@Alyssa the problem is that preexisting real-money prediction-market platforms have their own troubles. To the best of my knowledge, there are 2: Kalshi and Polymarket.

Kalshi is great but has run into regulatory issues with the CTFC, IIRC. Polymarket uses crypto. The intersection of "people who care enough about science to forecast about it" and "people who use crypto" is small. I'm trying to target a bigger market of "people who care enough about science to forecast about it". In an ideal world, I would persuade Betfair - the world's largest online betting exchange - to start taking bets on paper replication, because that seems much easier than creating a new prediction-market platform.

My hunch is that some of the troubles faced by prediction-market platforms arise from them focusing on US customers, and that expanding to Canadian, UK, EU, Chinese markets would help.

@Jason Thanks. This has given me a lot to think about. Hoping to start getting users for a play money version ~May-June, and to talk to some UK research funders about the possibility of using prediction markets to help inform funding decisions, so we will see what happens then.

@Elizabeth unfortunately, yes. There are a couple of ways around this:

1) decide "we're going to be an offshore gambling platform", grit my teeth, and go with the fairly tough but doable process of getting a gambling license or applying to be on someone else's gambling license; doesn't work for the US, means a greater focus on targeting non-US markets (e.g. Canada)

2) if you have an organization stump up a cash pool first and then participants in the org can bet, this has fewer legal difficulties (specifically, it doesn't count as gambling any more), but you also have a product aimed at organizations rather than individuals (internal prediction markets do seem to work where they've been tried, though!)

@adityaarpitha Thank you so much!

@astrosnat OK I have my little update from a brief call with Marcel. Some thoughts:
- My understanding is that part of the bottleneck is that the intersection between "makes news headlines" and "has enough people forecasting/has enough liquidity in the market" can be smaller than ideal
- Integration between metaforecast + seeing what people are talking about on social media is not easy

IMO these are solvable problems. So looking forward to seeing where BRT goes in the future

@saulmunn Hi Saul - how did your meeting with Marcel go? Would be interested in hearing your thoughts about BRT

More thoughts from me:

• BRT is really interesting, and I want to see + learn more

• I also booked a call with Marcel on March 13, and will update

@PatrickDelaney Awesome stuff, just checked it out now! Yes, let's talk more. My email is osnatkatz at protonmail dot com