Prediction markets are driven by money. If someone has more money than the rest of prediction market together, they can burn the money to support a wrong prediction. Why would they do that? Presumably doing this brings them more benefit than the money spent. I can imagine two situations:
a) The prediction markets are new, only a few people bet there, so there is not so much money there. You may have a business that would be endangered by prediction markets becoming popular (e.g. people pay you for providing the expert opinion). Thus you spend money hoping to discredit the very concept of the prediction market.
b) People start trusting prediction markets blindly. For example, if the market predicts that X will become a president, people will not even bother to vote for the competitors, because “what’s the point? they’re going to lose anyway”. In such case, X may be willing to burn a lot of money in order to convince people that he is going to become the president, because that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and his sponsors are willing to invest that money. For the sake of story, let’s make it dramatic: the person intends to become a dictator, nationalize a lot of stuff, and give it to his sponsors; this is why the sponsors are willing to invest insane amounts of money, because they bet on getting much more in return.
By the way, “prediction market” being right in general doesn’t mean that every answer will be correct. There may be answers where most people don’t have a clue, and those will attract much less votes (but still some, because people are irrational).
Prediction markets are driven by money. If someone has more money than the rest of prediction market together, they can burn the money to support a wrong prediction. Why would they do that? Presumably doing this brings them more benefit than the money spent. I can imagine two situations:
a) The prediction markets are new, only a few people bet there, so there is not so much money there. You may have a business that would be endangered by prediction markets becoming popular (e.g. people pay you for providing the expert opinion). Thus you spend money hoping to discredit the very concept of the prediction market.
b) People start trusting prediction markets blindly. For example, if the market predicts that X will become a president, people will not even bother to vote for the competitors, because “what’s the point? they’re going to lose anyway”. In such case, X may be willing to burn a lot of money in order to convince people that he is going to become the president, because that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and his sponsors are willing to invest that money. For the sake of story, let’s make it dramatic: the person intends to become a dictator, nationalize a lot of stuff, and give it to his sponsors; this is why the sponsors are willing to invest insane amounts of money, because they bet on getting much more in return.
By the way, “prediction market” being right in general doesn’t mean that every answer will be correct. There may be answers where most people don’t have a clue, and those will attract much less votes (but still some, because people are irrational).