Conditional on leaderboard tabulations not being significantly changed, will @Catnee remain in the top spot?
More fine print:
-Conditional on WvM resolving as expected.
-I reserve the right to ignore deliberate profit manipulations.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ7,870 | |
| 2 | Ṁ2,553 | |
| 3 | Ṁ1,942 | |
| 4 | Ṁ1,532 | |
| 5 | Ṁ1,089 |
@TiannaWheeler It is what it is. But I still want to know how 120k in private market profit is possibly legit. Can’t be.
@BTE wait what, they did 120k in a private market? I agree that should not be in the leaderboard
@MarcusAbramovitch Myself and others have suggested private market transactions shouldn’t influence leaderboards (or maybe even profit, at all).
It feels weird manually policing it all the time for these markets. They should just blanket remove the possibility
@MarcusAbramovitch YES!! I experimented last night with private markets and it turns out pumping your leaderboard position is so easy. I would be hesitant to ever bet on a leaderboard market again.
@Gen Manifold already doesn’t count them toward League profits so they are clearly aware of the potential.
@BTE Yep, it might as well get relegated to the equivalent of a fancy mana link. They can always undo it.. All groups have their own leaderboards anyway, which seems fine for private competitions
@MichaelWheatley Fool, why don't you tag me on making the correct decision? I ain't got time to be checking, expect you to come correct! Bunch of bullshit. Don't worry, I got you. Full on disrespecting me and my family.
I wonder if there is a corresponding unaccounted for decline in profits on another user’s account that could be used to discredit the supposedly legitimate private market profits that got Catnee over the top. It had to come from someone, right? Unless he is just betting against himself, but even then there is an alt with negative spike in profit between 10-11:59pm on the 30th. Who knows how to find it quickly using the API?
Okay, nothing I heard was quite enough to make me thing I should resolve differently, so I'm resolving to 66%.
I appreciate that profits from private markets put NO bettors in a very difficult position because they've got to argue against secret evidence they aren't allowed to see, and in future markets I'll make a point to set rules against those.
@MichaelWheatley I'm fine with this. Live and learn. Part of Manifold is having "shit go against you sometimes". Hopefully you do learn for next time
@MarcusAbramovitch You in on this too, probably got paid out to deliberately throw the market. We don't play like this. Not with me.
@BTE that was almost entirely made trading the market but sure. Also, in the past, I have gotten screwed on markets that didn't feel quite fair but you do live on
"My parents beat me when I was a child and I'm still alive so I'm going to beat mine too, nothing wrong with that." - @MarcusAbramovitch
@MarcusAbramovitch nicely done! And I agree completely about Manifold not being worth getting upset about. Not even a little bit.
@MichaelWheatley i don’t envy the position you were in deciding this resolution. I think you made a good call.
@BTE You're a buster. Thank you sir, may I have another? This here is some bullshit, you know it too. Ain't no two balls here to make a single sack.
Alright, I mentioned in the description that
"I reserve the right to ignore deliberate profit manipulations"
So lets weigh all considerations. There were two main sources of potential manipulation.
GHOST PROFITS:
Catnee had some profits which couldn't be accounted from from his public daily profits/losses. Those were profits presumably made on private markets. The concern is that those could easily have been spoofed.
Ghost profits summary:
640,000 -> 790,000 : 150,000 in daily profits
approx 109,000 - 80,000 = 30,000 in public profits
That's still 120,000 in profits that haven't been accounted for.
Catnee and others provided explanations for those private markets which were completely believable and benign (...with respect to this market), which they don't want me to share.
It's entirely possible that those markets were delayed until the last minute to manipulate this market (all parties involved report not actually caring about this market enough to manipulate it), but I wouldn't consider that a dealbreaker. The profit manipulation I was referring to was spoofed profit numbers, not mostly-legitimate profits that got delayed to the last possible minute.
It's hard to verify this 100% because I can't be certain of the stories, just about everyone involved is a top YES holder who insists they forgot about this market, the private markets are secret so the NO bettors can't help ensure I've fully audited them, etc.
AI DOOM MARKETS:
Catnee holds almost 3 millions shares across the various p(Doom) markets. Small perturbations in price can have huge effects on the book value of his portfolio.
During July 30th, there was a sustained push on those markets. I had a number of limit orders up there so I noticed that.
25m before market close, Nikita bought a bunch of shares on one of them, which boosted Catnee's portfolio over the line.
OTOH, these trades are mostly consistent with their trading patterns. Nikita pumps those markets dozens of times every day and Catnee had done his last round of big spending on May 31st.
I'm inclined not to attribute Catnee's number #1 position solely to manipulation on those markets because in the following two days, before a sudden drop in Marcus's numbers, Catnee spent approximately 2/3rds of the time ahead of Marcus (the aforementioned 3 million shares give Catnee a very volatile portfolio value). It wasn't a temporary jump.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS:
Catnee was #1. It's good to match the market title to the degree possible.
Overall, both causes for concern have innocent explanations, but they're both situations where it's hard to actually verify the explanation.
My plan is to resolve to a high percentage to reflect the uncertainly. Probably 66% because that's approximately my level of credence, and the percentage of time Catnee remained number one in subsequent days seems like a good Schelling point.
Major NO holders should let me know now if there's anything here they want to dispute or add to. @BTE @JosephNoonan @jfjurchen @NedFlicks @TiannaWheeler
Finally, I promised to sell all my shares to reduce resolution bias, but I never got around to selling all of my trading bot's shares, because I only remembered them at the last minute, and at that point I figured the market was going to resolve NO so I didn't have to bother. I will immediately donate them somewhere if that's an acceptable solution to major NO holders.
@MichaelWheatley Nikita stands to make a very large profit on this market. I didn’t see that addressed and IMO it actually speaks to motive to manipulate that makes pattern of manipulation, or the fact that he is always pumping the doom pedal, less relevant.
@MichaelWheatley And did you just explain to me that I can ghost trade with my alt accounts in a private market and make fortune in fake profits without anyone being able to see what I did??
@BTE If someone pumps the doom markets day in and day out, that makes it a lot more believable when they claim they weren't motivated by their profits here, and it was just routine pumping.
Like I said, Catnee has mostly stayed above Marcus even after this market closed, which is part of why I'm inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't just a transient spike that vanished as soon as it was no longer needed.
@MichaelWheatley Well obviously Catnee is going to be above Marcus if profit was sent to Catnee and not returned. Doesn't mean it won't be in the future. The problem is that it's really hard to track profits going between Catnee and alts/friends.
I guess my credence that Catnee was rightfully #1 without manipulation is like 40%.
@MichaelWheatley Honestly, I think Marcus tanking or at least not trying to win is probably the most likely reason this happened how it did. And you can’t really say that is manipulation unfortunately.
@BTE Not nearly as much as he had to lose. And afaik he said that he wasn't trying to lose intentionally before. Are you accusing him of lying for M2K?
The only way I'd agree with that is if his profit dipped significantly before the specified time, but it didn't.
Catnee, who just got caught exploiting Will the sum of shares on any market exceed 100 000 000 in the next two weeks? | Manifold and avoided being fined by stashing away his balance down to -300k.
Who posted a screenshot at 11:58pm and at 12:00am claiming "I forgot about this market".
Who gained 120k daily profit on the final day from private markets for "personal reasons".
Yes, this character is very believable.
@DanM I agree that Catnee is not believable when it comes to this. That's why my credence is below 50%. It's hard for me to track where all the mana went. He stashed away his balance which is problematic.
However, Marcus is pretty trustworthy and I don't think he'd intentionally try to lose. There's no evidence he did anything of the sort.
@MichaelWheatley I experimented with private markets today and I am no strongly opposed to the proposed resolution. It’s just WAY TOO EASY TO MANIPULATE!!
The profits weren’t necessarily made in Catnee’s private markets but maybe another user hosted the questionable activity? Who else is a member of Catnee’s private markets?
If resolving to PROB then the probability of the market at close seems much more fair, considering only approximately 20 percent of the profit is accounted for according to your summary. Why choose a much higher prob than the market when you admit you didn’t get straight answers or proof of where the profit came from? 66 percent seems way too generous IMO. Maybe 33% but again I think the market got it right based on the narrative you laid out.
@BTE Like I said, Catnee has entirely reasonable explanations for what was in those private markets. I'm about 90-95% confident those profits in private markets were "legitimate" for the purposes of this market.
My only concern is the logic being applied inconsistently. Maybe he doesn't create private markets for [Secret Catnee Purposes] when he doesn't simultaneously have a #1 profits market to manipulate.
Regarding the market close price, my thinking is:
the last-minute bump happened just 25 minutes before close so traders couldn't fully react to it/analyze it
Traders could see 120000 mana in profits which were unaccounted for but hadn't had a chance to get any explanations from the participants.
Regarding @DanM 's point about Catnee being a notorious scammer who can't be trusted, note that I was very nearly the number #3 victim in that scam, so I'm not exactly inclined to trust him myself.
@MichaelWheatley I appreciate everything you have said and realize you are putting a lot of time into resolving this question. Personally, I think it was a mistake to allow private markets to count towards P&L. The Manifold team excluded them from leagues probably because it was clear how they could easily be used to manipulate. Forget about the profit made in the last day of June, I wonder what proportion of Catnee’s total profit is from private markets?? And how did he go from being -300k to being able to trade a profit of 150k in a few hours?
I also appreciate your comment about it being hard to react to the spike. It also never actually says anywhere in the criteria that midnight eastern time is the cutoff. I know you have looked at the entire day and say that Catnee was on top 2/3 of the day, but we were only able to trade with the information we had the day before and had no chance to sell after the spike. I guess that we knew this was a possibility so it is what it is.
I think you have done an admirable job sorting through the information to make your decision. Tons of respect for you. However, I feel manipulated by Catnee and have less than zero respect for him.
@BTE Adding up Catnee's total profile profits in each market, you get about 660k. Yet their profit graph shows 790k. So yes, 130k was from private markets. And it wasn't profit that Catnee gave to someone else and got back, it's profit they never made in the first place. That makes my credence more like 20%.
Whatever Catnee's actual reason for it was, it still is profit manipulations, because you're purposefully changing the profit shown on your graph. If I had someone else transfer 100k profit to me, and I said "Well it wasn't for this market about me being in the top x traders, so it's not manipulation" that would be erroneous. Even if I didn't do it for that market, it was still manipulation of some kind.
@MichaelWheatley Catnee was still the #1 all-time trader on July 1st at midnight. Should resolve YES. Not sure why we are playing around with PROB and all that. You "reserve the right to ignore deliberate profit manipulations" so just waive that right, it wasn't anything crazy going on. I'm really disappointed in @MarcusAbramovitch as I had placed all my hopes, dreams and aspirations on that man, but I'll take this one on the chin and I think we can move on and get this resolved.
