A bet is being formulated on Twitter between @JamesMedlock (Twitter: @jdcmedlock) and Balaji Srinivasan (Twitter: @balajis).
The bet is over whether bitcoin will be worth $1M in 90 days, with Medlock to pay Balaji 1 Bitcoin if it is, and Balaji to pay Medlock $1M if it isn't.
This is stated by Balaji to be a bet over hyperinflation - Balaji claims to imminently expect a large (>40×) devaluation of the US dollar, and for bitcoin to maintain its value.
Will the bet go ahead (and be honoured)? This market will resolve YES if the winner is actually paid their winnings at the end of the term in a manner consistent with the terms of the bet.
This market will resolve based on whether the spirit of the terms currently being formulated is followed, not the letter - for example if payout is diverted to charity at the recipient's request, or recipients crowdfund their stake, or some other asset is used to escrow the $1M instead of USDC, that will all be fine, as long as the outcome still largely resembles a bet over Bitcoin's value being greater than $1M or not, with stakes of of 1 BTC vs $1M.
Edit: The terms are different to what I initially thought, and so I have edited the description above, which originally stated that the bet was an agreement that Balaji would purcase 1 BTC from Medlock for $1M in 90 days. Instead, it looks like the winner will keep both the bitcoin and the $1M, and the bet is explicitly over whether the price of BTC is more than $1M at the end of the term. See the below tweet for this clarification.
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@johnleoks ...his entire job is being a smug asshole on Twitter? He's not exactly a policy wonk, he's a one-line "lol taxes good losers" troll.
@ShakedKoplewitz (I mean I assume he also has a day job since presumably he was living off something before this, but it's his entire online role)
@ShakedKoplewitz there is a thing here where while there's a lot of trolls on Twitter, I find Medlock especially aggrevating because he's the biggest troll in a cluster of otherwise mostly reasonable policy-oriented people. It's one thing if he was just a straight up commie or trump troll, but he's close enough to the cluster of policy-oriented neolibs that he degrades the conversation in areas I usually like.
@ShakedKoplewitz Wow, taking the other side of a bet with a very rich and very wrong guy, what an asshole!
You may find him annoying, but that behaviour or perception was not why this bet paid off. This bet paid off because he was right, not because of his tweets.
@RobinGreen The bet paid off because Balaji overestimated the marketing benefits of that stunt. Nobody (even Balaji) believed it was a good bet. It was never a real "bet", because if he really just wanted to bet on bitcoin he could have just bought bitcoin. Medlock could take the bet with zero risk, because he could buy bitcoin to hedge. It was ridiculous from the start.
Yes, he was "right", but literally nobody (even the person betting against him) thought it was possible for him to be "wrong". Shaked's comment isn't about who was "right", it's about who was selected for getting the bet, and Shaked's point, is that he was granted that opportunity off the back of
being an asshole online
Whether you agree with the interpretation or not, you totally missed the point with your comment.
@Gen So the argument is that Medlock is famous because he's an asshole, and he got to take the other side of the bet because he's famous and because he was smart enough to see it was easy, risk-free money? OK, if that's the argument, then I can see how someone might think that, but I disagree with the premise that he's an asshole online. I don't share the same political views as Medlock but he is on my side of the aisle so I'm biased in his favour I guess. But he seems pretty polite to me.
Related market resolves YES: https://manifold.markets/LarsDoucet/will-balaji-actually-take-anyone-up#
This market will resolve based on whether the spirit of the terms currently being formulated is followed, not the letter - for example if payout is diverted to charity at the recipient's request, or recipients crowdfund their stake, or some other asset is used to escrow the $1M instead of USDC, that will all be fine, as long as the outcome still largely resembles a bet over Bitcoin's value being greater than $1M or not, with stakes of of 1 BTC vs $1M.
I believe it should resolve as yes. Some of the payout will go to give directly, but the core of the bet is still the same
@BraulioValdivielsoMartine I agree - $1.5M in asset were given to Medlock or donated as a result of losing the bet. It's unclear to me to what extent Medlock directly asked for 50% to be given to charity or what charity, but that seems to have been his intent (to take a 70% tax rate). I'd call this result well within the spirit of the bet personally.
Actually I think is is quite clear cut:
He directly said he wanted to give himself a 70% tax rate between taxes and a GiveDirectly donation: https://twitter.com/jdcmedlock/status/1637472476782362624
And now says that's exactly what's happening: https://twitter.com/jdcmedlock/status/1653452817179508736
"It's nice that my original plan to give myself my desired 70% tax rate worked out to nice round numbers"
This feels unequivocally in the spirit of the original bet to me.
@Weepinbell I agree - not up to me how this market resolves, but in my view the bet was resolved in the spirit of the original agreement, and so it would make sense to resolve to Yes.
@AlexFisch if you were DMing him about how to sue to enforce, I'm gonna say that's insider trading. 🤣
@nmehndir The stakes are clearly 1M, GiveDirectly got 500k and Medlock got 500k. Presumably if Medlock had lost he would have lost a Bitcoin.
I think this pretty clearly meets that criteria.
Honestly just confused now. I feel like @chrisjbillington is going to have a rough time deciding resolution criteria, but some sort of bet seems to have happened.
Buying YES mostly because of this comment: https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-the-1m-vs-1btc-bet-between-jam#1XvrRJi1zY45u14OaQiO
@DanMan314 Yeah he only locked up $500k for Medlock, I'm not sure what this means for resolution.
