If Manifold turns off the ability to turn mana into charitable donations or other items of significant value as described here, will the quantities of mana in use on Manifold experience a significant increase, along with a decrease in how much traders intrinsically value 1 mana?
This is common problem in play economies that give out bonuses to reward behavior they want to encourage, but don't have a good way to remove currency from the ecosystem. See the former MTG trading site Pucatrade for a nice case study on how abundant free money giveaways led to runaway inflation and the collapse of the site economy and eventual shutdown of the site.
If Manifold turns off the ability to cash out mana and significant inflation occurs, this market immediately resolves YES, no matter what happens after that.
If Manifold turns off the ability to cash out mana and no inflation occurs for a year, this market resolves NO.
If Manifold turns off the ability to cash out mana and then turns it back on after less than a year and no inflation occurred in the mean time, this market remains open without resolving until the next time they turn it off. (If it looks like the reason they turned it back on was due to signs of inflation about to occur, that will be sufficient to resolve this to YES.)
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ215 | |
| 2 | Ṁ140 | |
| 3 | Ṁ119 | |
| 4 | Ṁ64 | |
| 5 | Ṁ32 |
People are also trading
The argument that mana was still redeemable by converting it to PP/Sweepcash by arbitrage is reasonable on its face, but by the same logic a pure mana platform would still be redeemable by just arbitraging against Polymarket. If it would never be possible to have a non-redeemable currency, then clearly the word "redeemable" has no useful meaning. So that can't be what it means.
Mana redemption was turned off, and platform-enforced inflation occurred at the same time and shorter after. It's not exactly what I had in mind since the inflation was intentional by the site admins, but it still meets the criteria I laid out.
Resolving YES. If you disagree, present your argument and I can always re-resolve if necessary.
Selling out of this market at a loss because I don't want to litigate the inevitable discussion about what constitutes "exchanging" mana into another currency or whether there was "significant" mana inflation during specific times in the last year. Nor do I want my mana to be locked up for weeks while Isaac continues to ignore my pings. The first person to see this can enjoy their cheap YES shares.
@bagelfan It should resolve YES, mana can no longer be donated to charity and mana was devalued (Isaac stated further down in the comments that this counts as inflation)
@bagelfan I wasn't using Manifold last May, but are you sure about that?
The old "New Deal for Manifold" announcement says mana donations ended on May 15th, which is also when the mana devaluing happened. If this is correct, this market will resolve YES, since inflation was rampant post-devaluing (see the leaderboards for league seasons 13, 14, and 15 if you don't believe me; seasons 14 (June) and 15 (July) broke records back-to-back for the most league profit by a user in Masters league.)
@evan After the pivot mana was no longer donatable directly to charity, but prize points (which you could get by putting mana into certain markets and having them resolve in your favor) were
It was pretty easy to convert mana to prize points, e.g. by betting a lot of mana on a market at 99%
The devaluing happened before donations were ceased
Not sure what you are referencing exactly, but mana inflation certainly happened after donations were disabled. The mana purchase price was lowered by a factor of 10. Then later on (months after the donation cutoff) it was tightened up again, but by then inflation had happened.
e.g. by betting a lot of mana on a market at 99%
this was not actually possible, since in the pp era (at least at the beginning) manifold was not allowing bets over 99%
@Odoacre I mean that you could bet at not exactly at 99% but close to it.
Basically, since mana could be converted to prize points and prize points donated, I would say that mana could still be donated. Rather, it was when sweepcash was created that mana lost its value
@bagelfan so you are saying pp was still donateable, but then pp was discontinued and sweep cash introduced. Sweep cash was not donateable, and that caused mana inflation?
Still sounds like yes to me
@bagelfan I can't tell if you're being serious or not. You admitted it yourself in the message I replied to
Rather, it was when sweepcash was created that mana lost its value
@Odoacre Yes, I don't value mana much anymore, but this market probably needs more evidence than just one user not valuing mana to resolve.
You admitted it yourself
What are you implying here? I don't have a stake and am not trying to argue either way. I just want to resolve this accurately and so far have not been satisfied with the evidence presented.
@bagelfan I am thinking one way to prove it is to show that the average long time user is increasing in net worth, yet the active user graph is flat. I am super lazy though, so I don't really want to scrape the API to show it.
This is news to me and very sad. I haven’t donated in a while and I see now that I am unable to donate my mana. That was like… the main reason I got into manifold- i get to donate it at the end of the day. I will now return to the rock under which I live and shed a silent tear.
Edit: added the link to a charity page to show that mana donations no longer work (and sweepcash is phased out, so also doesn't work).
this stock may help traders to protects their MANA from inflation because shares are limited and price of this stock will be correlated with total number of MANAs
https://manifold.markets/fornever/usdmana-mana-inflation-protection-f
@IsaacKing yes. This is a common technique used by governments all over history to get rid of debts. Compare with the Roman Empire reducing the amount of silver in coins but keeping the same face value.
@Odoacre of course at the time they did not even know what inflation was, but the effect was the same: the price of goods rises because the real value of the currency decreases. Stored currency wether in a bank or stored under the mattress loses value, creating pressure to store value in commodities or real estate instead. This causes the actual price of those assets to incrrase as well. In the manifold economy there are no real goods immune from currency inflation, except donations, which have promptly skyrocketed since the pivot was announced
@Odoacre Makes sense to me. I also asked an economics student I know and they concurred that this counts as inflation.