This market lists various opinions I've heard about the proposed Manifold Pivot.
This is a combination market/poll. I've added a few opinions I've heard, and you can add your own too.
Buy YES in an opinion you endorse, buy NO in an opinion you anti-endorse. Each holder of YES is a single vote for YES, each holder of NO is a single vote for NO.
At market close at noon on 5/4, I will tally the votes and resolve each option to the majority position.
More details for those that haven't read the post:
We are working today on a killer feature that will supercharge your forecasts: real cash prizes. Our plan is to enable cash payouts under the sweepstakes model, as used by sites like Fliff and Chumba.
Mana will remain as a purely play-money currency used to bet on markets. But, most markets will payout sweepstakes Prize Points instead of Mana. Prize Points can be either converted back into mana or be redeemed for cash. The sweepstakes model has more restrictions and is importantly different from real-cash betting, but we hope it provides the incentive people need to bring higher quality forecasting to our platform.
The path to enabling cash payouts will be long and uncertain. It’s possible it won’t happen at all. We are working very closely with our lawyers, but it’s likely we won’t be able to roll out payouts for at least another month or two.
Mana purchase rate
The maximum mana purchase rate will change to $1 : M1,000 on May 1st, 2024.
Users will be able to cash out to charity under the previous rate of M100 : $1 in the interim period before May 1st (see below).
We are temporarily disabling mana purchases under the old rates. We will re-enable purchases at the new rates on May 1st.
Profit backfill
We will backfill profits on users’ profile pages and the site leaderboard to be 10x higher, in line with the mana purchase changes
Related questions
@shankypanky Sorry, the latter! LMK if you have any ideas for a more clear wording. “ it’s hard to predict which markets will be “good”. “, although hard to fit that in an option
Instead of real money prizes, you can earn the right to see content on manifold.xxx. Want to see Mana-chan x Fivey Fox hentai? Only if you make Ṁ10K in profit this month.
@shankypanky The revenue will come from everyone buying mana so they can watch the hottest new release: LK-69
Hic Okay, Morty! So, we've got this site, Manifold Markets, right? It's all about betting on real-world events, seeing who can predict the future and stuff. Real brainy, sciency things, Morty.
But I was watching this hic interdimensional cable, saw something called Fliff and Chumba. They let people bet and cash out in real money, Morty, real cash! So, here’s the genius part: we pivot our site to that. People toss in some digital coins, play the odds, and maybe, just maybe, they hit the jackpot.
It's like a sweepstakes, Morty! A big, crazy lottery where we belch rake in the profits while they dream of riches. It's brilliant, Morty, absolutely brilliant!
@DanMan314 this seems surprising given how many games and services do well on subscriptions and ads. Manifold has a fun game, basis for a social network, and a potentially profitable product of selling answers for your own or your organization's questions. Other companies show that these could be profitable. Pursing strategies similar to subscriptions also has the nifty little bonus feature of not being illegal....
@Anonculously Ads, subscriptions, and in-app purchases are a totally reasonable business model at a certain level of scale, but unfortunately Manifold is a couple orders of magnitude away from that scale with no obvious way to grow to it. I think a lot of sustainable business models could be unlocked with growth, but the team hasn't really figured out how to make that happen and at current scale it wouldn't work.
@DanMan314 this is a good assessment. Growth has to come first. It seems there are other good options to try for growth, but it certainly is challenging. Given the legal constraints and potential harms to people if get things wrong, it is not a clear a real-money pivot should even be considered an option (but wish them luck figuring it out)
That does not really matter. In the post pivot world the only (significant) source of mana is either buying it outright or winning it from someone else (and eventually down the chain someone bought the mana).
That's the whole point.
So it's not really a free user world, but a constant battle of whales.
@Odoacre Then the 10x devaluation is the problem. 1000 prize points for $9.50 is perfectly reasonable
@MarkHamill I'm confused. My point is post pivot it does not matter, since you buy mana at M1000:$1 and you buy dollars at $1:PP1000 (after converting the mana to PP at 1:1).
They could do $1:M1 or $1:M10 or whatever ratio. It's irrelevant.
It's effectively a new currency that's post pivot mana. The fact they are both called mana is confusing, but you can think of it as if they are giving you some post pivot mana for free in exchange for your current mana at a 1:10 exchange rate.
(NB this is my current understanding, I may well have it wrong)
@MarkHamill The only reason Mana is being devalued is so that they can handle reporting it as liability & a bunch of users withdrawing and leaving the site at once.
This sucks for old users who wanted to take advantage of the system, but for new users, the ratio literally does not matter, it could be 1 billion mana to USD, as long as the buying rate matches withdrawal.