Skip to main content
MANIFOLD
[POLL] Would you use Manifold more or less if anyone could cash out M$ to USD?
28
Ṁ109Ṁ495
resolved Jun 10
Resolved as
58%
Today, we support withdrawing M$ to charities, but not back to your own wallet. If you could turn your M$ back to USD, would you be more or less interested in using Manifold? Vote with YES to indicate more, or NO to indicate less. This market resolves to the proportion of YES vs NO votes in the comments.
Market context
Get
Ṁ1,000
to start trading!

🏅 Top traders

#TraderTotal profit
1Ṁ14
2Ṁ6
3Ṁ6
4Ṁ4
5Ṁ2

People are also trading

Sort by:
predictedYES
Hm, I'm getting 11/19, so resolving to 58% YES: Austin, Joy, NC, Gigacasting, Charlie, Martin, Daniel, Devansh, Amnonian, Matt, howodowtle, NO: Milli, Conflux, Marshall, Angela, Murloc, Sneaky, Bolton, Gavriel
12/19 = 63% YES by my current count.
NO. - I don't want the psychological burden of not becoming addicted to gambling. - I don't want to have to deal with reporting gambling winnings on my taxes. - I would rather the manifold team focus on improving the app rather than dealing with the regulatory questions this would raise. - This seems like the kind of thing that would swamp the platform with either bad-faith resolvers or large numbers of crypto price markets from people looking for arbitrage.
predictedNO
Yeah actually strongly seconding this. I hadn't even thought about the bad faith resolvers and regulatory overhead when I voted. I think maybe [this amount of user freedom] and [real money cash-out] have to be mutually exclusive to maintain trust, and I prefer the user freedom.
Right, but not the obligation.
Yes
NO, and potentially I use it less as losses could feel psychologically different.
I would get way more cautious in general and potentially stop betting entirely on markets-as-polls (depending on resolution criteria, ig). I mean, I don't really endorse that, because why on earth am I happy to spend a few bucks on play money only as long as there's no option to turn it back into real money? But I'm guessing that's how it'd work for me psychologically.
predictedYES
Is the idea unlimited withdrawals or only up to the amount of mana purchased?
predictedYES
I think limiting withdrawals to the amount purchased would encourage people to buy mana, knowing that they can potentially get it back if they make good predictions. And because this is essentially a refund it shouldn't be considered as income.
@MartinRandall We could also have like play money vs real money coexisting? Like maybe we have M$ on one side which you can get with stuff like free markets, sign up, etc, and real $ on the other you can only get by buying them? And you decide how many M$ vs real $ you want to stake in a given market
predictedNO
I’d use it less. I tend to avoid gambling with real money, and that would be what it would be.
Personally I would use it about the same, but I think that might actually a bad change overall. Right now it feels like a game; people can have fun playing around with fake money. If it becomes real money, it'll be perceived as much more serious, more likely to get coded as gambling, etc. I think a lot more users will be willing to gamble with fake internet points than they would be with real money.
@IsaacKing I lost ~M$ 1000 yesterday because of two bad bets. Though it's taught me a lot, it's hard to immagine I'd take it in such stride if that corresponded to my losing $100 in real money. (And I gotta admit it already stings even in play-money)
Whoops, bad conversion, that's 10 dollars, nevermind
Hard to say. I'll give a tentative YES.
YES, if it were to be legal in my (non-US) country. Though I would need some more tools to keep track of the users that make the markets. Maybe an option for me to tag users with some visible text, or a way to avoid seeing markets by some users.
NO (very me-specific, though) I think something about how I was raised has made me either extremely reckless, or ultra-conservative about what I buy (like, willing to drop $$$ if someone I’m dating wants to consistently Uber to church 🧐, but when I’m living on my own, never buying groceries because “I can keep eating spaghetti with peanut butter; the calories/$ just can’t be justified for vegetables”🙃). So knowing that actual money is acquirable would maybe not go so well for me. I think I also just have a certain mental block toward financial math due to certain people who I’ve gotten to know. Not being able to cash out mentally frees me to play around and be a bit reckless with this, instead of anxiously hunkering down and feeling like I need to learn everything about markets before trying anything (even if, realistically, 5 manna is worth $.05). Though, perhaps, having a way to turn this into money would incentivize me to actually learn the maths. Le sigh.
predictedNO
Considering that manifold is for-profit, though, I’m probably not really in the target audience at present; for me, buying additional manna would be an uncalculated impulse buy (which does happen. pretty often.).
predictedNO
The tldr is that the play money is appealing to me
YES. If you're able to do this legally wrt US residents, fuck yes.
YES but I feel like the status quo is a reasonable approximation. Having the option to donate the money plus the option to use it to buy information in other markets is mostly enough for me. Next you should add the ability to transfer mana to other users!
predictedYES
> Next you should add the ability to transfer mana to other users! You'll love what @mqp is working on: https://github.com/manifoldmarkets/manifold/pull/114
YES unless it means that Manifold is banned for US residents, or I have to pay tax every time I win a bet, in which case NO.
NO, not on my own behalf, but if it attracted more money to the markets, I would be more interested in participating in those bigger money markets.

People are also trading