Will manifold allow mana redemptions for gift cards within 30 days?
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resolved Aug 29
Resolved
NO

This is pending acceptance of my production API key access form submitted to Tremendous (https://www.tremendous.com/).

Pull Request: https://github.com/manifoldmarkets/manifold/pull/701

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predicted YES
@ian if you do decide to trial it manually, I'll happily be one of the beta testers using my winnings from the YES resolution. ;)
Betting YES because I think it'd be worth y'all at least trying manually. No use pulling your hair out about the legality if you haven't proven that anyone even wants gift cards. Though, sample size of one: I want. It'd be pretty dope if my Manifold profits could pay my Audible and Apple App Store subscriptions (though I wouldn't redeem for GC's unless I'd amassed significantly more profit than I have now.)
I'm still skeptical of gift cards being the route we want to go down but agree it is worth trying. I'm betting on YES because of how determined some of the team seem to be about this. Also, there were suggestions to just do it manually which would make sense to do if we wanted to test it out, so the odds were too good not to bet YES on this happening in the next 30 days.
Bad news! This from Tremendous: 'After further review of your team's details, unfortunately, we are unable to move forward with approving your Tremendous API approval as your use case does not meet the requirements set by our partner financial institution. Any sensitive documents have been deleted and pending payments canceled, so you will not be charged. I do apologize for any and all inconvenience and we wish you all the best.' I just responded and asked for more details on how we don't meet the reqs. I suppose the next place to ask would be https://developer.amazon.com/incentives-api
I would predict this to be legally equivalent to just doing real money payouts, so I'm curious if legal advice is intended to be sought or if it has already been sought or if Manifold is planning on going ahead without.
I agree, this seems like a good way to get the SEC on your tail.

As a reminder: scammers often ask for gift cards (e.g. Apple or Google Play or Steam) because they can be resold for cash on shady websites for a portion of their face value.

I would strongly recommend the Manifold folks not do the gift card thing: I would prefer that this website stay as a mostly-not-real-money prediction-based social network than it get attacked by the authorities.

predicted NO

I've done this myself, when I ended up with a US Play Store card I couldn't make use of; sold it for about 90% of face value on a website like https://gameflip.com/en/overview/sell/gift-cards/amazon (don't remember if that was the exact one).

Converting them to cash is mildly annoying and you'll lose a bunch of the value but not too difficult if you're not a fraudster and happy to do ID verification to a website that trades them.

Hm lots of bets but no written opinions. I and the rest of the team are of the opinion to try it. Any reason why we shouldn't or are y'all just betting we don't get approved?
predicted YES
@ian I figured you'd already decided (with very high probability) to try it if the implementation was completed, so the main questions in my mind were whether the approval would come in time and whether your PR would be completed (it mentions secret management as still being figured out)
predicted YES
@ian I think you ought to try it, although a part of me wonders whether it's technically legal?
predicted NO
@ian I think this is something valuable to the community, potentially very impactful (e.g. could be in one liner explanation on what is Manifold). I placed a no bet because I thought you have a chance on stumbling on some roadblock e.g. legality of this. Hope my bet is incorrect :)
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