I'm guessing it's not "Both of us move to the UK", although we are a freedom-loving country when it comes to gambling.

@GarrettBarry "I still think there’s a solid shot it happens, but to be clear, no money has been put in escrow"

@chrisjbillington I think donating to charity is worlds apart from giving a guy you don’t like $1m, but if we believe that they could not bet otherwise then it makes sense that it’s the only way to actually further the bet.

@JakeFromHackmud If this is what happens, it should resolve NO. This is NOT the bet that was outlined in the description.

I absolutely believe he will give $1m to charity, that’s nothing like the original bet.

@Gen Nvm it’s accounted for in description.

@Gen the description accounts for giving it to charity but only at the recipient's request, not because the loser had legal trouble sending money to the winner

@JakeFromHackmud The key tweet here is the first reply where Balaji is keeping a wide door open to backing out. If I didn’t want to pay up, I’d 100% say the lawyers made me not do it.

@ErickBall It’s weird there’s trouble at all, but I don’t understand American gambling laws.

I’d expect it to be difficult here in Australia (there’s no tax on winnings) but in the US? Wouldn’t the gov treat it like any other transaction? They get their piece so it’s no different to a gift or any business transaction. Guess not tho. Hope that guy loses his $1m regardless

@JakeFromHackmud If the $1M goes to charity because the recipient explicitly asked to do so (and not because Balaji demanded this as a condition) then this should resolve to Yes. Otherwise to No.

If it’s unclear whether Balaji forced the recipients hand in this, this should resolve as Unclear. The spirit of this question is explicitly about whether or not the recipient will get a free $1M in 90 days.

@NikitaSokolsky The spirit of the question is whether Balaji is actually willing to risk $1M for 1 BTC and if legal issues are preventing Medlock from getting the money, then giving the money to charity doesn't go against the spirit of the bet in my view (as long as Medlock gets to choose the charity).

@NamesAreHard if Medlock can choose any charity then I'm leaning towards this becoming a Yes. If he's forced to choose from 4-5 options provided by Balaji or a condition like "only crypto-related charities", then I'd say it's a No.

@NikitaSokolsky Agreed, it has to be treated fully as Medlock's money if Balaji loses for this to be a proper bet.

@chrisjbillington How would the market resolve in the backup case described here?

My initial thoughts are that if both participants shrug and say "ah well, we couldn't make the bet due to an actual legal limitation, charity bet it is" then it should resolve YES. But if Medlock is like "no, f you, this was perfectly possible legally and you are just chickening out", and it seems plausible that that's true, then it should resolve NO. What do others think?

Definitely "NO" if Balaji does not allow Medlock to name the charity

@chrisjbillington Seems reasonable to me :)

@LoganBowers It’s not that weird, if bitcoin is worth >1M at any point in the next 90 days, Balaji gets the funds in escrow. Otherwise, medlock gets them. It’s a pretty basic bet.

The only difficult part is because they have decided to use USDC to complicate things for no reason. The difficulties are of their own making, as Balaji obviously came off the crack and doesn’t want to give away 1M anymore

@ValeryCherepanov Agreed

I very much sympathize with the "completely ridiculous" prior here, but that prior is outweighed for me by my other prior, "People competing for viral internet attention will do all sorts of completely ridiculous things, including throwing away a million dollars."

@Gigacasting Imagine you are getting a free mill and you can’t come up with 26k 💀

It’s not happening dawg, this is the biggest crowdfund scam ever

@Gigacasting He will get bailed out via crowdfunding 100%

My bet was on him not having the $ and I was right- I didn't think he'd resort to E-begging so I sold all of my NO shares for a profit.

@Pickle I'd sell a kidney to put up a bitcoin for that deal. I could have a lawyer review, draft and escrow within 6 hours of a serious bet acceptance. I'm certain even my lawyer would be willing to front a bitcoin for that deal.

The fact that HE is the one delaying is almost unbelievable. There's no way it will go ahead now imo, if it was going to happen, it would have happened. I'm guessing there is a lot of uncertainty behind the scenes and Medlock doesn't want to front the cash for a high scam risk (e.g. you must use my lawyer or my escrow facility or or or or and and and and and - which you wouldn't expect when someone is essentially giving away $1m to be publicly embarrassed)

@Gen I'd remortgage my home for that bet if I got the other guys name and address confirmed by a 3rd party of my choice live so that I had somewhere to serve papers to.

@Gen chiming in here to provide some context - someone immediately lent me the bitcoin and I've been ready to go since then, just waiting on our escrow:

https://twitter.com/ikepoker/status/1636881252900028422

@Gigacasting He doesn't "blog about tax policy", he makes annoying bait tweets about taxes. Please don't dignify them by calling them "policy".

@ShakedKoplewitz Actually, new theory, what if Medlock is actually a false flag by the libright to make people annoyed at leftists. If Balaji knows this, he can coordinate with it for his pump scheme and get the account to claim it got paid.
(epistemic status: mostly unserious)

@ShakedKoplewitz you got me, been working on this con since 2019 https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2019/10/22/medicare-for-kids

@JamesMedlock I still don’t believe it’ll go ahead. I can imagine you have limited dealing with lawyers, and couldn’t easily contact one to solidify the deal, but it doesn’t need to take this long. I’m guessing the delays could just as easily be Balaji looking for an easy way out.

I don’t know how much you guys communicate, but unless you actually know each other well, I have no reason to believe this guy would front $1m on a bet that will never happen. Especially when if he thought it would happen he could buy bitcoin with that money for higher upside and lower downside. Even the escrow process doesn’t make sense (storing $1m you expect to hyper inflate?)

Even billionaires don’t fuck around with $1m like that. If his manic episode is over, you’re never getting that money. I hope for the sake of the charity that he’s still smoking enough crack to proceed. Good luck

@JamesMedlock I'm sorry, I didn't realize you also cowrote a blogpost with someone four years ago. You've now earned my respect, I'm suddenly willing to ignore your complete lack of content, constant trolling, and hard work on degrading conversation norms in what's generally one of the better online politics bubbles to maga/lefty bait-level trollings.

@MaxGhenis He's the former on Twitter and the latter here on Manifold. Have edited the description to include both.

@chrisjbillington whoops, duplicate comment. +1 vote for a comment delete button.

By the way, I've sold my NO shares and won't trade in this market from now. Just in case resolution ends up depending on any judgement call, I don't want people to be thinking about which resolution would benefit me.

@AlexPower To clarify my thinking here - if Balaji does not give Medlock $1M or equivalent, or direct $1M to some other charity/recipient specifically as agreed by Medlock, that will be a NO. Balaji cannot unilaterally decide how the money is to be directed, he is buying a bitcoin from Medlock, not receiving a bitcoin for free and then declaring unrelated spending of his own, that he might have made anyway for all we know, to be the payment.

@AndrewHartman why?

@DenisBaudouin Possibly the worst bet ever made, yes.

...in terms of the bet itself, that is. Presumably it's some ploy to gain visibility, or pump bitcoin a few percent on hype and thus profit enough off his other holdings to make up for the loss, or something like that. If it's not some clever ploy then we have a billionaire who has absolutely lost the plot.

@chrisjbillington I mean it's a less expensive manic episode than buying twitter, right?

@LarsDoucet In dollar terms, likely. As a percentage, Balaji is overpaying by more, which makes it feel much worse somehow. Perhaps because the uncertainty range on the value of each trade is such that Musk has a far higher chance of making a profit than Balaji, even if his EV in dollar terms is more negative by a couple of orders of magnitude.

I realise that market is about profit in one specific year and not whether Musk will have broken even - would like to see a market on that question as well.

@chrisjbillington Yeah you're right, the Twitter buy was dumb but wasn't absolutely obviously dumb at the time, or through just about any reasonable framework. Balaji's bet is so wild the only plausible interpretations to me are that he's snapped or it's a pump ploy

@LarsDoucet worth noting that Musk tried to back out of that one once his manic episode ended, and I don't think Delaware law would force this bet to close.

@DylanSlagh I like this comment because I have no idea which is which.