Well, in principle I see what you are talking about—if a lot of people bet your side, then your payoff can be reduced, perhaps to the point where you wouldn’t have taken the bet. But, at least for reasonably well-subscribed bets, won’t you, in the long run, do well enough by equating the ratio of future bets to the ratio of current bets? In other words, the odds should be as likely to move in your favour as against you.
That’s basically true for horse racing because all the relevant information is known in the minutes before the race and you can make your final bet. For a prediction market you would actually expect that if you have an informational advantage, the odds will move closer to your estimate over time as that information is revealed or processed by other market participants. The time frame on Bets of Bitcoin is long enough that genuine information will be revealed in the meantime for many bets. Because later bets aren’t “worth” as much as earlier bets, though, it’s impossible to say how much this would affect the actually payoffs without having a specific example to consider, though.
Well, in principle I see what you are talking about—if a lot of people bet your side, then your payoff can be reduced, perhaps to the point where you wouldn’t have taken the bet. But, at least for reasonably well-subscribed bets, won’t you, in the long run, do well enough by equating the ratio of future bets to the ratio of current bets? In other words, the odds should be as likely to move in your favour as against you.
That’s basically true for horse racing because all the relevant information is known in the minutes before the race and you can make your final bet. For a prediction market you would actually expect that if you have an informational advantage, the odds will move closer to your estimate over time as that information is revealed or processed by other market participants. The time frame on Bets of Bitcoin is long enough that genuine information will be revealed in the meantime for many bets. Because later bets aren’t “worth” as much as earlier bets, though, it’s impossible to say how much this would affect the actually payoffs without having a specific example to consider, though.