This is my version of /MarkIngraham/manifold-markets-financial-crisis , a market that is often linked to but which has an inactive creator and unnecessarily narrow resolution criteria.
A time period resolves yes if a Manifold Financial Crisis occurs during that time. Multiple time periods can resolve yes.
This market resolves based on the spirit of the question in my judgement. I would generally expect to see many accounts going negative and staff intervening in a manifold financial crisis, but those criteria are neither necessary nor sufficient. I am open to suggestions of how to define a crisis more formally.
Things that would not count:
A couple of accounts going very negative from new year's eve resolutions going against them, but most of the active users of the site coming out of it fine.
Heavy losses to many users after the election, but which are an expected part of making large bets on a binary outcome.
A temporary bug that looks like it will cause a financial crisis but is quickly fixed.
Every Whalebait market except Whales vs Minnows.
Things that would count:
An event like the the the Post-Person-Of-The-Year loan crisis, in which a bug was discovered that meant many users owed tens of thousands of mana in loans that they didn't realize had not been repaid. Many active users then went negative after the loans were paid back all at once, and staff had to step in and give out a bunch of extra loans to bring people positive.
A market or series of markets resolve in an extremely unexpected way, such as LK-99 being a room temperature superconductor, and many accounts are completely wiped out. This would count regardless of if staff steps in or not.
A massive bug that causes permanent economic damage which staff can't reverse.
Whales vs Minnows.
I will not trade in this market.
Related questions
@Joshua do you want to opine on whether a planned end to loans, as we currently expect, would count?
@chrisjbillington Hard to view any one thing in isolation here, I think the market is correct to have spiked but just the announcements so far aren't a crisis yet and we should watch to see how it actually plays out.
@Weezing good point, I brought it down a bit, but still this seems to go beyond whalebaiting and @agency will likely continue and mess lots of things up. it's not like two users bet against one another on a whalebait and one lost and it's a crisis for those people; it's like, probably hundreds of thousands or millions of mana will get injected into the mana economy by the power of troll, and that almost certainly resolves this YES imo
catnee just got fined 567k. if a bunch more people get fined or get forced to sell shares, does that count?
@Joshua as financial crises go, I have been through a few and I'm still in the dark as to did we just have one, I do appreciate that you think we did Can any light be shed by anyone on whether these concerns are well-founded?
Broad summary of what happened:
Starts with admins deciding to unsubsidize/unrank daily stock/crypto price questions
Backlash against admin decision.
Some traders and question creators who specialized in these questions vow to stop using the site.
One of those people ran a bunch of AI doom markets, decides to resolve all his AI doom markets to "no" early.
Catnee has a large position on Yes in AI doom markets, having repeatedly re-invested his loans in those questions. Catnee comes online, asks that these questions be re-opened
Questions are re-opened, Catnee immediately starts putting up more massive limit orders on yes, the world will end.
Admins decide to call in Catnee's loans early.
Backlash against admin decision.
A bunch of us end up in voice chat talking about moderation policy
Mira, who had said before she was planning to liquidate her positions, decides to do so all at once while the voice call is still ongoing.
She uses an alt to buy LK-99 to over 50%, filling everyone's limit orders. She begins selling hundreds of thousands of shares across the website.
Everyone in the call scrambles to chaotically grab the shares first as she continues to sell. There are races to set limit orders ahead of her. People start liquidating their own positions to get enough free mana to buy Mira's positions.
In the end, one of the site's best traders had -1 million monthly profit, the entire masters league was in a different order with Jackson at +250,000, and Shump had 500,000 shares of NO in the FUH steps market. It was total chaos. Definitely a crisis.
@Joshua it's a inshakeup, some serious incident. It was maybe even a crisis situation. I'm not sure about financial crisis in the common understanding, it's not long term, the prices mostly recovered by next day. No real ripple effect in others going bankrupt or needing bailouts. Ehhhh
@Fedor The prices may have recovered, but the all-time leaderboard and various leagues were totally upended. In a reputation-based financial system the leaderboards are where you generally see the permanent damage from a financial crisis that would count for this market.
That was definitely the biggest lasting consequence of the WvM crisis with Isaac dropping off the leaderboard and everyone against him shooting to the top, and the same is true of the Mira Mania crisis. Either of those would have resolved this market if they happened in 2024.
@Joshua The thing is, other than the Manifold bank and Catnee, nobody was adversely impacted. I think it was certainly a shakeup and very dramatic, but to me a crisis implies a tragedy that affects a significant part of the userbase, which this is not.
@Shump The Catnee thing on its own wasn't a crisis. But I'm counting everything together of stocks getting unsubbed, people threatening to quit, the ai markets getting resolved and un-resolved, catnee coming back, catnee getting massively fined, and mira then intentionally causing chaos. All that together is the most crisis-y thing that's ever happened while I've been on the site as far as I know.
For this market I'm trying to set a standard of things that do happen, just not often. I don't think there have been any other crises since WvM and before December, so they're still quite rare. But it's not an unreachably high bar, for this market.