reasonable, but must not pass, so as not to produce economic incentives to assassinate Trump. The power to review issues is another element that is in Polymarket's hands and cannot be decentralized for the time being. In the traditional system, this aspect is naturally handled by the government, such as Taiwan's referendum law, which authorizes people to propose, co-sign and vote, but the issue must first be reviewed by the Central Election Commission. Is it illegal to use Polymarket? Speaking of Taiwan, seventeen Taiwanese involved in Taiwan's presidential election at Polymarket at the end of last year, suspected of violating the Presidential Vice Presidential Election Recall Act. Probably because of this background, I...